Dog Owners Spread Impassioned Warning After Beloved Pit Bull Dies of Suffocation From Chip Bag

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“Be extra careful, warn other dog owners & give your fur babies some extra love today and everyday,” wrote Chrissy Villareal in an impassioned Facebook post. Her husband, Christian, just found their dog Petey dead at home from suffocation.

The Houston couple were devastated by the sight of their beloved pit bull “lifeless in [their] dining room with a chip bag over his head,” as Petey’s human dad Christian wrote on Instagram.

The young couple had left the bag out on the counter while they went to work, and somehow, Petey had got his head stuck inside. The loss made them aware of the problem of pet suffocation, which is much more common than is generally known.

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For Christian and Chrissy, the year and a half they had spent with Petey was a dream; as Christian wrote, “My heart hurts and I miss him like crazy but I am so thankful I had him in my life at all.” Petey loved a run through the park and was known for his cool costumes on Instagram.

“There is no way to describe the sadness, guilt, and emptiness we feel in our hearts and our home,” Christina explained to Love What Matters. “Petey taught us how to love in an entirely different way than we had known before. He made Christian and I feel like a real family.”

The fateful day when husband Christian returned home, he was surprised to notice that Petey wasn’t at the door to greet him. He thought at first that that the dog might have been hanging out on the sofa—which he wasn’t supposed to be on. But as he ventured in further, he saw the horrible sight of his beloved pit bull with the bag over his head.

How could this have happened? As Christina noted, “Petey was SMART so I didn’t understand why he couldn’t get it off with his paw.” The more she thought about it and did research, the suffocation made more sense. “He ate every chip out but of course went back for crumbs,” she wrote in her Facebook post. “With there being nothing left inside, every time he would go for more he would inhale making the bag tighter & tighter around his head ... ultimately resulting in suffocation.”

Petey’s owners went online to do some research about the dangers of pet suffocation and found that, sadly, their case was by no means an isolated incident. As Christina noted in her Facebook post, “[c]hip bags, cereal bags, bread bags, popcorn bags, dog/ cat treat bags seem to be the most common” causes of dog suffocation.

The American Veterinary Medical Association survey data on suffocation from 2014 to 2018 from over 1,300 respondents found that “about 25 percent of the bags or containers had been in or near the garbage, 22 percent on a coffee or side table, 13 percent on the counter, 6 percent outside, 6 percent on the kitchen or dining table, 3 percent in or near the recycling bin.”

These figures show the importance of animal owners keeping their houses free of open food containers. As Beth Brookhouser, director of Community Outreach for the SCPA of Monterey County, told KTVU, “The best that pet owners can do is try to pet-proof their home like they would for an inquisitive toddler, and to train their dogs to stay off counters and out of garbage.”

While Petey the pit bull died when his owners were out, it’s all too common for pets to suffocate even when Mom and Dad are nearby. As the AVMA survey showed, “thirty-nine percent of respondents were home when the pet suffocated. Of those who were out, 18 percent were gone for less than 15 minutes.” Thinking about what your dog or cat could be getting into could save their lives.

Unfortunately, it’s not just bags and containers that pose a danger—it’s also the substances inside of them that could be dangerous if ingested. “Human foods can be particularly troublesome, as these foods aren’t formulated for dogs and can cause choking or poisoning dangers,”AVMA spokesperson Michael San Filippo explained to TODAY. “For example, many foods contain the artificial sweetener xylitol, which is toxic to dogs and could be deadly.”

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What are pet owners to do? Advocates and activists working to end pet suffocations have several recommendations that can avoid this tragedy. The first, which the Villareals now practice, is to keep any bags with food in them safely stored, where unattended pets can’t get into them. The second is to take a few seconds and use some scissors to cut up chip bags and the like when you are done. The third is to secure trash and recycling so that animals aren’t lured by the food smells.

Of all the disturbing information that the Villareals discovered after the death of Petey, perhaps the most upsetting was that they were entirely common in not knowing about the dangers that a simple chip bag could pose. As the AVMA’s survey found, “of people whose pets have suffocated in food bags or containers, 87 percent didn’t know about the danger until the pet suffocated.”