One of the top finalists of Veterinary Practice News' "They Ate What?!" contest was a Great Dane whose stomach x-ray showed he'd munched on and eaten 43 socks.

The entry was submitted by the vet surgeon who operated on the ailing animal.

"We had a suspicion from his x-ray... [that] there was a considerable amount of foreign material in his stomach. When we opened him up... I kept pulling out socks. One, or two, or three socks isn't that unusual for a dog to eat -- but these socks just kept coming and coming," said Ashley Magee of Portland's DoveLewis Animal Emergency Hospital.

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Magee shared that the three-year old dog was quite huge and she just kept on reaching down his stomach with forceps. The process took quite a while, with Magee managing to remove 43-1/2 socks from the dog's stomach.

So where did the other half of the last sock go?

The vet stated the dog had previously thrown up material and, after a thorough checking of his intestinal tract, she believes she's managed to remove all the socks.

The procedure took two hours to accomplish and, She said the dog is now feeling much better and on his way to recovery.

But before the procedure, the dog was in a lot of pain and vomiting.

"His stomach was stretched to the point where the wall was starting to thin out and actually die off. He actually did have areas of his stomach that needed to be removed as well ... this was really a serious medical, life-threatening emergency," Magee explained.

Magee believes the dog was probably eating socks for a while and its owners, who had several children, probably didn't think too much of missing pairs of socks.

For pet owners who fear their dogs might do the same, Magee said the best way to prevent such incidents is to keep clothing in good laundry hampers and avoid having clothes lying around in the house.

The Great Dane didn't win this year's "They Ate What?!" x-ray contest. Instead, the winners were a bearded dragon named Dragon that ate a Barbie banana and a frog named Kermit that gobbled up thirty ornamental rocks from his terrarium.