The heatwave may be breaking a little this weekend but hopefully summer is with us for a few weeks yet.

With summer comes the attraction of barbecues and al fresco dining – great fun for us humans – sometimes slightly disastrous for our dogs.

Intestinal foreign bodies often become more of an issue in the summer months when dogs are getting their hands on (or should I say mouths around) things that they should not.

The classic offender is corn on the cob; fresh from the barbecue nothing is more delicious to a dog than a butter-soaked piece of sweetcorn, but the cob itself presents huge problems.

A one-to-two-inch-long piece of corn on the cob is big enough to swallow, swill around in the stomach for a while and then pass into the intestines – where it gets stuck. Corn on the cob is the single item I have surgically removed the most from dogs’ intestines.

Even more dramatic than corn on the cob is when dogs swallow kebab sticks – and believe me they do - this makes for very stressful abdominal surgery and a very high-risk patient. Remarkably I have known dogs recover from these sorts of incidents, but they are always touch and go cases.

The take home message must be – if you are having a barbecue this summer then keep your food safely away from pets, never underestimate what a dog will eat if it is soaked in butter or covered in barbecue meat juice.

* Alice Moore is a vet at Castle Veterinary Clinic, Dorchester and Weymouth. Tel 01305 267083.