Pet owners in East Vancouver are being warned after at least two dogs came into contact with what appeared to be “booby trapped” food at Strathcona Park.

On April 3, DJ Larkin and her dog, Silas, were at Strathcona Park. Silas was playing with other dogs, but then ran off and began eating something.

“It was a piece of what looked like pizza wrapped up with sewing threads, with about seven feet of thread sewn through it,” Larkin said. “I was really scared that it could be dangerous to him.”

Larkin said Silas swallowed the pizza whole, so she was able to get it all out of him. She said the incident was cause for concern.

“It was just sewn all together throughout the whole thing, you couldn’t do it by accident it seemed really intentional to me.”

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Larkin hoped the incident was a one off. It appears, though, it might not have been. The owner of Ball and Biscuit Pet Boutique says one of her dog daycare clients had a similar but scarier encounter at the same park just days ago.

“The dog swallowed a piece of pizza, and she noticed that there was sewing needles and thread within the food. When she went to retrieve it, the dog was obviously in discomfort and so they rushed off to the ER,” Carie Wong said. “That’s when they found that there was a needle stuck behind the larynx.”

That dog needed to have surgery and is recovering.

The city and the BC SPCA are now looking into the incidents.