Your Pet's Best Friend

My dog has been poisoned!

When the phone call starts that way, I am often skeptical.  People often blame poisoning for everything from cancer to parvovirus diarrhea.  How do you know it's been poisoned?  Did you leave poison out where your dog could get it?  Did you see him eat it?   Before I could ask any of my questions, the owner told me that another dog had died with the same symptoms two weeks ago. "He's drooling like crazy, and having convulsions. He has vomited and passed diarrhea.  He can't get up and I think he's dying."  You know how in old Westerns they used to say "Shoot first and ask questions afterward"?  At this point I'm thinking, let's get him into the hospital and ask questions afterward.

So here's Brutus.  He's pretty much just lying there, except for the constant severe muscle tremors that you can't see in a still picture. Those tremors are why his temperature is 106.   He certainly has all the signs of exposure to a toxin affecting the nervous system.  It's not carbamates or organophosphates because his pupils are dilated.  Could be permethrin or something similar, maybe slug bait.  No way to tell really, so it's on to supportive care.  I. V. fluids, atropine for the salivation, and plenty of valium for the seizures and tremors. 

Once we got him calmed down and quasi-stable, further questioning revealed that Brutus had escaped the yard, allegedly in search of romance.  When the owner caught up with him, he was down and out.  Turns out his deceased buddy had also escaped the yard prior to his demise.  I'm thinking that would have put me to work some overtime on the fence situation, but now we've got to worry about what we're going to do after the fact.

Brutus got relatively quiet, though his muscles were still quivering like a sack of snakes.  At the risk of having it vomited all over me, I administered good old Toxiban + Sorbitol.  This is as close to the "universal antidote" as we have.  First of all, we really don't know for sure what Brutus got into, and for a lot of toxins there really is no specific antidote.  This stuff is activated charcoal, which acts like a "chemical sponge" to catch toxins that are still in the gut. This should keep more from getting into his bloodstream and making things worse.  The sorbitol is a cathartic, to shoot the stuff on through and get rid of it.  A little messy, to be sure, but "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do".

In the hospital, it's not that much of a problem, but if you send somebody home full of this, you have to warn the people that he's either going to vomit "black paint" or possibly have diarrhea like "black paint".  It will darn sure ruin clothing or carpet.  Inexplicably, some people don't take this warning seriously and destruction ensues.

Anyhow, I spent all Sunday morning with Brutus, missed church, missed Sunday luncheon, too.  By noonish he was getting pretty stable.  By evening he didn't look great, but he was holding his head up and looking like he might get over it. Evidently, he didn't get enough poison to kill him outright, and we got the rest of it flushed out.  His body's natural defenses came through (with some help from me).

Today he's looking good and going home... hopefully to an enhanced fence.

Rat Poison Scare

Why is this dog squinting?  Well, I'll tell you about that.  It seems that she and old Dad were out in the garage and somehow a box of rat-bait got knocked over.  They knew how many chunks of bait were in the box and when they picked them up, they were short a chunk.  Of course, with that kind of confusion, a dog has to be right in the middle of it.   The natural assumption would be that the dog had scarfed up one of the baits.  So, it's rush, rush, rush over to the veterinarian.

Now, when you look at this thing, it's about the size of two ping-pong balls end to end, weighs an ounce, and is pretty rough and rigid.  It doesn't look like something you'd want to swallow, but you are not a dog.  I well recall one of my "stupid hall of fame" dog patients who ate a brillo pad... twice.  Just because it doesn't look like food is certainly no guarantee that a dog wouldn't eat it.  Far from it.  So, we add a missing bait and a big dog and the sum could certainly include "dog ate it".

Which brings us to the squinty eye.  One of the most effective emetic drugs is apomorphine.  One of the simplest ways to give it is to put a little under the eyelid.  It absorbs through the mucous membrane and gets in the bloodstream rapidly.  In just a few minutes, Voila! you're puking.  Squinting, too.

In this case, you're puking up chicken [It looked like chicken; did it taste like chicken? Everything does, so I didn't have to check that.].  Then, some more chicken.  Then some more chicken. Then bile.  Then more bile.  No rat bait.

So, Dad went home and made a dismounted reconnaisance and found the missing bait.  Whoops, all that vomiting for (maybe) nothing.  Just to be on the safe side, we sent home vitamin K.   We cleaned up her eye, too.

One thing that I forgot to mention in a previous post on rat poison is that most of these rodent baits have a brilliant blue-green dye added to them.  That way you might notice a brightly colored poop and realize that something was amiss before the dog began to hemorrhage.  This stuff is pretty drab.  I must say that I prefer my environmental hazards to be more decorative.

Pet Food Recall - "Special Kitty" is special in a new way.

Yes, Wal-Mart's house brand of cat food (manufactured by Mars, makers of fine candy and pet food -- a winning combination, but don't get confused on Halloween) has a little Salmonella prolem.  Salmonella, famous for food poisoning, not for salmon.  Here's a link to the full info.  Supposedly these bags are all way out east of Missouri, but you might just check your serial number.

Pet Food Recall rises from the dead.

This time it's not the dreaded Chinese melamine. Apparently they are keeping that at home to put in their baby formula. It doesn't seem to be working any better for their babies than it did in the dog food here.

This recall concerns possible contamination with Salmonella (can you say "food poisoning"?).

Here's the website with all the information, positive spin and all.  They also list the recalled products and lot numbers, so don't get discouraged when you read about what great folks they are for doing the voluntary recall when maybe their food doesn't even have anything wrong with it.  Just keep reading... or scrolling down.

Pet food recall, but not such a big one.

This little recall (big if you're the company, I guess) only affects one size bag (20-pounds) of one product: PEDIGREE(R) Complete Nutrition Small Crunchy Bites.  It's also in a limited market area, i.e. a long way away from me: Albertsons stores in Southern California and Las Vegas, Nevada.

The pet food is being voluntarily recalled because of potential contamination with Salmonella. There have been no complaints or reports of injury resulting from consumption or handling of the recalled product.  I guess they just found somebody eating the stuff in the back room.  Or maybe they found somebody using the dog-food bags for a toilet.  Or maybe somebody's pet turtle was found in the feed room.  All turtles are potential carriers of Salmonella.  Don't put turtles in your mouth.

So here's a link to more information on the recalled food.

And here's a link to more information on handling contaminated food.  If it says "Contaminated", you know it's bad.  Also, never buy pet food with a skull and crossbones on the label.

Lead paint in dog toys.

This is nothing to lose sleep over.  While it is certainly true that lead is toxic and you shouldn't eat it, the potential hazards of the involved toys have been way overblown.

So, some toy tennis balls like this have lead paint in the pawprints.  How much of this would your dog have to actually eat in order to have a problem?  Here is what Sharon Gwaltney-Brant DVM, PhD, DABVT, DABT of the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center says:

"So let's calculate a toxic dose for a 10 kg (22 pounds) dog. Assuming worst case scenario, we know that chronic toxicosis is induced at 3-30 mg/kg/day; we'll use the 3. For a 10 kg dog, that's 30 mg of lead per day times 90 days (3 month subchronic study) for a total lead dose of 2700 mg. Let's also assume that somehow the dog manages to eat 1/2 oz (15 gm, 0.015 kg) of leaded paint (at 30 ppm) off of these toys every day (unlikely there's even that much total paint on a toy, but we'll call this worst case scenario). So every day the dog is eating 0.45 mg of lead; it'll take 6000 days to get to the chronic toxic dose of 2700 mg of lead. That's 16.4 years. So, if the dog, every day, scrapes off 1/2 oz (1 tablespoon) of paint from toys/bowls whose paint contains 30 ppm of lead, the dog might finally develop lead toxicosis when it hits 16 years of age. Very very unlikely. Allowable levels for humans should be fine for dogs, especially since dogs don't live as long as we do (risk assessments for humans have to take into account our long life span). "

My brothers and I have laughed about the concerns with children's toys and lead paint.  Certainly it wouldn't be funny for children to be poisoned by eating their toys, but we had toys made out of lead. In fact, we made them ourselves, in our room, without adult supervision, when our ages were 4, 7 and 11.   First, you coat the cast-iron molds with soot by using the open flame of a candle.  Then the two halves of the mold are clamped together.  In the meantime, the lead has been heating up until it is all melted, its liquid surface shimmering like silver.

Now, while we inhale the acrid fumes, the cauldron of molten lead is tipped carefully to pour the mold full, making some shiny new lead soldiers.  Of course, sometimes we weren't as careful as we should have been.  Once some hot lead landed on my toe.  We were in our pajamas and barefoot while doing this.  I skipped briskly to the bathroom and dunked my toe in what commercials used to refer to as "the bathroom bowl".  This was screamingly funny to my little brothers, and little children often find it amusing even today.

So, you shouldn't eat lead paint, and the Chinese are bums for putting it on toys, but your dog is probably not going to get enough to hurt him... unless he helps us make lead soldiers.

Pet Food Recall Rises from the Grave

Two different issues this time.  A couple of different foods recalled due to possible Salmonella (the germ that causes "food poisoning") contamination: Krasdale Gravy dry, and Red Flannel large breed dry foods.  Check out the Mars Pet Care site.

For more  Salmonella opportunities, try "Eight in One" chicken jerky.  Here's the FDA listing on those products and how to get them.

On the melamine front (our regular, reliable, Chinese poisonous contamination), Wal-Mart has removed some fabulous Chinese chicken jerky from their shelves.  Their official statement is more about what responsible merchants they are than anything else, but it does list the product. 

It's always good to know that people are learning from their mistakes.  By people, I mean US, not Wal-Mart. 

Pet Food Recall rises from the grave.

This one has nothing to do with the Chinese wheat gluten.  Castleberry is a company that manufactures a lot of canned chili and junk, and some Natural Balance canned dog food.  They have had a little bit of a botulism problem. Not enough to make the cans bulge up and scare you off, but enough to make you pretty darn sick if you ate it.  Here's a list of their affected products.  It's a voluntary recall, so that just shows you what good sports they are.  As always, the link has been added to our special pet food recall web page.  Sheesh.

Chocolate Overdose

Many folks have heard that "chocolate is poisonous to pets".  As far as that goes, if you eat a massive enough amount, it's poisonous to people, too.  Yes, yes, I hear you out there saying that chocolate is actually an essential nutrient, that you can't live without it (or life isn't worth living without chocolate, or something like that).  Yes, I know that a small amount of dark chocolate is considered beneficial to your heart.  I eat some every day, though it's mostly because I like it --the heart benefit is just serendipitous.  Dogs are different than people and DO NOT require chocolate in their diets.

The toxicity of chocolate is very much dose-related, and generally speaking, it takes a pretty massive amount to be poisonous.  When someone calls me in a panic because their dog ate an M&M, they are beating themselves up for nothing.  Theobromine is the toxic compound in chocolate, and in large amounts it can make your heart race, give you vomiting and diarrhea, cause seizures, and even death.  For a great discussion from VeterinaryPartner.com, check out this link to "Chocolate Toxicity".  You'll see from the table at the bottom, it takes a LOT of milk chocolate, and quite a bit of dark chocolate, although it doesn't take very much baking chocolate at all.  That's why when Fifi gets a couple of Hershey's Kisses, we're not too worried.

So, when Kaiser's mom asked if eating Hershey's miniatures would hurt him, I said, "Unless he ate handfuls, I wouldn't worry too much."  She went home and found that between Kaiser (73 pounds) and his roommate Dixie (13 pound Min-Pin), they had gone through most of three pounds.   Now, doing the math (if you followed the link and looked at the chart), you'd see that Kaiser would have had to eat 63 ounces of milk chocolate, and we only had 48 ounces total. 

Plus, there were a number of partially mangled bars that didn't get eaten.    Dixie, on the other hand, would only have to eat 13 ounces, and even less if she concentrated on the "special dark chocolate" (my favorite).  So Kaiser is bigger and greedier, and might have eaten it all.  BUT, Dixie is younger and faster, so how do we know who ate how much?  And who likes the "Mister Goodbars" and who likes the "Krackels"?  And for that matter, who ever buys a full sized Krackel bar?  I've never seen one outside of the miniatures.

Fortunately, we were within an hour of the ingestion, so the order of the day was to induce vomiting in both dogs.  As it happened, Dixie only brought up a few specks of chocolate and wrappers.  Kaiser, however, while he may have eaten less than a poisonous dose... well, you could have fooled me.

Talk about your chocolate mess.  It may not have made Kaiser sick, but the rest of us were getting pretty queasy by the time we had everything cleaned up.  After they finished vomiting, we gave them some activated charcoal (the "universal antidote": it acts like a chemical "sponge" to soak up toxins in the gut) to be on the safe side.  I anticipate that all will be well, but we won't be serving any pudding at staff meetings for a while.

Pet Food Recall - just a tiny one

This is pretty much out of my "local listening area".  Some bags of Ol' Roy have been recalled out east due to some Salmonella contamination at the factory.  Salmonella is the bacteria most often associated with "food poisoning".  The big dogs say you can get infected with it from just handling the contaminated food.  This is a local factory, one-shot deal as  far as we can tell.  Probably wouldn't have made the news if not for all the previous commotion.  Here's the link.