pet connection

I spent last Saturday at a breeders symposium sponsored by the Canine Health Foundation. One of the speakers at the day-long session was John Tegzes, VMD, a veterinary toxicologist. You just know that a toxicologist is going to have good stories about his work. Take the dog who ate slug bait and was hospitalized for 11 days, nine of them on a ventilator. His life saved, he’s sent home. Within 24 hours, he’s back, poisoned by slug bait.

“What’s going on?” Tegzes asks the owners. “How could you let him get into it again?”

“Oh, well, we thought he would have learned his lesson.”

Sigh.

I learned a lot, even though I’ve written about this subject at least a couple of times recently and will be addressing it again soon. Here’s some nontoxic food for thought.

The top 10 reasons people call poison hotlines about their pets: human medications, insecticides, people food, rodenticides, veterinary medications, plants, chemical hazards, household cleaners, heavy metals, fertilizer

If you think your pet has been poisoned, remain calm (not as easy as it sounds). Look around to see what might have been eaten and try to figure out the maximum that could have been eaten. Collect any empty or partially eaten containers, such as pill containers, boxes of rat poison, etc. Have them with you when you call the hotline or take your pet to the vet.

Be prepared to say whether your dog or cat is conscious, alert, breathing normally, able to stand and walk—or not.

Inducing vomiting is not the best way to remove toxic substances from a pet’s stomach, so throw out that old bottle of ipecac. Nobody recommends it anymore, for kids or dogs. Instead, keep activated charcoal on hand. It’s like a giant sponge and will absorb everything in the stomach. Some activated charcoal also contains a laxative to help move toxins out the other end. Skip that—it’s not effective—and stick with plain activated charcoal, available from your grocery store or drugstore

Bonus info: gastric lavage—better known as stomach pumping—is less effective than inducing vomiting.

Most of us know that flea treatments made for dogs are generally toxic to cats and that any insecticide can be toxic if misapplied or if the animal is sensitive to it. If your pet has a reaction to an insecticide applied to the skin, your first inclination might be to bathe it to remove the substance. Don’t! Check with your vet or a poison control hotline first. Some products become more toxic when they get wet. If you’re given the okay to give a bath, brush the animal first to help pull the substance off the surface of the fur

Know your local plants and their toxicity. Toxic plant lists don’t always include regional plants.

For instance, we learned that hibiscus flowers are highly neurologically toxic. I didn’t know that and neither did the woman next to me. She has them in her yard and we have them in our complex. By the way, toxicologists have to learn all the toxic plants from South Africa because that’s where a lot of ornamental plants come from.

It’s still unknown why grapes and raisins seemed to suddenly start causing renal failure in dogs in the 1990s, but Tegzes says new studies may provide an answer very soon. “It’s either a complex carb or sugar in grapes that some dogs have a reaction to, or it’s going to be a mycotoxin,” he says. Although not every dog reacts to grapes or raisins, Tegzes always recommends aggressive treatment because the reaction has the potential to be severe. Death, anyone? He advises activated charcoal immediately, IV fluid therapy for at least 48 hours, careful monitoring of central venous pressure and urine output to prevent fluid overload, and monitoring serum chemistry values for at least 72 hours for indications of acute renal failure. Hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis may also be necessary.

In case you were wondering (and someone at the conference was), wine is also toxic to dogs. So remember: It’s a sin to let your dog dig Zin.

Then there are moldy walnuts and dairy products, source of tremorgenic mycotoxins. That means, yes, that they cause a severe and potentially deadly neurologic syndrome with signs that include tremors. Your dog doesn’t even have to eat a moldy walnut for it to cause problems. Simply putting the nut in its mouth is enough. Clinical signs—restlessness, panting, excessive salivation, tremors and seizures—typically begin within 30 minutes of exposure. Moldy walnuts are usually found on the ground, where they make tempting chew toys for dogs. Moldy dairy products, on the other hand, are most likely to be found in your refrigerator. Don’t give your dog that moldy cheese you found in the back

Don’t hesitate to call the Animal Poison Control Center or even your local poison control hotline. Even if it’s not specifically for animals, there will sometimes be someone there who can advise you, Tegzes says

Obligatory Cavalier blogging: Harper now weighs 13 pounds.

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