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.

Comments

[Nettie]

Please also point out the generic other risks of any "pest" poison. I volunteer at a wildlife rehab place and often we get cases of secondary poisoning: a hawk / coyote or other predator animal ate a poisoned mouse or rat. Beside the fact that the mouse die a horrible, drawn-out death - they still can contain enough poison to kill a much larger animal. It was sad to watch the wonderful hawk dying.
Please don't use poison - instead use humane ways of pest control *aka humane wildlife solutions. for more details re:
http://www.wildcarebayarea.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AnimalAid_LivingWildLife
Thanks,
Nettie