Rat Poison

I planned to do nothing today, just kick back and take it easy after the morning duck chores and yard work, but that was not to be.

Our neighbors took us over to their place to check out the remodel job being done by the company we hope to use in our remodel. The dogs came along and waited outside in their yard.

Long story short, Hattie found some rat poison the guys put out a few days ago. They initially had it safe in a bait box, but after a few days looking like the rats weren't taking the poison they took one of the poison blocks out of the box and put it on the ground under their hedge. (Bad move even if our dogs didn't visit them. They have no fencing to keep any animals out of their yard.) Hattie, she of the Nosework training, found and ate it. It must smell good to attract rats because Tux managed to get a little for herself, too. Of course, if we'd known there was rat poison in the yard we wouldn't have allowed the dogs in, but we didn't know and it never occurred to the neighbors that the dogs might get into it so they didn't mention it.

Luckily the dogs pulled the bait box over to the porch and that alerted us to a problem. Panic ensued. Which dog ate it? How much did she eat? Who do we call for help on Sunday? We ended up calling the ASCPA Animal Poison Control Center after leaving a message with our local vet's emergency number. (The local emergency never returned our call.) In the meantime, I saw the blue/green poison in the crevasses of Hattie's molar teeth while she was panting so there was no doubt she ate it. But Tux had a little in her teeth, too. The ASPCA took the info on the poison and the dog's weights, breeds, ages, etc and used a formula to determine if they might have ingested enough to cause a problem. Not knowing which dog ate the most, we had to assume each of them ate the whole block and Hattie, being smaller, was over the safe amount. We decided to induce vomiting in both dogs anyway.

Our neighbor had a new bottle of hydrogen peroxide and we were instructed to give Hattie two tablespoons of it with a little yogurt and if she didn't vomit within fifteen minutes give a second dose. Tux required three tablespoons. Both of them needed a second dose before the heaving began.

Hattie was first, her foamy white vomit yielded three big chunks and multiple slivers of poison, at least 80% of the block. There were even a few pieces in the second vomit, but third and fourth were just foamy slime. Tux held out for a while then heaved two massive foamy piles with just a few pieces of poison so she was in no danger.

The ASPCA said Hattie was probably in the clear and shouldn't suffer any neurologic damage, but reading up on rat poisonings it can be days, even weeks, before any symptoms make themselves known. I'll be calling the vet tomorrow to be sure we don't need to do any more.

To top it off, the white skin tag that was growing near Hattie's eye (you can see it in the picture of her in my last post) turned dark this morning and Bob thought it looked like a tick. We all poo-pooed the idea but the neighbor brought over a magnifying glass to convince Bob and, by god, it sure did look like a tick. I got my old tick puller and got it right out of there. It turned out to be one hell of a day for all of us.