Pet Holidays
09/14/07

With Halloween and other assorted holidays just around the corner all of us can take a moment to remember how inventive and persistent our pets can be getting into goodies that might become available.

I’ll never forget Guthrie, the completely cool male ferret who came in with the complaint “ain’t doin’ right” (ADR in doctor speak). After some diagnostics we decided Guthrie was suffering from an intestinal foreign body of some kind. We gave him all sorts of fluid therapy, lubricants, motility stimulants, etc. Sadly, he wasn’t getting better so we decided we would surgically remove the problem, at considerable risk to poor Guthrie. Having prepared for the big surgery, I went to get Guthrie from his “room”. The little guy was sitting up at the cage door glad to be getting a visit and seemed miraculously improved. On closer inspection I found a large bowel movement in his litter box with a large, shell on pistachio nut as the principle ingredient. Viola!! Guthrie was cured! The owner then remembered having a covered candy tray of the nuts on the coffee table at Thanksgiving a week before.

Remember, dogs are apt to eat all the chocolate they can get their paws on and large amounts can be toxic or even fatal. Baker’s chocolate is approximately 10 times more concentrated than standard milk chocolate. It takes about 2 oz of milk chocolate (or .2 oz of baker’s chocolate) to make a 10 lb dog sick, and about 10 times that amount or 20 oz of milk chocolate (or 2 oz of baker’s chocolate) to be fatal to a 10 lb dog if not treated. That’s a lot of chocolate! A simple at home treatment if the ingestion is recent can be the administration of hydrogen peroxide by mouth to induce vomiting. Symptoms of chocolate poisoning may not develop for 8 hrs and include vomiting/diarrhea, thirst, urinary incontinence, agitation /nervousness and seizures.

So don’t underestimate your pet’s abilities to open packaging containing candy, nuts, baked goods etc. Holiday decorations can also become foreign bodies that get lodged in the stomach. Also, bring the pets in on Halloween so they won’t be bothered by the traveling spooks and goblins!