“Your pet ate WHAT? Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

How often we want to say this but don’t want a client to feel worse than he or she already does. Many people think that when a poison is consumed their pet will fall over frothing at the mouth in the first hour. While this can happen, it is rare. Many poisons take hours or days to show their evil effects. Antifreeze toxicity shows few signs in the first few hours after consumption and during this time, the effects can be treated with potentially little permanent damage. After 12 hours the poisoning is almost irreversible and will cause severe, usually fatal, kidney failure. Rat poison may not show symptoms for several days. The most common symptoms are bleeding, bruising, and signs related to severe anemia, seen 2-3 days after consumption – at this point, toxicity may be expensive to treat.

Both of these examples are important because if we know a pet has gotten into these substances right away, we may be able to reverse or prevent problems, saving both your pet’s life and money (from more extensive treatments that would have been needed to treat the toxicity). If your pet consumes something it shouldn’t, PLEASE, don’t wait. Call your Veterinarian or the Animal Poison Control Center