Protecting Your Pets
Pet owners have been on red alert and with a constant worry after the recent pet scare that swept the news in the past couple months. With all the pet food being recalled people are know making sure that none of their shelves have other products that could otherwise be harmful to their pets. What most people don’t realize is that they have more dangerous products in their home then they thought.
Deadly toxins that pet owners would never think are dangerous often surround even the most spoiled pets. A few months ago, Kit Kat, was treated after eating a Tylenol capsule. Every year, pets get sick from drinking toilet water with bleach in it. Pets also can be victims of lawn-care products like fertilizers and insecticides, which can be absorbed right through pet’s paw pads. Mothballs, coffee grinds, onions, beans and chocolate are also dangerous to pets.
String, yarn and even dental floss can cause intestinal blockages. And the fumes from self-cleaning ovens can be deadly to pet birds. Emma sniffed out her owner’s supply of nicotine lozenges and ate about 10 lozenges, which is a lethal amount. Luckily, she recovered just fine. But her story is very familiar to some dog owners.
Five-year-old Cleo has had several close calls. “We joke that she’s our urban goat,” Chris McNally, Cleo’s owner, said. Cleo tore into fertilizer and a box of steel wool, which is common because there is something in the chemical that dogs love, he said. “This is melogamite which is an organic fertilizer. She ate two or three pounds of it, ran right through her and our garden looks fine now,” McNally said.
Many dogs like Cleo end up in the canine emergency room. Pets come in after eating all sorts of seemingly benign foods that are actually harmful. Everything from grapes, which veterinarians are now saying can cause kidney failure, to sugar free products that can contain xylitol and can cause low blood sugar and liver disease.
“When I came home there were candy wrappers all over the floor from those little miniature candy bars,” Peggy Asseo, Lilly’s owner, said. The best lesson for pet owners is that just because people eat it, doesn’t mean pets should, and if food is left out, pets will find it.