In the past week, we have had FOUR dogs in our practice who have ingested rat/mouse poison. While this is fairly common in the fall, it is a rare occurrence to have so many calls in a week during the spring. We can only assume, with so many people laid off or working from home, that y'all are going on spring cleaning sprees. PLEASE be careful if you have mouse poison down in any part of your house to make sure that your dogs and children cannot access it. The baits are scented/flavored and are VERY attractive.
With the new federal regulations on mouse/rat baits, fewer and fewer of the poisons on the market have antidotes. That means, there is a very good chance going forward that if your dog eats the poison and it isn't caught and treated within the few hours, there may be nothing that can be done to save their lives. Dogs don't care about "tamper proof bait stations" - if they can chew up bones and their toys, they can chew through plastic bait stations to get to something tasty. Some of the newer generation baits can cause "secondary poisoning" - if your dog eats a mouse that has eaten the bait or has died from the poison, the dog (OR CAT) can also become poisoned.
We highly recommend NOT using poison baits of any sort (regardless of the ingredients or packaging) and sticking with good-old fashioned traps (the covered kind are safer in protecting YOU from diseases that you can catch from rodents). Or, if you have a big rodent problem, call an exterminator - they can safely help without harming your pets!
Check out the following link to learn more about the dangers of mouse/rat poison in dogs: https://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/…/mouse-and-rat-poison-r…/
