The dark side of rat poison | Pet Peeves
Is the use of rat poison more common in the spring? Most of the worst rat-poison cases I have seen over the years happened in the spring. I saw one just the other day. The owners of this little dog initially called the clinic because they found their dog with a stick of the bright green TomKat bait in his mouth. They pulled it out. They explained that they did not think he actually ate any; there were just a couple of traces on his teeth where he had begun to chew the stick.
We advised the owners over the phone to give the dog Hydrogen Peroxide, first one tablespoon, and then if he did not throw up within 15 minutes, another tablespoon. If still no vomit, they needed to head to the clinic immediately — and definitely bring the bag of rat poison along so that the type of poison can be determined.
He did not throw up for them, and two hours had passed by the time they arrived at the clinic. Looking at the bag, I saw that the active ingredient was bromethalin. Bromethalin is one bad rat poison. It is not one of the older poisons that cause the rat to bleed. Those poisons are typically bromadiolone and brodifacoum. While bromethalin sounds like the other two, it works in an entirely different way. Bromethalin is a neurotoxin that causes the brain to swell.
Bromadiolone and brodifacoum have an antidote called Vitamin K. These two types of rat poison will interfere with the clotting of blood. The rat will bleed out after eating this type of poison. If a dog or cat eats this poison, it, too, will bleed. If caught early enough, there is hope for saving the pet because Vitamin K is an easy treatment. It can be given as an injection or a pill.
But back to the bromethalin. This poison has no cure. If a pet ingests it, it will stagger, vomit, have tremors or seizures, and can go into a coma and die. We immediately made this pet throw up by giving him apomorphine. The little dog promptly threw up a whole log of the bright green rat poison with two more piles of chewed up green poison. Apparently, he had already eaten a stick before the owners found a stick in his mouth.
After he had emptied his stomach, we gave him activated charcoal, which is a special kind of charcoal made to bind toxins and keep them from being absorbed through the intestines. The activated charcoal has to be repeated again every eight hours for at least three doses to keep the toxins bound until they all pass through the digestive tract and are expelled in the stool.
Fortunately, we were able to save this little dog. There is no doubt in my mind that if he had not been treated the poison would have overwhelmed him. He had eaten so much of it. Every time this happens, I wonder why these horrible poisons are on the shelf. I know rats can be a problem, but why are these neurotoxic poisons with no cure necessary? The old rat poisons that at least have an antidote still kill the rats.
These poisons can be misleading with their labeling. Once an owner told me he purchased the poison because it had a little picture in the top right-hand corner of a kid and a dog. It read, “Kid and dog resistant station.” He thought, “Oh, this is safe for kids and dogs.” No. The active ingredient was bromethalin, the neurotoxin with no cure. All that little dog and kid icon meant is that the bait station was supposedly not easy for dogs or kids to get into. But this dog just chewed it up and ate it.
If you must use rat poison, read the active ingredients and research what you are getting. In today’s Internet world, there is no excuse for not knowing what kind of poison you are getting.
This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: The dark side of rat poison | Pet Peeves
