While I applaud you for composting, make sure to do so appropriately – your compost shouldn’t contain any dairy or meat products, and should always be fenced off for the sake of your pets and wildlife. These piles of decomposing and decaying organic matter and molding food products have the potential to contain tremorgenic mycotoxins, which are toxic to both pets and wildlife. Even small amounts ingested can result in clinical signs within 30 minutes to several hours.
Clinical signs include agitation, hyperthermia, hyper-responsiveness, panting, drooling, and vomiting, and can progress to serious CNS signs (including incoordination, tremors, and seizures!). Ruleouts for this include toxins that cause “shake and bake,” such as metaldehydes (snail bait), strychnine, organophosphates, and methylxanthines. Prompt decontamination is the key if the patient isn’t demonstrating clinical signs yet – this includes inducing vomiting and giving activated charcoal. Once the patient is symptomatic, aggressive supportive care includes the use of IV fluids, temperature regulation, cooling methods (cooling down to a temperature of 103.5 F/39.7 C), IV muscle relaxants (i.e., methocarbamol), and anticonvulsants (i.e., diazepam, phenobarbital).
Spare your pet the trauma and you the cost and fence off your compost bin!
Sunday, July 26, 2009
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1 comments:
Thank you so much for your information- I came home yesterday afternoon to find both dogs extremely distressed, ataxic, reflexes hypertonic with one frothing at the mouth. Looking around I saw the compost bin overturned- something they have not done before.I had no idea that they would be interested in something so fetid.
The one who was frothing seems to be doing okay, the other one is not doing very well.
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