doggy eating mushrooms?

[Hampton_Bay]

My dumb little Schnauzer has possibly decided the mushrooms in the yard taste good. Of course this happens at night and the vets here suck during business hours. Emergency vet care is non-existant short of a very very long drive.

These are the big toadstool mushrooms. I would imagine this isn’t the first time he may have munched on them, and he’s not dead yet. It never occurred to me that he might develop a taste for them, or I would have removed them from the yard long ago.

However, tiny moron dog has occasionally had some soft poop that will last for a few days and then all is back to normal. This is not terribly uncommon for him after having been poisoned by something unknown and almost dying in early 2007.

Could big yummy toadstools cause soft poop in a 10 lb doggy? I can call the vet in the morning, but I seriously doubt he’s at risk of dying from mushrooms because if he’s eating them today, he’s been eating them for a while and I just didn’t know it.

[Horsegal984]

Get them out of the yard ASAP!! Dogs can and do die from eating mushrooms in the yard. Keep an eye on him tonigt, and if you catch him eating them again induce vomiting at home

[Horsegal984]

Oh but to answer your question, yes GI signs are one of the main symptoms, so it certainly could be from the mushrooms, or rabbit or deer poop, or just who knows what else. Try to make a note on the calendar when it’s happening, if it’s at regular intervals then I would try a round or two of Panacur to rule out parasites.

[Canaqua]

Yes, get the mushrooms out of the yard if you can…it’s not easy, they keep popping up! Our young BC mix ate some mushrooms she found as a puppy…took her and a mushroom to the vet and, since, we could not safely identify the mushroom without tracking down an expert, which there really wasn’t time for, we decided (after consultation with ASPCA Poison Control) to treat as if it were poisonous. Induced vomiting (probably too late for that), activated charcoal, IV fluids to flush things through and the vet put her on a liver protectant. She was fine, but I’m pretty sure that mushroom wasn’t actually poisonous.

A week later, I found some, very obvious, Death Caps (Amanitas), in some woods we walk in (it was a big mushroom year). THOSE are terrifying, so we didn’t walk there (with her affection for mushrooms) until they were gone. Amanitas are horrible things and do kill dogs when the owner didn’t see the dog get it and can’t take quick action before liver failure sets in.

There were less scary looking mushrooms popping up all over our yard too, I pulled them up as best I could, but it was hard keeping up. I walked her on a leash, even in the yard, for a while until mushroom season was over.

I’m not sure what you mean by toadstool, because people apply that to different kinds of mushrooms. Amanitas are the ones to worry about (alot!)…they are typical cap and stem mushrooms and sometimes hard to tell apart from harmless mushrooms. The amanitas have a bulb at the bottom of their stem and a skirt around their stem when fully grown. Not being a mushroom expert, however, I don’t rely on my ability to identify them and treat all wild mushrooms as bad news.

I also learned, from the Poison Control folks, to keep a fresh bottle of hydrogen peroxide in my house at all times, and a dosing syringe. 5cc per 10lbs of body weight will make a dog puke everything up within 10 minutes. That way, we’d be able to get most of it out during the window when it was still in her stomach and THEN go to the vet’s if she actually got into a poisonous mushroom. I’ve never had to use it for a mushroom, but it did come in handy when my son left a massive chocolate bar under the Christmas tree and puppy ate the whole thing ;).

[Hampton_Bay]

By toadstool I mean the ones that “bloom” flat out. They are maybe 6" in diameter after they bloom. They’re definitely not the poisonous kind. We had some of those in FL. There are just plain mushrooms that bloom into a big flat toadstool. Sorta like what a portabella looks like but more white instead of grey.

[GallopHer]

Be very wary of mushrooms. My precious min pin ate a mushroom last year. He became very ill within 30 minutes. We got him to the vet, but lost him in less than 24 hours.

[Appsolute]

Neighbor’s dog ate mushrooms in the yard and died shortly there after. Not something to mess around with!

[Bacardi1]

[QUOTE=Hampton Bay;6445610]
By toadstool I mean the ones that “bloom” flat out. They are maybe 6" in diameter after they bloom. They’re definitely not the poisonous kind. We had some of those in FL. There are just plain mushrooms that bloom into a big flat toadstool. Sorta like what a portabella looks like but more white instead of grey.[/QUOTE]

Sorry dear, but you obviously know absolutely NOTHING about mushrooms, particularly regarding which ones are toxic and which ones are not. How sad for your poor little dog.

[tradewind]

Mushroom aside from death, can casue GI symptoms, seizures etc. Any mushroom in an area your dog frequents should be removed post haste. You should not assume any mushroom would not be toxic to your dog.

[Hampton_Bay]

[QUOTE=Bacardi1;6447001]
Sorry dear, but you obviously know absolutely NOTHING about mushrooms, particularly regarding which ones are toxic and which ones are not. How sad for your poor little dog.[/QUOTE]

Seriously?? You enjoy being rude and unhelpful?

Little dog is just fine, his perky, normal self. I removed all the mushrooms as soon as I saw him eating them. WTF else do you want me to do? Freak out over something I couldn’t do anything about? I live 1.5 hours from any vet who isn’t more than a rural cow vet, and 3 to 4 hours from any emergency vets worth a damn. By the time I made this post, it had been an hour or so since he had eaten a bite of a mushroom. If he were going to die, he would have been too far gone by the time I could get him anywhere, and I would have seen symptoms already. Like I said, these were definitely not poisonous mushrooms. We had several kinds in FL, these looked nothing like them.

[Canaqua]

[QUOTE=Hampton Bay;6447133]
Seriously?? You enjoy being rude and unhelpful?

Little dog is just fine, his perky, normal self. I removed all the mushrooms as soon as I saw him eating them. WTF else do you want me to do? Freak out over something I couldn’t do anything about? I live 1.5 hours from any vet who isn’t more than a rural cow vet, and 3 to 4 hours from any emergency vets worth a damn. By the time I made this post, it had been an hour or so since he had eaten a bite of a mushroom. If he were going to die, he would have been too far gone by the time I could get him anywhere, and I would have seen symptoms already. Like I said, these were definitely not poisonous mushrooms. We had several kinds in FL, these looked nothing like them.[/QUOTE]

I’m VERY glad your dog is OK and I’m not going to be rude, but much of what you are saying is not true or a dangerous assumptions. 1) Some mushrooms take 12 hours or more for symptoms of poisoning to reach a clinically apparent stage. 2) There are things you can do, even if far from a vet. Keep the hydrogen peroxide available…if you induce vomiting before an hour to and hour and a half has passed, you can remove 70% or so of the toxins from the dog, this can be a matter of life and death and buy you time. The sooner you make them puke it up the better. 3) Thinking you can identify a poisonous mushroom because it didn’t look like another poisonous mushroom makes no sense at all. There a many different kinds and some look very benign…the super scary ones are plain old white parasol mushrooms…the flat cap that blooms, very subtle things differentiate them from edible ones. ONLY a mushroom expert can definitively identify a safe mushroom, anyone will tell you that. Thinking you can idenfity them for sure yourself is playing Russian Roulette…maybe you’ll get lucky maybe you won’t…people die from eating “safe” mushrooms.

Again, glad your dog is OK this time, but better safe than sorry.

[Canaqua]

You can also keep Denamarin in the house, it’s a liver protectant and you don’t need a prescription. I keep an emetic (to induce vomiting), activated charcoal and Denamarin…because I have a young dog who will try to eat ANYTHING. I’m only 15 minutes from the regular vet and 40 minutes from a 24 hour emergency vet, but poisoning scares the crap out of me, it’s a horrible way to die. I wasn’t this paranoid with the older dog, she only eats dog food and treats, but this new one is indiscriminate and I don’t want to lose her, or worse, see her suffer.

Calls to ASPCA poison control are expensive, $65 or so, but once you have a case open with them, everything is covered. Regular vets won’t always handle poisoning on their own, so ASPCA will work with the vet until the animal is safe or dead, all for the original $65. I think I’ve called them three times over the last 10 years…two were a waste of money (like finding out that a dog eating an ant trap was not a poison risk, but I should worry about them passing the plastic safely), but the last time the Poison Control vets worked with my vet and me for 36 hours to make sure puppy was good with the mushroom eating incident.