Tremorgenic Mycotoxin
Dog folks: Ever hear of tremorgenic mycotoxin? I hadn't, until yesterday.
I'm very careful about keeping Felon out of the trash. She's a garbage eater. It's in her DNA. As with most of her misbehavior, it doesn't happen when I'm around. But Saturday afternoon, a 15 minute shower was all she needed to tear into the corner of a garbage bag and lunch on some moldy spaghetti. This wasn't an all-out garbage feast, though. She just got one little hole in the corner, and it looked like she had just nosed around in it a bit. I didn't even expect her to throw up from it. I certainly didn't expect what happened. This was around 2 PM.
I took her in the car with me to run some errands. I do this from time to time when the weather is cool and I don't need to spend much time in any one store, because she dearly loves riding in the car. At around 3:30, I headed for Jo-Ann's to see about their sewing patern sale. Felon was perfectly normal. After a maximum of twenty minutes (probably less), I determined that further sewing pattern research was needed and left the store without a purchase. I got into the car, glanced at Felon, and did a double take. Something was really damned wrong with my dog.
The first thing I noticed was that her eyes looked really bizzare. Kind of terrified and deranged, though part of the deranged-ness was that she was holding her eyelids funny, too, and her head was at an odd angle. Her whole body was curled up funny, like in an S, and she was leaning over in an unstable fashion. She was also panting a lot. I decided to get her out of the car and walk her around to get a better look at what was wrong. She looked even worse when trying to walk. Her whole body was shaking and moving funny, and her back legs were really unstable. I immediately helped her back into the car. There was a vet in the shopping center, but they were closed. I called information, and got the number of an emergency vet. They were minutes away, and by the time I had called them and described her symptoms, we were pulling into the parking lot.
I got her inside, did the paperwork, and we had to wait a bit for a room. The symptoms were getting worse. She was pulling on the leash to go investigate things as she normally would, but instead of charging forward, she'd lean into her collar all lopsided in the general direction of the interesting smell or dog. I noticed that she was drooling a great deal. Her tongue looked funny. Her ears were all off kilter, one would be up and the other would be down, no rhyme or reason to it. She was still shaking and rocking. Her tail was tucked. At one point she started arching her back.
When the vet examined her, she said that Felon was classic for tremorgenic mycotoxin, and that she would've thought so even without the history of eating moldy garbage. As it turned out, as dramatic and scary as the symptoms were, most poisonings of this type aren't life-threatening with prompt treatment. So, she wound up getting an overnight stay at the e-vet, IV sedatives to control the tremors, and charcoal to absorb any remaining toxins. If untreated, it's possible for them go into shock or die from the seizures.
She's snoozing next to me now. She's a little stoned from the sedatives but otherwise completely herself. I couldn't believe how sick she got from what seemed like a very minor exposure to garbage, which among dog owners seems to just be par for the course... once in a while, like I did, you let your guard down just long enough for them to take a crack at it. She's a big dog at 60 pounds, and it makes me wonder what would've happened to a smaller dog who got the same dose.
Articles:
http://www.aspca.org/site/DocServer/toxbrief_0400.pdf?docID=113
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=339273
http://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/Vets%20Corner/Vets%20Corner_Reviews_Feb05.htm
http://www.petservice.com/ask_the_vet/article_archive/leftover_for_rover.html
I'm very careful about keeping Felon out of the trash. She's a garbage eater. It's in her DNA. As with most of her misbehavior, it doesn't happen when I'm around. But Saturday afternoon, a 15 minute shower was all she needed to tear into the corner of a garbage bag and lunch on some moldy spaghetti. This wasn't an all-out garbage feast, though. She just got one little hole in the corner, and it looked like she had just nosed around in it a bit. I didn't even expect her to throw up from it. I certainly didn't expect what happened. This was around 2 PM.
I took her in the car with me to run some errands. I do this from time to time when the weather is cool and I don't need to spend much time in any one store, because she dearly loves riding in the car. At around 3:30, I headed for Jo-Ann's to see about their sewing patern sale. Felon was perfectly normal. After a maximum of twenty minutes (probably less), I determined that further sewing pattern research was needed and left the store without a purchase. I got into the car, glanced at Felon, and did a double take. Something was really damned wrong with my dog.
The first thing I noticed was that her eyes looked really bizzare. Kind of terrified and deranged, though part of the deranged-ness was that she was holding her eyelids funny, too, and her head was at an odd angle. Her whole body was curled up funny, like in an S, and she was leaning over in an unstable fashion. She was also panting a lot. I decided to get her out of the car and walk her around to get a better look at what was wrong. She looked even worse when trying to walk. Her whole body was shaking and moving funny, and her back legs were really unstable. I immediately helped her back into the car. There was a vet in the shopping center, but they were closed. I called information, and got the number of an emergency vet. They were minutes away, and by the time I had called them and described her symptoms, we were pulling into the parking lot.
I got her inside, did the paperwork, and we had to wait a bit for a room. The symptoms were getting worse. She was pulling on the leash to go investigate things as she normally would, but instead of charging forward, she'd lean into her collar all lopsided in the general direction of the interesting smell or dog. I noticed that she was drooling a great deal. Her tongue looked funny. Her ears were all off kilter, one would be up and the other would be down, no rhyme or reason to it. She was still shaking and rocking. Her tail was tucked. At one point she started arching her back.
When the vet examined her, she said that Felon was classic for tremorgenic mycotoxin, and that she would've thought so even without the history of eating moldy garbage. As it turned out, as dramatic and scary as the symptoms were, most poisonings of this type aren't life-threatening with prompt treatment. So, she wound up getting an overnight stay at the e-vet, IV sedatives to control the tremors, and charcoal to absorb any remaining toxins. If untreated, it's possible for them go into shock or die from the seizures.
She's snoozing next to me now. She's a little stoned from the sedatives but otherwise completely herself. I couldn't believe how sick she got from what seemed like a very minor exposure to garbage, which among dog owners seems to just be par for the course... once in a while, like I did, you let your guard down just long enough for them to take a crack at it. She's a big dog at 60 pounds, and it makes me wonder what would've happened to a smaller dog who got the same dose.
Articles:
http://www.aspca.org/site/DocServer/toxbrief_0400.pdf?docID=113
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=339273
http://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/Vets%20Corner/Vets%20Corner_Reviews_Feb05.htm
http://www.petservice.com/ask_the_vet/article_archive/leftover_for_rover.html