Mylo, our cute Cockapoo.
Since owning a dog, I have read lots of helpful tips, ideas and guidelines for looking after our dog.
I have also come across some warnings that dog owners should be aware of too. One of these is that raisins are toxic for dogs! A dog can go into renal failure after eating raisins or grapes and sadly there are reports of some dogs not making a recovery after eating only a handful of raisins.
So you can imagine my horror when I came home from work a few weeks ago and found Mylo had managed to swipe a snack box of raisins off the kitchen counter and eat some!
It is not very often Mylo is left on his own but this particular day he was on his own for a couple of hours. My daughter arrived home to find raisins strewn around the kitchen floor and also up the stairs. Mylo appeared to be ok but how many had he eaten?
I arrived home from work about 15 minutes after my daughter had gotten in and she told me what had happened.
I immediately remember reading an article about raisins being toxic and straight away knew we had to get him to the vet as quickly as possible!
I felt so worried not knowing how many he'd eaten from the box and I knew that even though he appeared to be ok the symptoms might appear soon...
I got in the car with Mylo and drove him down to the vets praying we could park nearby and that he wouldn't start to display any symptoms.
We got parked easily on the busy road thankfully and within minutes of walking into the vets he was seen by a lovely lady vet.
She straight away told me not to panic as some dogs don't react too badly to raisins and in fact her mother's dog had demolished a fruit cake once and didn't have a reaction whatsoever!
However, there was still a risk that Mylo might be a dog that did react.
She advised that we should induce vomiting via an injection to bring up any raisins he had eaten because we figured he couldn't have eaten them more than an hour or two ago and so they hopefully wouldn't have been digested.
Depending on how many raisins he brought up she said she may need to keep him in over night to put him on a drip and flush out his kidneys...The thought of leaving him overnight really tugged on my heart and I felt my eyes fill up with tears...Hopefully it wouldn't come to an overnight stay and he would be fine.
I said goodbye to Mylo and left him with the vet. She was very calming and reassuring and I felt that he was in the best of hands.
She told me to call back in an hour to see how he was doing.
I went back to the car and sat there praying. Praying that he would be ok and that he would get through this terrible ordeal.
In the meantime I had booked the girls in for a hair cut and went to the hairdressers to pick them up. I sat there with a cup of tea just thinking about our little Mylo being made to be sick...I felt so bad that somehow he had gotten the raisins off the side. In fact we rarely have them in the house except for when I'm baking a fruit cake! Typical he should find them
The hour passed and the girls and I went to get Mylo.
We walked in and I anxiously asked the receptionist how he was doing...
He had been sick 3 times and managed to bring up 2 raisins...yes, only 2!
I was relieved!
Thankfully, due to the amount of raisins he brought up, the vet felt that Mylo was ok to go home after his ordeal and said that he should rest and drink plenty and we should bring him back if he showed any signs of illness or distress.
We laughed in the car...poor Mylo, made to be sick for only 2 raisins and at cost of £70 to me!
But it wasn't worth running the risk of not taking him...He means so much to our family and we couldn't bear it if anything bad happened to him.
So, Mylo will not be eating anymore raisins. They will be hidden out of sight and my advice to dog owners out there...Remember raisins are toxic!
Please read this link to find out more!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape_and_raisin_toxicity_in_dogs
