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I know that most pet owners will be aware of what I am about to tell you, but since I've had 3 toxicity cases in the past week and I know that there are more out there, I thought that this is a good time to touch on this topic.

So we've had two cases of a sweat tooth resulting in potentially serious problems for dogs.

Looks good enough to eat, but this smooth, delicious treat has a potentially lethal component.  All chocolate contains methyl Xanthines  (think caffeine and related compounds).  Just the the taste and quality of our favorite treats, the amount of these chemicals varies with the type of chocolate.  Milk chocolate is the least dangerous, darker more bitter chocolates are more dangerous. You also have to be aware of the danger of cocoa mulch in the garden, but that is more of a concern in the summer than this time of year.

These compounds can cause excitablity,abnormal heart beats, and at levels of 60mg/kg, seizures.  As little as 4 oz of milk chocolate can cause moderate to severe signs in a 12 lb dog.  8 ozs of dark semisweet stuff can cause seizures in a 40 lb dog.  The good thing is that most of the chocolate that people have is the less toxic milk variety and usually is not pure chocolate, but rather it is filled with other stuff.  (yummy stuff usually)  As expected there is an app for i phones that will let you calculate the actual dose of methyl xanthines that your dog may have ingested.  It can be downloaded for free from the app store and is called choc tox. Even if your dog didn't eat enough for neurologic signs, you can expect an upset tummy with some vomiting and diarrhea.

Now, while chocolate seems to be mostly a dog problem, this next poison is one that I see in both dogs and cats.  Sometimes owners poison their pets by mistake and sometimes they do it to themselves. 

This was obviously a dog, and he pulled this bottle off the shelf and opened it himself.  Ibuprofen causes renal failure at 120 mg/kg in dogs.  It is extremely toxic to cats.  In addition to potentially fatal kidney shut down, it can cause gastric ulcers which can bleed or perforate.  This dog seems to have responded well to 2 days in the hospital on high doses of IV fluids, stomach emptying (yes we made him puke his little brains out) and gastric lavage with activated charcoal.  Plan is to send him home today and hopefully he will continue to do well.

If he were a cat, just a few of these pills would have been the last little things that he ate, because the dose would have been fatal. 

Speaking of cats and looking at the calendar:

No, I'm not being festive.  If you have cats, then NO TINSEL!  For some reason felines find it irresistible.  It is not digestible and can cause a nasty obstruction requiring surgery to remove the strands from the intestines or stomach.  While when caught in time this only results in an expensive, painful surgery and recovery, I have seen cats so sick that they cannot be saved.  So, while I haven't seen any tinsel trouble in the past year or so, I'm worried that my streak will be over soon if you guys are not careful.

Enjoy your holidays.  Keep the chocolate and hangover meds out of reach of your pets.  Enjoy an eggnogg or two for us, and have a happy and healthy holiday season 

I know that I've written about this topic in the past.  (OK distant past, and on a different blog), but it is important enough that I want to just touch on it for a brief moment here tonight.  Brief, because those of you that are fans of our Facebook page know that I already wrote a long and involved post complete with pictures and arrows and descriptions on the back but it was inadvertently deleted prior to posting.  While I recognize that it will take regular posting on my part to gain any type of readership and ability to reach the masses to help them better care for their pets, I don't have another long post in me tonight.

Why is this topic so important that I am writing about it again?  Well in the past month, we've admitted two cats to our hospital that were blocked for a long time.  One died of complications, the other was critically ill due to metabolic derangement secondary to his kidneys shutting down.  We did manage to pull that guy through, but not until after he blocked a second time in the hospital and needed a surgery to remove the penis, the enclosed narrow urethra, and all associated external genitalia so that he won't block again.

Cats block for a variety of reasons.  All are somehow related to the production of grit or mucous along with the narrow penile urethra and spasms of the lower urinary tract.  This combination, the perfect storm as it were, plugs the outflow from the bladder and prevents the cat from urinating.

As urine backs up, the kidneys stop working (reversible in most cases, preventable if the blockage is caught early), and the patients can become really ill.  Critically ill.  Not going to suvive ill.  So here are some things to think about.

Feed your cat a quality diet and make sure that there is adequate water available.  Cats are notoriously poor drinkers so it would be best if at least part of their diet is a canned food. Clean fresh water dishes and fountains, or dripping faucets will stimulate some cats to drink.

If your cat has a history of urinary tract problems, your veterinarian should recommend a prescription diet that will help prevent  relapses.

If your cat is straining to urinate, having blood in the urine, making frequent trips to the box, (litter that is), crying in the box, urinating out of the box, or generally doing anything out of the ordinary urination wise, you may have a problem.  If he can't urinate, there is definitely a problem, an emergency type problem.  Call your vet and if your vet is closed, get to an emergency vet.  Don't wait until Monday or even to the next morning.  The odds are, that if you are just noticing that your cat can't pee, he's probably had a problem for a while and may be on the precipice of a crises. 

 A good, but technical overview of this condition can be found on the ACVS website.  There are some graphic pictures of the urethrostomy surgery, but hey, they are surgeons.  I would make a joke about pictures of "kitty" naughty bits, but in light of what is going on out at Penn State, I will refrain.