Last Wednesday, Rowdy was exposed to rat poison, antifreeze and brush killer, none in any large quantity, neither was he seen ingesting any of the substances. Thursday evening, he threw up his entire dinner just after eating it. That in itself did not indicate a potential poisoning, because he has thrown up several times in the past and I could chock it up to an upset stomach. But, shortly after that, there was a spot of fresh blood on the floor, so I checked his mouth and his gums had been bleeding.
I took him to the Vet first thing Friday morning and he did a full blood work up, which showed everything to be normal and in good ranges. Mainly he wanted to check for his liver and kidney count, because each one would indicate if he ingested either antifreeze or brush killer. I don't remember which is which without looking it up, but those are the indicators and both were normal. His exam showed nothing wrong, but the bleeding gums that I reported to him, was of concern and is an indicator of poisoning, possibly the rat poison. If Rowdy ingested any of it, it would have been a small amount because the bait trap was still pretty full. The Vet gave him a vitamin K shot and some vitamin K pills for him to take, to counteract the poison if in fact he ate some of it.
The rat poison has been dealt with, so he won't be exposed to that again. Usually he is not around when I am spraying the brush killer and I will take extra precautions, if I should have him with me when I need to spray the next time. The antifreeze exposure would have come from leaking tractors and rain runoff at an auction site that I took him too when it rained that day. His exposure would have been limited and diluted. I tried to keep him from drinking the ground water and provided my own water for him, but my eyes were not on him 100% of the time.
Crisis averted!
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