Urban Legends Reference Pages: Critter Country (Raisin the Alarm)
On Friday afternoon the kids were having a great time in the weirdo snowstorm. Chloe made a snowman and had decorated it with raisins. Since she’s kind of short her snowman was also kind of short so Peterman devoured Mr. Snowman’s whole face. Then he went to work on the bowl of left over raisins.
All in all he had between a quarter-cup and a half-cup of raisins that afternoon. At 1am the following morning he had a terrible case of diarrhea with some vomiting. That night ever hour on the hour he would let loose with fluid from some orifice. I was up all night tending to him and his out of control movements. I didn’t shout or anything; he was clearly very humiliated by what was going on.
As the day wore on he continued to have problems. He came across the street with us to dig some neighbors out of the snow and he romped and had a good time. He behaved normally. We just thought he’d eaten something bad and had an upset stomach. In the evening his condition deteriorated rather badly.
His whole body was shaking and shivering badly. He wasn’t drinking enouhg water to replace what he was losing through is vomiting and diarhea. We were starting to get very concerned.
After a little poking around Liz discovered some web sites that suggested that raisins could be toxic to dogs!
I found a good article at the ASPCA.
We called our vet to see what he thought. After about 30 minutes he called and I explained what was going on. I was totally prepared to hear him say “Tut, tut — its just an upset tummy. Have some milk and go back to bed, silly bear.” Instead he said that the dog definitely had an upset stomach but that he had never heard of this raisn-toxicity-thing. “It could be true, though, so call the 24-hour animal hospital”.
Not only had the animal hospital heard of this condition, as it turns out they had just released a dog the previous day that had ALSO suffered from “raisin toxicity”! I called the ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center. They charged me $50 and, after hearing the dogs size (20lbs) age (6mo) and the amount of raisins they confirmed that this amount of raisins can cause problems including kidney failure in dogs. They encouraged me to get Peterman to the hospital ASAP.
We got there quickly and they took him right away and admitted him to their Intensive Care Unit. He was a real wreck and needed their help desperately. They ran a “chemical profile” and did blood workups. They took an x-ray to confirm that he hadn’t eaten pennies or something. They ran all manner of tests. They administered fluids intravenusly during the course of the night. We heard back the following morning: his numbers were improving and he’s looking better.
We saw him around 2pm and he was happy and animated. He was wearing one of those ridiculous funnels on his neck and had one leg all taped up with a syringe taped down. He jumped up and down and was as happy a dog as I’ve ever seen. He played for a while with the girls and everyone had a good time - for about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes his energy had totally run out and he started looking exhausted.
So, we’re very optimistic about how things will work out. He’s going to stay for another night to make sure his numbers come back to where they should be.
The kids seem fine with this whole thing. They’ve seen us take good care of them and of our pets and they have no reason to think we would ever let any harm come to them. I think they just have faith that everything will work out.
If Liz hadn’t found those articles about the raisins, I have every reason to believe we would have lost him. Probably due to the effects of the dehydration, but it could have been the renal failure too. I had never heard of this “raisin toxicity”!! And I would never have thought raisins and grapes could be deadly to dogs!
We’re looking forward to getting our little guy back tomorrow.
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