[Dailydrool] Mouse bait and secondary poisoning (long)

[Opal-Deitering, Gaylene]

Kara asked me a question about mouse bait poisoning a dog who eats a dead mouse.  This is the answer based on my years in pest control and personal experience.
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The answer depends on the dog, their overall health, and how many mice they eat.  My Sassy ate the block style bait straight (no dead mouse), and ate more than just a couple whole blocks.  We had a bucket of bait in the house to remind hubby to bait under the house, and the lid got popped off.  Talk about stupid humans!  We took her to the vet, made her vomit, gave her a big vitamin K injection and put her on vitamin k pills for about a week.  She is just fine because I caught her in the act of eating one.  She didn't have time to digest it. Thank GOD!  The bait is no longer kept in the house even for an hour.

A mouse will eat a little bit of bait.  If it is dying or dead, it has already processed the bait.  The bait is designed to act well after the mouse has eaten it, because if a mouse eats a little of something and gets sick right away from it, they will never eat that thing again. They might survive and then reject further baiting attempts. They have to eat enough to digest the poison and get it into their blood stream.  If a healthy dog eats a mouse that ate bait, you should not have a problem with secondary poisoning.  You would have more worry of the dog getting tapeworm from eating the mouse, as our Pom puppy did from a dead squirrel.  Tapeworm is very difficult to detect, because they don't shed segments in every poop.  We got lucky to catch it when we did.

If the dog has a bleeding disorder, such as Von Willendbrands disease, you might have something to worry about.  The active ingredient in rat bait is an anticoagulant.  It causes organ bleeding in the primary animal. If your old or sick dog eats a dead or dying mouse with active anticoagulant in its system, the amount would be very small, and would likely not harm the dog, but, if you have an elderly dog with compromised health, you never know for sure.  Just do what you usually do, inspect anything that they put in their mouth that you didn't give them.  I am sure that you, like almost every good basset owner, do that already. Generally, mice do not want to come out of hiding when they are sick, so you will eventually find the dead, flattened remains behind your dryer or somewhere like that.  The good news is that the bait also causes the mouse to dry up rather than rot and stink.  Your hound might smell it, but usually you won't.  If your dog seems to fixate on the dryer or dishwasher, you might have a live or dead mouse behind it.  Cats don't generally bother with something already dead that doesn't move, so if the cat fixates on a corner or dishwasher, you can pretty much guess that the mouse is ALIVE and MOVING about.  Our old cat used to tell us before we knew that we had a live mouse under the dishwasher.  She never told us when we had a dead one, that was left up to the dogs to find.

Love and drool to all those who have lost a furkid, or have sick ones.  Special drool to Mike with MRSA, and Elder Clara.  Get well soon!

Gaylene

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