As I sit here writing this, our treasured family pet, an eleven year old Jack Russell X, is lying seriously ill in a Canberra veterinary surgery after the diagnosis of being poisoned with Ratsak. On Sunday morning she was a little ‘off’ but, being a typical lazy eleven year old we didn’t think much of it. She sleeps on top of a chair, with her sister, great for looking out of the window and wonderfully warm, especially when the sun comes around.
She’s always been sensitive to her tummy being touched and has skinny female legs. She’s always been a bit precious, stressed, highly strung, but totally loved. She was wobbly this morning, but had a drink and went to her kennel as per usual. On coming home this evening, I found a dog that was disorientated, falling over and unable to hold her head up.
The vet and her colleagues were spot on. With the suspicions of a tick, snake bite and possible stroke, within minutes they diagnosed the poisoning. After several injections, where her blood was as thin and pale as water, our precious girl is now having a blood transfusion and we face an anxious wait.
We don’t know how the dog has been poisoned. We don’t use Ratsak and the dogs are, despite being JR’s, hopeless at catching rats and have never been interested. However, this is not to say that they haven’t taken a liking to something dead and, after all the heavy rains, we cannot discount the fact that it could have perhaps been washed into the garden. As for someone throwing something over the fence? Well, we just won’t go there.
Please be vigilant. If your dog seems unwell, keep a close eye on it. Our girl only showed minor signs but started to go off her back legs, before it affected her whole body. We would just like to alert dog owners here in Canberra that dogs do get poisoned; it’s something that we always read about happening to other people. We never imagined it would happen to our precious girl. We wait anxiously for tomorrow.
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