WALKING your dog along a track he’s happy, barking and full of energy, running in and out of trees along a bush trail.
Within 45 minutes his legs are shaking and, 30 minutes later, he’s in a coma.
This is what happened to dog owner Susan Harlow and her one-year-old border collie, Darcy, last Wednesday.
The pair was walking along the reserve in Moss Vale behind Blue Circle Oval where Ms Harlow said Darcy was in her sight for most of their 45-minute walk.
Once they returned home Darcy’s legs buckled under him.
“He was walking like a very drunken sailor with no control over his legs,” she said.
Ms Harlow rushed Darcy to Berrima District Vet hospital. Within five minutes, he’d collapsed.
Vet Ken Davidson said that on examination Darcy presented completely normal, with slow but regular breathing and no signs of a snakebite or common poisoning.
“It appeared that Darcy had suffered a massive stroke. He had no pain reflexes at all and appeared to be brain dead except for his breathing,” he said.
“By nightfall, we had given up on any chance of his survival.”
This was when Mr Davidson remembered a case in the late 1970s where an African Lion at Warragamba Lion Park had dropped suddenly into a coma.
“It had them completely baffled as he, too, passed all blood tests,” he said.
Then they looked at the lion’s diet. An operator euthenasing steers had overdosed a barbiturate anesthetic to put a steer down but missed the vein, which kept the whole lethal dosage under the skin, which the lion ate.
“It took [the lion] three days to wake up,” Mr Davidson said.
“I told Susan that night there was a very slim chance that Darcy might have got a similar poison.”
Darcy was held overnight and in the morning he responded to a pinch with a faint reflex and a batting eyelid. He was on the mend.
“It was still touch and go,” Ms Harlow said.
“I was very worried and upset and wasn’t sure I would get him back and I was half inclined to put him down.
“But we gave him a chance.”
Mr Davidson said barbiturate was a liquid substance used to euthenase animals and access to the drug was restricted to vet use.
So how could barbiturate have been around the area?
Mr Davidson said he had heard of it being put into mince for bait to kill feral cats or perhaps there was a dog put down by the drug then dumped in the bush.
“It’s extremely rare,” he said.
“It’s not normally a bait you’d use to poison animals, but anything’s possible.”
Mr Davidson said all symptoms pointed to an ingestion of the drug.
“The immediate worry is barbiturate is a restricted substance. How did this dog pick up the bait? Where did it happen? We will probably never know,” he said.
Ms Harlow took another walk around the same path she and Darcy trod last Wednesday but couldn’t find a dead animal or anything that might have caused Darcy’s problems.
Whatever it was, she’s relieved her puppy is on the mend and won’t have any lasting effects.
But she did want to warn other dog owners to take care.
“Be very careful when walking your dogs; don’t let them out of your sight, especially young ones,” she said.
Email a friend