For all of my kvetching and moaning and mumbling about how some people are just rotten, the truth of the matter is that I generally have a pretty optimistic view of people. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, to assume their intentions are good, that they want what is best and trust me the way I trust them.
I still hold that this is generally the case. I don’t know if I am willfully obtuse or just pigheadedly determined to look for the best so I don’t renounce my membership to the human race in order to run wild with the dogs out on the prairie. I accept that this means I get burned on a regular basis, since some people just do horrible things.
So when a client calls and says he came home and found his dog chewing on a hot dog in the backyard, except he didn’t give his dog a hot dog, it was with a bit of perplexed concern that we agreed that he should bring the dog in, just to be safe.
Despite all signs to the contrary, I still hoped this was just some wayward hotdog-toting patron benefactor of neighborhood dogs who happened to wander by on his way to the shelter. Of course, the dog ended up vomiting up a nice green chunk of rat bait in addition to the hot dog, and my faith in humanity was once again plunked into the toilet. Nice.
It was luck, and nothing more, that the owner happened to catch the dog in the act of eating the hot dog to trigger his alarm. Geez, had we been talking Brody (or most dogs I know!), the window of opportunity would have been less than 5 seconds. And that is what makes rat bait so malicious- the effects are not seen that instant. It takes some time. And by then, it might be too late.
Fortunately, in this case the dog will be OK. The owner is obviously shaken. I am just angry and sad, and perhaps wondering what sort of karma that kind of action brings.
Oh my goodness! What a horrible person… I hope they forget which hot dogs they put the poison in before they eat their own dinner. I’ve had all sorts of people claiming their neighbors must be poisoning the dogs/cats/bunny rabbits/what have you, but this is the first time I’ve actually heard of a case of clearly deliberate poisoning aimed at a pet. He’s so lucky to have found it, and for it to have registered as suspicious! If the pup had gotten sick later after eating the hot dog unattended, it might have been brushed off as accidental, and been too late to help. I’d be freaked out.
Does he have any notion of whether thee are any neighbors who might have reason to want his dog dead? People annoyed by barking, maybe?
His dog did have some barking issues and he said he didn’t bring them in like he normally did. Which of course is *complete* justification for causing a painful horrible death of said dog. (end sarcasm)
Oh Dr V . My imagination is running wild at the thought of Karma for this 🙂 I am sooooooooooo glad the outcome was a positive one in this case . Huge Kudos to the owner for their quick thinking , and you, for your saving actions on this one . 🙂 It irks me that there are idiots ( wanted to use a harsher word ) out there that continue to do this. Its animal cruelty and it bears the same “hint” of malice that emminated from a certain now “convicted” cruel Butthead of a couple years ago . The one that we have come to have dissdain and disscust for?. Maybe not the same acts to the same morbid degree, but the result is the same , an innocent and trusting animal / pet , gone to Kevin too soon (painfully) , at the hands of a moron.
Phew …………now that I got that off my chest , I am now going to go hug my boys 🙂
I do so hope that this person gets ht by a bus!
I am so careful about patrolling out yard while the dogs are outside because we live on a main road that people walk on a lot. The pups are never outside without us because of the pool but now I have another reason. Thanks rat poison hotdog person, now I will be paranoid not only about my dog getting into my closet for a snack I have to worry about the backyard too.
I am glad that you could save this little guy. I’m sure his owner is very grateful.
And that is one reason why I have such a low opinion of humanity. I really truly hope that the rat-bait person gets theirs.
Ugh. Just ugh.
OMG! how dare they do that. Ever notice we are the only species that abuses, harms and kills for a reason other then survival?
I am glad this dog is ok. I bet the poor owner will forever be worried and weary, I know I would be.
I hope this person gets caught! I can’t even imagine how freaked out I would be if something like that happened to my dog in my own yard where I assume they’re safe. NOTHING could ever justify feeding rat poisoning to a dog! I hope Karma strikes this person down.
Let’s hope that in this case karma is a real bitch. What a horrible person! No wonder I want to just establish a doggie sanctuary (for senior dogs in particular) and just spend my time with them. I’m afraid I can’t muster too much enthusiasm for most of the human race any more. Thank goodness the owner caught this in time… I hope he reported it to the police.
He did. That is absolutely a crime.
I’m a member of a lot of pro-pitbull and pitbull rescue communities around the internet. This happens A LOT to pitbulls/bully mixes, (heck, I even knew a girl who was taking her dog out for a pee in her own yard, and her neighbour shot her dog.) which is why I never never let my dog run free in the backyard, even though I stand outside with her.
My family had a beatiful amstaff when I was growing up, and he was (I hate to say it) tied outside (no one in my family ties their dogs out anymore),I remember one morning I found him dead when I was about four years old. Turns out someone put antifreeze in his water dish.
My hatred for my fellow man started when I was very young. Which is probably why I’ve always had more animal friends, than human friends.
Antifreeze!!! Oh. Oh people are so horrible.
Sadly it happens to Rotties too (my breed that I’m heavily involved in like you are with pitties). It’s one reason my dogs have never been left outside without me being out there and I’ve done many perimeter checks to make sure there is nothing in the yard that shouldn’t be. 🙁
Did you report it to the news stations to alert other people that this creep is out there?
Ugh. This makes me physically nauseous.
No, but that’s not a bad idea.
While I have no reason to be paranoid about my neighbors, as every last one of them is a dog owner… now I surely will be. Yikes!!! I just can’t even phathom that some person would even THINK of doing something like this. It seriously just blows my mind that people can be so evil. Ugh, I hope they get what is coming to them.
I have 2 neighbors, each of whom has 2-3 big loud dogs, so I can’t imagine either one doing that kind of thing. But who knows about the person down the street, the psychopath a few blocks away….
Oh my goodness. That is so horrible! What luck that the owner was able to catch this in time to help his dog. Who does that to animals?! I seriously don’t get it!! Sad.
This. This is why we have a security cam. Not only would we get the f’er on camera but we’d gladly share the footage with police. I’m SO happy the owner caught it in time!
You have a security cam? On 24/7?
Oh, this makes my blood boil. I agree with Kristie- it would be great for this to be reported to the authorities because chances are the bonehead has done this before/will do it again & they will do the same thing. Eventually he/she will be caught and then all of these cases can be hung around his/her neck.
And after all of that… I firmly believe that MOST of us aren’t total souless jackasses. Most of us kiss pups on the head every chance we get.
Oooh- that person is SO destined for all kinds of slivers and papercuts and car accidents (that don’t hurt anyone else) and water heaters that explode and cause $1,000’s and $1,000’s in damage (ya know… karma stuff)!
Or perhaps, if the universe has a sense of humor, he will choke on an Oscar Meyer weiner at the county fair. It could happen.
Hah!
we caqn only hope so
this happened to me in may… I have two rottweillers and I was doggy sitting for my brother’s cocker… I was supposed to be on a trip with my parents and brother but decided to stay…
On the second day the oldest of my rotts starts shaking like mad, her vet wasn’t working so I took her to another one (the only emergency room for pets we have in my city doesn’t take rotts).. I had felt something strange in her skin, and if I touched it she showed me that it hurt…
This other vet didn’t realize the real issue but gave me something just in case, 3 days later the 3 doggies were sick and our vet made a blood test and found out it was rat poison…
If I hadn’t been home she probably would have died, and the other two were on that same road also…
We never found out who did it, but we know it wasn’t the first time…
Wow. That is SO scary. I am soooo glad they were OK, and that you were home.
wow people suck!! I’d love to track them down and make them eat that hot dog. I’ll never understand people who hurt animals, it just does not compute
I agree. Does not compute at all.
Yikes. Horrible people. I think I’d be putting up fine-mazed bird netting..
Aaarrgghh! Sickening, that is what some people are! I agree that this person deserves paper cuts, slivers, getting hit by a bus, death by hot dog, etc. I hope they catch the b***tard. Thank you, Dr. V, for saving this dog 🙂
My lab, Murlin, was poisoned while I was out of town. Luckily my girlfriend was staying at the house & got him to the vet & saved him! He was already bleeding. It wasn’t cheap but very worth saving him, lots of Vitamin K. He lived many years after that.
Oh wow. I can’t believe how many people this has happened too. I am so glad to hear that Murlin made it- I can’t imagine how awful that must have been!!
To hear from the post and the comments that this isn’t a rare occurrence makes my stomach churn. I had always heard little rumors that some disturb neighbors sometimes poison barking dogs, but I had always held on to the hope that they were just mentally disturbed or something out of urban myth. I guess, like you Dr. V, I try to be optimistic but over the years (especially more recently) I find that optimism waning. It’s horrendous to think about what these foolish, cruel and inhumane acts of death and destruction say about our culture. As Gandhi said so eloquently: “The greatest of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
When I was growing up, the neighbor had a beagle. It barked a lot, but was a sweet, sweet dog. Their next door neighbor filled its outside water dish with antifreeze, and the dog died. Karma comes around, though. A tree ended up falling on evil neighbor’s brand new car right in front of her house. Of course, a dog is more precious than a car, but she totally got what was coming to her.
Yes, the universe does work in mysterious ways sometimes. Maybe she will be reincarnated as a cockroach who gets fumigated.
Soooo horrible! I hope they catch that nasty person. Or karma gets him. All the other suggestions for Karma’s revenge sound good….. You wouldn’t have Karma’s phone number, would you? 😉
Really though, so sad. Glad this story had a happy ending!
Wow. That’s horrible… I just don’t understand people sometimes.
People can be astoundingly cruel. The only thing that gives me hope is that people can also be heartwarmingly compassionate (as in the rescues of animals from situations of immediate jeopardy, like ice floes, wells, dams, manholes, etc., and people giving of themselves and their homes to foster homeless animals). If I dwell on the cruelty of humans, it will cripple my spirit.
I agree. I have to find those stories, and hold them close, or else I will dissolve in frustration.
I am just sick. Here the dog thinks he’s scoring some goodies while someone is really just trying to kill him. We had a serious problem for a little while in NYC, with someone putting rat poison hidden in steaks, in Central Park. Dogs are allowed off leash there from 9pm-9am. Sick, just sick! So glad this boy is okay!
Did they catch the !@%#@$@#@$!# ?
I just returned home after a week away to discover that the same thing happened in my town. Argh! Horrible! The owner, who saw her dog eating meatballs, called him away. She rushed him to the e-vet clinic when he started having seizures 30 minutes later, where he died. Two other dogs have died with a similar history in the same general location. I am sick about this.
It’s so scary, you saw how Starr tries to pick up everything. Lambchop was the same way. That’s why I never hesitate to stick my finger down her throat and get the offending “score” in question out. I do however need to remember not to just throw it as far as possible — I have gotten a person or two!
If I caught a person doing this to an animal… well, I’d probably end up in prison for the things I’d do to them.
I think it SHOULD surprise you, and any of us, that this kind of sociopathic inhumane cruelty exists in this world. What have to do something! But what? 🙁
I think all we can do is refuse to accept it, and insist that it be a surprising, inhuman, completely unfathomable thing for a human being to do. Never allow complacence.
We have been having that exact problem in Toronto for the past few years. Some nefarious person(s) has been leaving human food laced with rat poison in dog parks. Most dogs just got sick, but one dog actually died a year or two back. It’s really sad that someone is doing this and hopefully they will get caught!
Been there! Done that. Neighbors can really do some scary things to each others pets. What’s next their noisy teenagers? But in our case it was raw hamburger and the hamburger clearly had the green pellets and so did the ensuing vomit.
When I was in high school, my dad took 2 goats as payment for some work he did for a family (don’t ask). They were great at clearing our yard and not much else. Even though our house was zoned for animals (in fact, we had a horse corral in the front yard and had several chickens, ducks & roosters), our neighbors took exception to the goats. I don’t know why – it’s not like they were loud or anything and they never got out. One morning we found both goats dead – we suspected they were poisoned due to the bloat in their stomachs and general pallor. Our neighbors refused to look us in the eye anymore after that. I still don’t know what compels people to so cruelly murder animals.
Jess,
Can you do a post sometime about what one can do about problem barking dogs? You know, morally? How does one train someone ELSEs dog not to bark 24/7 when the owners totally refuse -after repeated conversations – to do a damn thing about it? I can’t slip in there and put a bark collar on the dog. Is there a training whistle? Something? I don’t live in the sort of town where police respond to barking noise. They don’t even respond to women alone in house with robbers. I actually don’t have this problem now, but there was about a year where it was so bad we truly thought our only option was to put the house on the market and move.