To Puke or not to...

I was let off of jury duty an hour early today (yes that's right...jury duty for 2 to 3 weeks...I was picked out of 300 prospective jurors!)...so I was excited to run the dogs and then head down to the Arkansas to maybe catch an evening hatch! I left my dogs for 3 seconds and went into the bed room and came out to find my Elhew Pointer with a bar of rat bait. Where in the world she got it from is beyond my imagination! I don't keep warfarin products around my cabin just for that exact reason! Of course I wasn't certain if my setter Gretchen ate some or the cats, as they were all standing at the scene of the crime (can you tell that I'm on jury duty?)

Warfarin or Coumadin is a compound or drug that acts indirectly as an anticoagulant (it has no direct anticoagulant effect) by interfering with the action of vitamin K1 in the synthesis of the coagulation factors II, VII, IX, and X. It is often used in animals and people to help patients that are throwing blood clots.

I realize the accompanying photos are pretty gross, but I wanted to make an important point here! I'm 40 minutes from town and 2 & 1/2 hours from my practice here at the cabin...what can I do to make my pets vomit to decontaminate them? I reached under the bathroom sink for my brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). In my practice, we use a drug which is an opioid (morphine-like drug) called Apomorphine that can be given IV, SQ or in the conjunctival sac of the eye. I was taught in veterinary school, by a world class toxicologist, that H2O2 is a safe and effective way to induce emesis or vomiting in our dogs. I use a dosage of 0.5-1 ml/lb, no more than 45 ml total volume, and no more than two times dosing with it. The antidote or treatment after emesis is induced is to treat them with vitamin K1.

A side note: I don't use Peroxide for anything else except to clean blood off of hair after surgery. Peroxide is commonly used to clean healing wounds which is a bad idea because it causes free radical damage to the healing tissue...which is obviously counter productive!


The Guilty Party!