Episode 26: Common Household Pet Toxins

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Transcript

Dr. Cliff Redford (00:05)
Good morning, good day, good evening, everyone. Welcome to another episode of VetLife with

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of vet life with Dr. Cliff. That was actually the third time I did that intro. the other times I was saying vet Clife with Dr. Cliff. who knew? Nope. Not too many of you know, my family know, I had a speech impediment when I was a child. I had trouble saying my L's no, my R's I had trouble saying my R's. I would say it with a W sound. So I would say Cliff, Wedford.

so I would go to a little speech therapy class, probably once a week, twice a week. don't know. can't remember. but, of course my big bother, Tim made fun of me, about it, but that's what big bothers are supposed to do. They're supposed to bother you. it made me stronger in life. so I love you, Tim for it. I will get you back one day. anyway, so on this episode, we are going to talk about.

common toxins to cats and dogs that are found in your home. I decided to do this episode as sort of a deeper dive into this topic compared to when I was on Mary Berg's show, The Good Stuff with Mary Berg. It is on CTV weekdays, I think 10 a.m. across the country. Mary Berg got sort of national fame when she won MasterChef Canada.

And, eventually has now her own. It's not only a cooking show though. That's the primary, portion of it, but then she has cool people on and not so cool people on like me to talk about various things. So let's jump right into this. the first thing we talked about was chocolate. Now everyone knows chocolate is toxic to animals. it is probably the most common thing that we get a call like toxin. get a call about,

And so let's talk about it. So the chemical in chocolate, it's called theobromine. It's kind of like a caffeine derivative and theobromine is a very strong stimulant and dogs are not able to metabolize it properly. And also frankly, you know, it's not unusual for a 10 pound dog to eat if they were given the opportunity, a full pound of chocolate.

You know, let's do the math. Let's say you're 150 pounds. That'd be like eating 15 pounds of chocolate all in one sitting. That'd probably make us sick too, but it'd make us sick for different reasons. so theobromine is this, this double espresso like caffeine kind of stimulant. And what ends up happening after a few hours is it elevates the heart rate. It elevates, breathing rate. elevates core temperature. the animal may, have a bit of.

sort of stomach upset and diarrhea. But the big problem is if the dosage is high enough, you end up seeing seizures. Your dog can seizure, they can get muscle tremors and eventually seizures, and it can be fatal. Now the treatment basically ideally is quick evacuation of the stomach. So I did mention it takes a couple of hours, but you want to call your vet right away. Now the thing is, is not all, not all

chocolate contains the same amount of theobromine. It's basically the, amount of cocoa that is, that is within the chocolate. So milk chocolate, which let's be honest, isn't sorry, white chocolate, white chocolate, let's be honest, isn't really chocolate. It's just kind of this weird, sweet, creamy sort of treat. But it's not, I don't, I don't consider it chocolate. It doesn't taste like chocolate.

But milk chocolate, pardon me, white chocolate is essentially, see, I can't even say it as chocolate. White chocolate is essentially free of theobromine. And then milk chocolate has a little bit of theobromine in it and then semi-sweet and then dark chocolate. Like you get up to 90 % cocoa. the kind of chocolate I really love, that is, that is bitter. and you got to take it in small, small bits. that's the stuff I really like.

it's got a lot of theobromine in it. And then if you get up into, like Baker's chocolate and cocoa powder and, cocoa, it's like a cocoa, not a mush, like a pulp, I guess used in baking, those things have massive amounts of theobromine in it. So when someone calls my clinic and says, Hey, my dog's eating some chocolate. First thing we do is we ask, age and size, and then we ask what kind of chocolate and approximately how much.

and we can often work through with the owner. It's like, okay, ate a milk chocolate candy bar and, and, you know, then we'll pull it up online and figure out how big that candy bar is. And when in doubt, we sort of always round up when we're trying to estimate how much chocolate that they ate. And we basically, we go online. So this is something you can do as well. So the first thing you can do is you can literally Google, chocolate toxicity dogs, and there'll be various calculators.

various little apps or websites and you punch in the weight of your dog, kilos or pounds, and you punch in the type of chocolate and you punch in the amount of chocolate in ounces or grams. And it'll, it'll basically say, this is super dangerous. Call your vet immediately. This is moderately dangerous. Still call your vet immediately. Or, you know, this is not dangerous at all. Just be mindful of GI upset is something they'll always mention. And that's because of the sugar.

and the fat that might've been in the chocolate. So when this happens and someone calls us and we go, uh-oh, this calculator says it's too much. And sometimes we know right away without even going online. We have you come in and if it's within two or three hours, we can induce vomiting. We throw in an IV catheter and we administer, we use a drug called apomorphine, which is a very, very low dose or low volume.

Injectable it goes into the vein and within 30 seconds it causes a vomit reflex. Do not do things at home like hydrogen peroxide or force salt water on your dog. All those things can be caustic and damaging to the esophagus. You really do need to seek veterinarian care for something like this. So we will have them expel the chocolate. We feel like exorcists at the time and Linda Blair's head is spinning around and vomiting.

your dog's head will not spin around, but they will vomit and they may mumble a few satanic verses who knows, but, we will get them to vomit and it's, it's fascinating. it's pretty amazing. And they often vomit other things that people didn't know they ate, hair scrunchies and a little pieces of plastic or, whatnot. And, if we need to, depending on how long it's been and depending upon sort of toxicity levels, we've.

may also force them to ingest some charcoal, a charcoal slurry. And charcoal basically binds to the theobromine. We'll wait a little bit and then we give them another drug to stop the vomiting. And then if everything's going well, we'll send them home. Now, if it's been well beyond two or three hours, then we'll often hospitalize on IV fluids and monitor. And the vast majority of these cases, the prognosis is excellent.

Even if, even if, you know, we're not able to get them to throw up the chocolate, because it's been, let's say four or five hours. If we can get to them before symptoms, significant symptoms occur, then supportive medications can really do wonders. So call your veterinarian. That's going to be the moral of this story of all of these cases. Call your veterinarian. Do not wait. The next thing we talked about were grapes and raisins. Now, again, everyone sort of knows, most people know, I hope.

there's one lady in the audience, on the good stuff with Mary Berg that did not know this, that I'll get to in a minute. but most of you, if you have pets know that grapes and raisins are poisonous and it's because of a chemical called potassium bitartrate, also known as cream of tartar, which is what I learned from Mary Berg is what sort of lines the wine barrels, as the wine is aging. this cream of tartar is a very sort of acidic.

kind of avoid things that say cream in it. just don't like it. maybe it'll be yummy though. I don't know, but, potassium by tartrate causes some pretty nasty cellular, kidney necrosis, what is called nephrotoxic. Nephromines kidneys. So it is nephrotoxic and, we don't really know the dosage and different,

guess they'd be species, different types of grapes have different levels of potassium by tartrate and also, you know, depending upon how ripe they are, how large they are, what the soil was like, even if they're sprayed with certain chemicals can apparently affect how much of this by tartrate is in them. So we don't really know. and unfortunately, even just a few grapes or a few raisins can be, fatal.

and the problem is, is the symptoms don't show up for weeks because the animal eats it and it causes some cellular damage in the kidneys. And then slowly those kidneys basically necrotize. They just, the cells die. And, you know, I'll tell a very, warning story of a patient of mine that had become an ex-patient cause they had moved.

to Toronto, I'm in Markham and it was moving day and they'd sort of already found their regular veterinarian, but it was moving day and they called us up to say, Hey, buddy, I'm changing the name buddy. which I think if I remember correctly, he was a Jack Russell, buddy has, swallowed some, some grapes. what should we do? And we basically get them in here really quickly.

And they kind of balked at it and hummed and hawed and you know, we're moving and all this stuff's going on. And what if, what if we wait and see and no, you can't do that. Like if this is, if this is going to cause a problem, you're not going to know for, for weeks. And, you know, we tried our best, but I guess we didn't try good enough because they didn't come in. And then weeks later, we got a call from their new veterinarian.

to kind of say, Hey, just to let you know that, your old patient's dying of kidney failure. And, he was not aware of this veterinarian was not aware that the dog had eaten, had eaten grapes. And, and so I had to tell them and, know, just, just out of interest, cause they were trying to figure out what caused it. and it certainly did seem like some sort of toxin and he had the very sad, and difficult.

task of informing the owners. And I'm sure he didn't say it this way, but essentially this was, this was due to the grapes and, and due to them not bringing their dog in quickly. Cause we could have, we could have saved Buddy. Even if it was two, three, four hours later and we couldn't induce vomiting, like it wouldn't have done anything. you get this patient on IV fluids for a couple of days and you basically keep those kidneys healthy. Wow. They're taking this. We call it an insult.

this trauma to the kidney cells. So grapes and raisins are very dangerous. Contact your veterinarian immediately and do not wait for symptoms of kidney disease. I'm not even going to tell you what those symptoms are because I do not want you to wait and monitor for them. And yes, I know what they are. I'm just not going to tell you. So the story when we were at this, when I was doing this TV show is after the segment, the producer came up and he said, Hey, this

This woman in the crowds really upset and she doesn't know what to do. She's been feeding her dog grapes as a treat, occasionally. And you know, does she need to go to emergency hospital? What is she, what is she going to do? And I basically said, look, if she didn't, if she didn't feed it in the last couple of days, going to the emergency hospital is not going to help at this point, but explain to her that some grapes.

don't carry much of this potassium bitartrate and we don't know which ones or which scenario. And even we think that some dogs don't have that sensitivity that they almost have some sort of antidote. It's not toxic to them, but those dogs can later become sensitive. So she needs to stop right away. never give grapes or raisins to her dog again. and, you know, just to be safe.

And I was trying to be professional and protect my butt. said she should contact her veterinarian and just kind of clarify, if she needs to bring her, her dog in. So that must've helped her. Cause I did offer, I said, give, give her my, contact information, my email and my Instagram, number or information at drcliffworldwidevet. me, please, send me messages. Anyways. I said, you know, give her my contact info and I'm happy to discuss, and answer any of her questions that I never heard from her.

So hopefully things are okay.

So another thing that we talked about and Halloween just passed and it is a tiny issue with Halloween, especially if you have a diabetic in the family who takes a lot of like sugar-free treats or sugar-free products is the artificial sweetener called xylitol. Xylitol is also labeled under birch sugar or bark sugar, I think, maybe wood sugar. I think all three of them.

or even just simply birch bark because xylitol is naturally found in certain plants, but especially in birch trees. And xylitol as a, as a artificial sweetener is commonly used in, like sugar-free peanut butter is very common. and certain candies and certain gums. and interestingly enough, back to the grape issue, cream of tartar is used in baking and is used to kind of gum up.

or make things thicker, I guess it congeals the baking that you're doing. And it is found in certain candies and certain gums as well, and Play-Doh, especially homemade Play-Doh. So you could have a double whammy if you have gum that has both grapes, raisins and xylitol. Now the way xylitol hurts animals is it sort of tricks their brain into thinking they ingested a massive dosage of sugar.

And so it can't distinguish between xylitol and normal sugar. And I should say other, other artificial sweeteners, sorbitol, sucralose, saccharin, all those ones are all aspartame. They're all okay. They're all safe. I should say, not toxic, but xylitol itself is very, very dangerous. And so, you know, the brain thinks that this

dog or cat that the body has ingested this massive amount of sugar. And so it responds with a massive insulin dump and it causes hypoglycemia. causes a, a massive drop in blood sugar levels, which can be dangerous and can be fatal. and so you know, your, your animal will become weak. We'll walk around like it's drunk, what we call ataxia.

and so it'll be wobbly and kind of confused. it can't do a Scrabble or math very well. so it starts to have difficult with simple functions like that. they'll get muscle tremors and they will seize, can have seizures and it too can be fatal, fatal because of the seizures. which can be very, very dangerous and very, very painful. And the problem is.

Is these symptoms can show up as quick as 30 minutes. So it absorbs very, very quickly and you need to contact your veterinarian right away. And the treatment is basically maintaining a blood sugar level. so we'll get them on IV fluids and usually a dextrose drip, we will basically ride out this, this hyperinsulinemia, this elevation in insulin, which is causing the hypoglycemia. I'm going to throw a lot of cool.

Sciencey words at you guys today. There will be a test at the end So hypoglycemia, so that is xylitol very very common and people don't people aren't aware of it

So another one, another common toxin and probably Mary Berg's favorite is a favorite because she cooks with these products a lot. Like you can't really have a favorite when it comes to with pet toxins, but she found this most interesting. are, are foods in the allium category. So onions and garlic, leeks, shallots, chives, and scallions. that right? Scallions? Scallions sounds like a insult you would throw at a.

pirate, say it's a dirty scallion pirate. What word am I thinking of other than scallion? I don't know. Maybe it's the typo that I'm reading here. Anyway, so all of these products, they cause oxidative damage to the red blood cells and they result in these lesions or these dots basically on the red blood cell called Heinz bodies.

likely discovered by, sounds like a German name, a Dr. Heinz. and so you'll get what is called Heinz body anemia or hemolytic anemia because the body recognizes that the red blood cells are damaged and it lices them, lizes them, it lices them. I don't know which is right. but it causes hemolysis. Hemo means blood, lytic or lysis hemolysis means destruction of.

That's why we call it hemolytic anemia. And basically the animal becomes weak and their heart rate goes up and their gums become pale and their breathing rate increases. And they'll get these hemolyzed red blood cells, these destroyed red blood cells, the products of the red blood cells, the body does this destroying red blood cells that are damaged because it just thinks they're old.

And it's trying to recycle the iron and the proteins and whatnot and use that product because the body recycles. is worried about the environment and reduce, reuse, recycle. can't really reduce the red blood cells, can't really reuse them when they're damaged. So it, it recycles them, and utilizes the iron, cetera, and then urinates out the other products. So you'll actually get this like dark.

And to, to cure this, and this is normally, when we see this is normally a, let's be honest, it's usually dogs, cause people feed their dogs pretty funny foods. It's when they're eating onions, you know, a little bit every day for awhile, or, a couple of times a week for awhile or garlic, that sort of thing.

and there are times where if the, the amount that they've ingested is high enough, do have to induce vomiting. That's pretty much the treatment, the supportive treatment for most of these issues. but there are times where we'll actually have to shut down the immune system to stop it from hemolyzing these red blood cells. Cause that's part of the normal immune system process. And we will, get them on IV fluids and even have to do blood transfusions. if they are, if they're sick enough. So.

onions, garlics, leeks, shallots, chives, the rest rascally scallions, are dangerous to, to cats and dogs. We then talked about human medications and I'm going to focus on acetaminophen or Tylenol. Acetaminophen, Tylenol, very common over the counter pain reliever and, anti pyrexic. pyrexia means fever. in Greek it is pyrrhotos.

pyrexic, so Tylenol reduces fevers. And it's kind of a really interesting, if you're into science, how this, how this affects cats and cats, dogs are sensitive, but cats are super sensitive to acetaminophen toxicity. They do not have the enzymes needed to metabolize the acetaminophen. And what happens is they develop a condition, here's another great word called methemoglobinemia.

So, Mathemoglobin is a altered form of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is basically the iron carrying portion of red blood cells, not iron, pardon me, oxygen carrying portion of red blood cells created with iron. That's why I was thinking about that. And what ends up happening is this oxidative damage or this damage from the acetaminophen is it.

converts hemoglobin to methemoglobin and methemoglobin does not have the ability to carry oxygen and What ends up happening? You know, they get the elevated heart rates and elevated breathing rates. They become very weak But the cool but also scary situation is their gums become this muddy brown color Now not only that but there's another change and I'm tell you a little story. So I've only had to deal with this

once in my career. this was probably 20 plus years ago. So I was just a young vet, but, but enough to, know what I was doing, obviously. and this cat came in on a Saturday, super sick. didn't really know what was going on. Could he have gotten into anything? No. is he on any meds? No, et cetera, et cetera. and we took him to the back and decided to pull some blood, cause we're going to send it off just to see what's going on.

And when I pulled the blood from his jugular vein, I kid you not, the blood looked exactly like chocolate milk. Exactly. you would have had no way of noticing the difference visually. And right then and there I was like, there's something about this. There's, there's some red blood cell damage. And if I remember correctly, cause I wasn't sure if I remember correctly, I think it's Tylenol. So I went, talked to the family and they said, yeah, we did give some Tylenol. So, so.

What I, what I've learned over the years is I don't just say, your animal on any, you know, medication or prescriptions, but did you give them any medicine? And did you, and then I'll specifically say, what about over the counter medication? If they say, no, we didn't give them any medication, because people sometimes don't comprehend or kind of really think about over the counter medication as real medication. So they're really thinking about.

what they would think is more serious stuff, but they don't realize how serious some of these OTC drugs are. So, you know, for those vet students out there or new to veterinarian world, recognize that sometimes you have to be very specific and say, any drugs, is the animal on any medications? Did it get into any sort of medications? Okay. Did you give it any medications? No, I didn't. What about over the counter stuff? Aspirin, Tylenol?

Et cetera, et cetera. And then we'll even say, and this is a segue for the last one, though we're not there yet. What about any sort of recreational drugs? Is there anything that's available in the house? And Canada has made marijuana legal several years ago and it's legal in more than half of the states. Federally it's illegal in the U S but state side, it's legal for more of the house states. So it's more and more common, right? Anyway, so you have to be very specific.

if you want to get the information out. So the other thing that, and I don't remember exactly the name of the drug, but I happen to have the antidote for this cat. want to say muco mist, but that I don't think that's correct. but, we added a head, we had to give it an eye medication, but give it orally. And what ends up happening is when you give it, it turns the tongue blue, like blue, blue.

Not kind of blue, but super blue. And I'm sure I should, I used to remember this back in vet school, but it's been 26 years. It has something to do with this drug, probably pushing the methemoglobin out of the system and allowing a hemoglobin. Well, see that wouldn't work because then where does the, the, then you get methemoglobinemia. So probably just quickly converts it back to a hemoglobin and then maybe the hemoglobin because it has zero oxygen.

attached to it, maybe due to that conversion process, it becomes quickly becomes blue. much like you would get blue lips if you're, having a, like a respiratory attack or if you almost drown or if you're super cold, you get blue lips because the oxygen is not being carried to your lips. anyways, so this animal did great. And the moral of that story is don't give Tylenol to the cats. The, if I remember correctly, the owner had said they were kind of told to give it.

by their pharmacist and I can't remember or maybe they were mistaken if the pharmacist actually said you could give a little bit of baby Tylenol or if they said you could give low dose aspirin and then people confuse the difference. Don't give aspirin to your cats and dogs but the toxicity rating is a fraction compared to acetaminophen. So a couple of drops of like children's Tylenol.

which occasionally is sweetened with xylitol. So then you got a double whammy. A couple of drops of children's Tylenol for a cat can be fatal. And the treatment is really just give them this medication and IV fluids, et cetera, et cetera. And then we quickly talked about marijuana, or at least we did during the practice run. And then I talked too much during the other one, so we never had a chance to discuss it. I basically, we were going to end it on a funny note.

we're basically going to say, look, marijuana is a problem, THC specifically. And obviously it depends on how much they take in the form. So edible, THC products, brownies, you know, the magic brownies, things like that are a different THC. Joe Rogan would say the exact chemical compound. I don't know what it is, but it is a different compound with a different sort of psycho.

what's it called? Psycho, not analytical, psychogenic. I can't remember what the, what the term is, but THC in an edible form is stronger and slightly different than when, when taken, inhaled. And I, I don't know if it's because you eat it, it's different or if the cooking process. like, you were to eat marijuana leaves, would that give you the same, effect of, you know, eating cook?

marijuana and like a gummy or something like that. But anyways, unless they get into massive amounts, the true danger is pretty low. and then I was going to say the joke that look, if it's a low dose, your veterinarian might just give you two instructions. And that's if your dog gets into a low dose of marijuana, simply turn up the Bob Marley music and give them a bag of potato chips and they're going to be fine.

and then everyone was going to laugh and, we were going to say goodbye. marijuana is a problem. talk to your veterinarian. it, if it happens, we're not going to judge you. Half of us probably use, utilize marijuana occasionally and arguably, well, not even arguably it's safer for your body than an alcohol is in the sense of getting a little bit high versus getting a little bit drunk. they both have sort of similar fun effects, but getting a little bit drunk hurts your liver.

getting a little bit high, just, maybe causes some anxiety depending upon how well you handle it. so anyways, so that's the episode. we talked about chocolate grapes and raisins, xylitol, alliums, and the rascally scallions and then, over the counter humor medications and THC. there are so many other, products, but these are sort of ones that are found in your kitchen mostly.

and your pantry, maybe in a very, very, soon upcoming episode, we'll talk about other, other products. So send me any questions that you may have. maybe it's about this podcast. Maybe it's about, just questions about your pet, and even, questions that aren't related to being a veterinarian, me being a veterinarian. we can just talk about, maybe I can help you with, with some other question you may have.

And then if you have questions or you want to list off some other toxic items that you found out about, I bet you there's a few that I don't know about. And then you could surprise me and I'll say your name, say your name on the podcast and give you a little shout out and then I can learn while so do the other listeners. So thanks for listening. Be kind to animals and be kind to yourself and others and to all the animals out there, say no to drugs.

Cheers.