Dog house owners in New Westminster are warning others after quite a few dogs grew to become sick from ingesting what’s believed to be opioids left on the bottom in and round a well-liked park.
Resident Diane Gratton mentioned she needed to drive her panicked neighbour to the vet the day after Halloween as a result of the canine had fallen in poor health after a walk by way of Port Royal Park.
She mentioned after therapy for attainable drug poisoning, the canine recovered.
“Our dogs were playing together,” Gratton mentioned. “Suddenly, her dog had a full seizure and started shaking and couldn’t move at all.”
“Another dog also had similar (symptoms), but he was a bigger dog and had tremors, I believe, and the same sort of loss of control over their body.”
Gratton mentioned it has occurred in earlier years round Halloween, typically affecting puppies within the neighbourhood.
She added that now her neighbour may be very paranoid when taking her canine out.
“We’re walking and she’s checking everything on the ground because of it. And the dog’s not known to be picking up things so this is why we worry.”
Rex Bai lives close to Port Royal Park and mentioned final Friday his canine grew to become actually sick.
“He had pretty bad bouts of diarrhoea,” he mentioned. “We were taking him out every three hours and we didn’t know what happened or where he was. We never left him alone or anything like that.”
Bai remains to be unsure if his canine consumed opioids however he has heard of different circumstances within the space as properly.
Hannah Weitzenfeld, senior supervisor for animal well being for the BCSPCA, instructed Global News there aren’t any statistics on how typically that is taking place however they’ve been seeing increasingly circumstances of dogs being poisoned.
“We have a B.C. housing pilot program where we basically work to keep pets and people safe in B.C. housing buildings and we’ve actually seen it in about 11 of the buildings that we work with. So … it’s definitely not uncommon to see this now.”
Weitzenfeld mentioned canine house owners ought to simply keep watch over what their canine is doing and smelling, even when they’re off-leash.
If somebody suspects their canine could have ingested opiates, she mentioned the very first thing to observe for may very well be drowsiness or wobbliness.
“You’ll want to keep an eye out for any drowsiness, difficulty standing or walking or lack of responsiveness to commands. If your dog normally responds to commands, of course, but basically behaving in abnormal ways to what they would normally do in situations and slow or absent breathing is another thing to watch for.”
Weitzenfeld added that naloxone, which is used to deal with opioid overdoses in people, can be used on dogs and it has been used prior to now.
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