Beware of Snail Bait

On the morning of May 31, 2011, my dog Daisy got into a box of Corry's snail bait. If you're not familiar, this type of snail bait is in pellet form and used in the yard to attract and kill snails. I hadn't even purchased this product, but found some in my shed from the previous owner, and accidentally left some within my dog's reach when I was moving some stuff around over the weekend. On that morning, I let my dogs out as usual to go to the bathroom. And when I let them back in, I noticed the box of snail bait lying on the floor outside already sort of torn up. Honestly, I  didn't think anything of it at the time since I thought it was Dobi chewing on cardboard again and I had no idea they liked to eat the stuff or that it was even appetizing to them.  I found out later that it apparently has a sweet and bran-like flavor to it and dogs really like it. So in my stupidity, I left for work.

About 8-9 hours later, I came home from work and found Daisy convulsing on the floor, drool and pee everywhere, her body having uncontrollable seizures. She was upside-down with her legs twitching in the air, with her eyes rolled back, and her tongue hanging out. I was in a complete state of panic, but I somehow managed to quickly carry her to my car and drive to a 24 hr emergency vet. I had never felt so scared in my life. During the entire car ride, I continued to talk to Daisy and let her know I was there and with her. I wasn't prepared to have her die right there, but it seemed very likely seeing as how her body was flailing one minute and then frozen the next. Luckily we made it to the hospital and the next 48 hours were the longest hours of my life.

The vets began to sedate her while cleaning out her system, pumping her stomach, putting liquid charcoal through her body to get all the toxins out. The goal was to sedate her just enough so that her body would stop convulsing and stabilize itself. The more she continued having tremors, the higher her fever would be and the more potential she had for brain damage. The vet spoke to me and was very straightforward telling me that she was in pretty bad shape since it had been so long since she got into the pellets. If she had been convulsing most of the day, there was a pretty high chance she would suffer brain damage or not be able to stabilize. I left the vet devastated and completely blamed myself for letting this happen. All I could do was pray for the best.

We waited by the phone for the next 9 hours. No news was good news, they said. At 3am, the vet called to tell us that her condition had not improved and they were going to try a different type of anesthesia on her - propofol.  We went to visit her in the morning and found that her tremors had still not improved. Seeing our little girl on the operating table with tubes hooked up everywhere and a breathing tube in her mouth was pretty difficult to see. They gave us many options, one of course was putting her down since this was a pretty serious case and her prognosis continued to be "poor" and "grim". Most dogs at this point should have at least showed signs of improvement and she continued to tremor uncontrollably.  Although we asked what would happen if we just kept sedating her until her tremors stopped, the vet techs said that most people would have put their dogs down by then so they weren't sure. And even if she did survive after being sedated so long, there would probably be brain damage since she had come in with an extremely high 106 fever. The longer they had to keep her under, the worse her prognosis was. We told the vet we could live with it if she suffered brain damage and were determined not to give up on her.

We spent the entire day praying and thinking about how she could survive this. We considered what would happen if she didn't get better and it was really hard to think about even putting her down. We felt like we needed to try everything before giving up.  The day moved extremely slowly and all we could do was wait. Finally around 4pm, the vet called and had some unexpected good news. Her tremors had improved tremendously and she was now off of the sedatives and also breathing on her own! We visited her that night around 8pm and even though she was still immobile, she was now blinking and able to sort of look around with a dazed expression.  I couldn't tell if she recognized us, but she started making a lot of groaning noises while we were there, which made the vet think that she was trying to tell us that she was still here. Although it was great to see her "awake", we still didn't know the extent of her brain damage.

It was still a sleepless night that night but at 6am the next morning, we visited and found out that she had made even more progress. She had started walking (although in a very "drunk" state), drinking water, but was mostly still very tired and just needed rest. When we saw her that morning, she even licked us, which was a great sign, but she was still so tired that she couldn't get up. It was also a relief that she was now in a cage and not on the operating table anymore.

 

 The difference in energy from that morning to that night.

By that afternoon, they informed me that she even started eating soft foods and was walking more normally.  By the time we visited that evening, she appeared happy to see us and even sat up as we sat next to her cage. At this rate, they told us she could potentially go home with us the next morning.  And on the morning of 6/3, Daisy went home.

For the first few days, we looked for any signs of brain damage - weird signs of behavior, blank stares, not remember where things were, or maybe even not remember Dobi. But in a typical Daisy fashion, she was still her weird self - crawling under the bed to sleep, jumping on people, bothering Dobi, shaking her booty when she saw us, and putting her head on our lap for attention. It's only been 2 days since we took her home, but I can tell the old Daisy is 95% back (I say 95% b/c she is way less vocal and not pulling my arm off when we walk, but that could just be from tiredness). Looking through her medical records, it's still amazing to me how she made it through all this and still came back like nothing happened - that's so Daisy. I feel like she got a 2nd life and I hope it's a long and happy one.