My sister, who lives in Covington, LA, almost lost her 9 month old Great Dane/Weimaraner mix recently due to a poisonous mushroom, so obviously it is a possibility – my dad is a doctor & he didn’t know about the mushroom, but he knew something was horribly wrong & sent her to the ER vet clinic & they said if she had gotten there 5 mins later the dog would have died….
I am so sorry about you losing your dogs- I lost my 22 month old British lab import in March & we still don’t know what killed him 🙁 He woke up next to the bed w/me yelping, running around, & w/in 2 mins had a major grand Mal seizure ( this dog was NEVER sick a day in life – I got him @ 8 weeks) – he came out of the seizure a little bit, but w/in a min or so had 2 more smaller ones back to back & never came out of them – I kept his airway open, but there was nothing I could do. He died w/12 mins of waking up. He had been eating EVO grain free RIGHt before the recall, but after his autopsy, food testing, they still don’t know what killed him. The pathologist thought it was definitely Clostridium Perfergens UNTIL he got the anaerobic cultures back & they came back negative, so I will probably never know. What I do know, however, is that we have sheep herders who still put out poison for coyotes even though it is illegal – after a LOT of research I have found that not all poisons will kill a dog immediately – there are a variety of rodenticides that are second-generation & although most dogs will show symptoms & you can usually get them to a vet in time, there are quite a few cases where the dog has absolutely NO symptoms ( no vomiting/diarrhea, etc) like mine did. I did send the pathology report (autopsy) to a number of vets in the country & most say they have no idea what killed him. Did have one vet who said that even though he showed no aneurysm in the brain (I had them do brain tissue slides), it is still possible that he had a stroke that was so severe……found out later they didn’t dissect the whole brain, so unless they happen to cut right into where there is damage, they can miss it…
Anyway…..sorry for the long post, but it has taken a VERY long time for me to recover from this, so I can not imagine how you must feel after losing both of your dogs – my heart goes out to you…
I just got a British lab (22 months old) in mid June, & rescued a wire-haired doxie mix (9 months) from Crowley, LA in July from a kill shelter & I now feed them Honest Kitchen Preference (base mix)supplemented with our raw game meat & they are doing great on it & love it.
There is invaluable advice here in this website/forum & I hope you find some answers – I am a newbie here, wish I had found it sooner….
Again, I am so sorry for your losses…..
Suzi
