Mark KennedyWe interrupt your holiday weekend to bring you this important public service announcement: Don’t let your dog chew sugarless gum.
On Christmas Day 2014, our poodle-spaniel mix, Boise, decided to chew a whole package of Trident sugarless gum. Mint-flavored.
Actually, Boise didn’t just chew the gum as a way of relaxing in a socially responsible way, he swallowed it. All of it. Every ding-dong piece.
If you have a dog, you probably know the feeling.
Your best friend – your little furry love muffin – has just eaten something that’s not his or her dog food and you wonder: Will my dog be OK or will he get sick?
If the item ingested is an irregularly shaped object – such as a Lego or an iPhone charger – you try to use logic to decide if it might eventually work its way through your dog’s intestines. Generally speaking, if the object swallowed is larger than your dog’s head, the answer is “No.” This is just my common sense rule of thumb, I know of no veterinary studies to back this up.
The bigger problem, frankly, is poison. Will the forbidden food cause my pet to get sick? Or worse?
You’ve probably heard all the holiday cautions: Don’t feed your dog chocolate. Don’t let your dog eat the poinsettia plant.
Until now, you might have never heard: Don’t feed your dog sugarless gum.
Well, consider yourself warned.
Some sugarless gum contains a food additive called xylitol, a natural sugar-free sweetener. Veterinarians have discovered that xylitol can be lethal to dogs. In some animals, xylitol can cause vomiting, loss of coordination, seizures and liver failure. If left untreated, your dog could even experience a fatal drop in blood sugar.
Still, for a dog, finding a pack of unopened gum with a nice minty scent must feel like discovering a magic chew toy.
When Boise discovered somebody’s unopened pack of gum on the coffee table, he immediately took it behind the couch, which is where he goes to consume Popsicle sticks, No. 2 pencils, Kleenex, small stuffed animals and Bounce dryer sheets.
In the olden days before the Internet, Boise’s sugarless gum meal might have been a shoulder-shrugging moment. But now that all information is available from your web browser, it only took us about one minute to discover the xylitol problem.
We quickly called the Animal Control poison number – yes, there is a poison control for animals, just like the one for humans. The expert on the phone line immediately plugged our information into a formula that considered Boise’s weight and the number of sticks of gum he had eaten. The verdict: Get him to an animal emergency hospital. Immediately!
If you want to spoil your childrens’ Christmas, tell them that you are taking the family dog to the emergency animal clinic and that the pet might not make it home. Ever.
We wrapped Boise in a blanket and took off for Aminicola Highway, home of the city’s only 24-hour emergency veterinary clinic, where dedicated vets and support staff give up their Christmas holiday to care for sick and dying animals.
They pumped Boise’s stomach and immediately began monitoring his blood sugar which, as it turns out, was dropping rapidly. All we could do was watch and wait.
At points through the night we would call and check on our little buddy. By early evening, his blood sugar had bottomed out and appeared to be on the rise. By the next day his tale was wagging, and he was ready to come home.
Crisis averted.
So take a minute and chew on this: If you’ve got a dog, hide the gum.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.