Subject: Gopher Bait - Poison!
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:40:

This was on the Borzoi List:
This past Saturday(4/24/04) we buried Pickle Hill’s Cool Max in the back yard and planted an apricot tree above his grave. Max Belonged to my girlfriend Cynthia McCabe, and he was a three year old borzoi. Max died Wednesday night at 12:45. He had a seizure at 10:30 and another about 3 minutes later as we were getting ready to go to the emergency vet. He was treated initially with an injection of valium which didn’t prevent a third seizure about 15 minutes after the first. The initial blood test showed elevated proteins and coupled with the symptoms he had, the vet suspected strychnine poisoning.

The morning following his death our other three borzoi were restricted to the house and potty walks on leash until I could locate the source of the poison. The gross pathology revealed grain of some type in Max’s small intestine. After searching our ½ acre yard several times I came up empty handed as to the source of the poison and went to the vets to look at the seeds from Max’s stomach. After seeing the contents of his small intestine I again searched the yard knowing more what I was looking for and happened to run into our neighbor to the rear and told him what had happened. He brought out some gopher bait he had bought a while back but said he only used it in his front yard and stopped some time ago out of fear for his own dogs safety. I took some to the vet who treated Max and they agreed it was a perfect match to the seeds he ingested.

I called the company that makes the bait and was able to talk to the owner of the company and he told me some very revealing information about gophers:
A single gopher can tunnel up to 800 yards, and if a poisoned gopher were ingested by a dog, depending on the amount of poison and the weight of the dog it would make them sick and possibly require medical attention, but shouldn’t be fatal. However gophers have fur lined pouches in their cheeks and can carry up to an ounce of poisoned seeds which would be a fatal dose for a 50-70 pound dog. The warning on the container caution’s about using near domestic animals but fails to clarify that that should be a half mile radius.

At this time we have no idea where the poison originated. All of our immediate neighbors either own cats, dogs, or have toddlers and don’t use gopher bait. The enormity of our problem is that it could be someone two streets away.

Our short term plan is to dig a trench around the property and bury a barrier and work on eradicating the gophers in our yard with traps or flares that way we will be able to notice when one enters the property and be able to have a chance to get it before the dogs do. Until then the dogs are only allowed supervised free run.

Long term, I’m not sure what to do. I am bothered that a poison targeting an animal weighing a few ounces is capable of being carried in a quantity that is lethal to a predator 200x its weight. In a comparative sense Strychnine is not as toxic a poison as some of the others out on the market. It is an alkyd, which is a plant derivative and in about 90 days breaks down into organic carbon compounds and becomes benign. I think the concentration needs to be adjusted as well as a more encompassing warning label. Neither of the vets we have talked to keep any cumulative records of how many pets are poisoned by gopher bait. One of the vet tech’s said it is pretty common though most survive. Another vet told me that 98% of pets that go into strychnine induced seizures die. I am trying to think of a way to collect data from all the vets in the county, eventually expanding to include volunteer’s in other areas of California. Initially the data would be rather crude and unreliable as most fatal poisonings are never verified by necropsy. I would hope to attract interest from a vet school and funding to let someone else manage a study with a network of volunteers I am hoping to attract. This would give some leverage in approaching bait manufacturers or in pushing for legislation.

I am very disturbed by how common but unknown this type of poisoning seems to be. Within 2 hours 15 minutes of having his first seizure Max was dead and that time includes 30 minutes of CPR. With that in mind I think more dog deaths whose cause is unknown could very well be by this type of poisoning.

Please feel free to forward this