I think we can all agree that there are few things as deeply wrong as cruelty to animals.
Unfortunately, despite the apparent common consensus on this issue, there are still people in this world who will go out of their way to cause pain and suffering to innocent creatures.
One of the most egregious examples of this behavior is dog-baiting, or deliberately poisoning a dog, often a family pet. We saw an example of this not long ago in the death of a pit bull mix named Zack, lost too soon.
It’s hard to know what drives people to commit these brutal crimes, but in many cases, it seems to be rooted in either a case of misplaced vigilantism or an attempt to even a personal score.
Poisoning symptoms in dogs include:
- Vomiting and diarrhea
- Lethargy
- Seizures
- Blood in the stool
If you suspect your dog may have been poisoned, call Animal Poison Control or a veterinary hotline immediately.
The most recent case, coming out of Queensland, Australia fortunately, has a happy ending but provides a chilling look at the lengths some people will go to hurt an animal.
For Gary Pavey and his family, of Maryborough, Queensland in Australia, it was far too close a call.
The family’s beloved family dog, Milly, had been the target of a vicious crime when an unknown criminal tried to poison the sweet pooch with rat poison hidden inside of a pie.
Milly, fortunately, didn’t touch the lethal snack, but when the Pavey’sfound it the next morning, they were understandably shaken by the implications.
Family Pet Get Rodent Pie
The ‘treat’ in question was a savory meat pie; these are typically stuffed with steak or other meat in gravy for a convenient meal-on-the-go.
In this case, the meat pie had been tampered with in an attempt to hurt little Milly.
In addition to the normal savory filling, the pie was also stuffed with lethal amounts of rat poison, in the form of small green pellets.
Under normal circumstances, a meat pie would be irresistible to just about any pooch, but clever Milly didn’t go near the pie.
Gary Pavey theorizes that either she was still full from her dinner, or, equally likely, she was able to detect that there was something off about the food.
As he put it to the Sunshine Coast Daily, “And there was that much rat sack in it, Milly might have smelt that there was something not right about it.”
Rat poison is typically made up of lethal compounds like bromethalin and arsenic, among many others.
These compounds are designed to kill off pest populations of rats, mice, and other rodents, but in larger quantities can be just as harmful to larger animals, including dogs and even humans.
People who attempt to poison dogs, either for sport or out of misplaced vigilantism, often use rat poison hidden in meat to do the job, because it is easy to purchase and is often designed to be enticing to animals.
Though Milly was lucky to come out of her scary encounter unscathed, her family is still at a loss to explain why someone would target their beloved family pet, who rarely barked and is described as extremely friendly and lovable.
Queensland did experience an uptick in deliberate pet dog baiting cases over the summer, with several similar attempts to kill dogs in the state, leading to at least one death of another beloved family pet, a bull terrier named Ozzy in the town of Mackay.
While there is no evidence that the two cases are connected Maryborough and Mackay are separated by roughly 450 miles the two incidents are disturbingly similar.
While it’s impossible to know the motive behind the attack on Milly until the perpetrator is caught, it’s possible that she was deliberately targeted for her breed.
People have been known to attempt to kill off pit bulls and other dogs with bull-baiting heritage out of prejudice and fear against the breed, even if the specific dog in question has never shown any aggressive tendencies; Milly, as a Staffordshire terrier, could easily have been mistaken for a pit bull because of some shared physical characteristics.
At the end of the day, the most important thing is that Milly is just fine.
Still, all dog owners should make a point of looking out for unusual food or snacks in their yards and should be aware of the symptoms of poisoning.
If you want to learn more about the symptoms of a dog poisoning, check out the ASPCA Animal Poison Control page for more information.
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