We have a heads-up for dog owners about mushrooms.
Recently, a few cases of dogs with mushroom poisoning have come into the hospital. Sometimes an owner will actually see their dog eat mushrooms, but think nothing of it until later.
If you see your dog eating mushrooms from your yard, please bring them in urgently. It's a bona fide emergency. Bonus points if you can bring a sample of the mushroom with you. If caught early, treatment is relatively simple and straightforward.
If it's caught late, however, treatment can be difficult to diagnose, difficult to treat, or it could be fatal.
We also recommend that you clear your yard of mushrooms, even ones that don't look particularly exotic. Toxic mushrooms come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and can look just like a mushroom you use in your kitchen. They can also pop up over night, so keep your eyes peeled.
The fact is that most mushrooms are benign, but the toxic ones are so poisonous that if you have a dog, clear them anyway. It's not a great idea to feed wild mushrooms to humans either, as we recently saw with four Loomis residents who died from eating soup containing a poisonous mushroom that resembled a non-poisonous Asian mushroom. Not good for people, not good for animals.
So, if you see your dog eating a mushroom, any mushroom growing in the neighborhood, or if you have reason to believe they did, get them to an emergency room!
