In the past weeks Sammy has done much damage to the household. Our financial files have been made into carpeting on the kitchen floor. Several CDs have been destroyed and she has basically had her way exploring the house. But today….. that was when reality set in.

Now, I grew up with dogs and to me a dog is a dog… period. They eat, sleep and, well you know what else. Other than that they are generally low maintenance. At least, that is what I thought. I have found out that a couple of things are very serious no-no’s…. Chocolate and Raisins. It seems that these two items alone can kill a dog. I had no idea.

So there I was, good day at work, heading home at a relatively decent hour and looking forward to a night of PHP work on website design. Then I opened the door to the kitchen to be greeted with a very hyper Sammy with a tail pushing around the floor torn up bits of boxes of raisins. We made a run to Costco and picked up a few packs of Raisins. Sammy in her most recent growth spurt had managed to get a pack down from the counter. The rest they say was history. She ate well. I though, damn another stupid owner making things accessible to a 10 month old dog. What the hell. Then I headed out to the balcony to see what damage she left for the day. There they were, the mounds of what could only be described as melted chocolate with raisins sprinkled in it. Ugh…. and I had to clean this up.

When completed, I did what I have done over the past couple of weeks, I dropped a line to the wife to tell her of the day’s events. Immediately I get a call on the Cell. “Ham says its poison!” We have to take her to the doctor asap. Now knowing how the Mrs. likes to over react, I did the most logical thing…. Google! I was a doubter, but hey the query confirmed it. ASPCA says that Raisins can cause renal failure and must be treated immediately! I had no idea. Don’t believe me?

Check out the Urban Legend site.

There is more real information on the ASPCA website.

So we did just that rushed the little monster into the vet. He did a blood test and all was in order and within the appropriate levels. But most of the sites say that they should be observed in a 24 hour period just to make sure. So we left her to spend the night again with her favorite vet.

During the visit, in true Japanese fashion he brought us up to speed on the gory details of what dogs should not eat and surprisingly enough, chocolate is worse than raisins. Followed by onions. Then the conversation drifted into things like dogs eating towels, socks and other assorted fabrics and how that can clog the intestines and kill them. Boy talk about a depressing visit. Well she should be IV’d up tonight and hopefully getting some rest. She should be fine because we reacted quick, all thanks to our good personal pet consultant…. HAM.