Taken from Classic cars for sale..
Rock Salt and Anti-Freeze Poison – a Cautionary Tale for Classic Car Enthusiasts.
I’m sure all of our U.K. classic car enthusiast will remember the snow last December - and would probably like to forget it - but I have a cautionary tale to tell which might save a canine’s life and its owner a lot of heartache.
Like many car enthusiasts, over the time of the big freeze I liberally scattered rock salt on my drive to make sure I could get out for vital supplies and also make sure that our postwoman could make her deliveries. When the thaw eventually came it was such a relief to see the puddles form on our drive rather than hard compressed snow.
Katie is one of those very special terriers you get once in a lifetime, full of character, life and joy. I never made any connection with the puddles when Katie (brother to Sydney – steak and kidney – get it?) started throwing up and drinking vast quantities of water – including water from the puddles. Gastroenteritis was the diagnosis and an overnight stay on a drip at the vets, various injections and potions and she was on the mend, thank goodness, but still drinking a lot and stopping to empty the puddles on our drive despite my protestations.
A week passed, when one night whilst watching a ghastly horror DVD my daughter recommended we watch, Katie started to throw up again and was totally disorientated walking round and round the living room banging into things. She started to moan in pain looking decidedly unwell. By 10.00 p.m. we had to telephone the vets and seek ‘out of hours’ assistance rushing her into the surgery as soon as possible. Our vet, Caroline, carried out a thorough examination but couldn’t really work out what was wrong. She gave Katie a shot of morphine for the pain and decided to keep her in on a drip and would stay with her through the night.
Racked with worry, we finally went to bed at about midnight and eventually fell asleep - only to be abruptly woken at 1 a.m. by the rasp of the telephone giving us both instant punches to the gut. This must be bad. And it was; Katie had fallen into a catatonic coma. Her mouth was shut tight with the vet unable to open it and her eyes were wide open with no blink reactions. It looked like she was not going to make it. I expected a call after an hour to tell me Katie was dead.
Waking every hour throughout the night I decided that ‘no news was good news’ and when I called to see how she was - despite my foreboding that it was actually not going to be good - I was relieved to hear that she had indeed survived the night but was extremely poorly.
Caroline asked if she could have been poisoned. My wife and I both said in unison, “Of course not”. How could she have been poisoned? We keep all chemicals out of reach and there is no way she could have had any rat poison as it is confined to special rat traps where it can’t be got at. “Well” said Caroline, “it could be a brain tumour then but she needs an MRI scan so we can make sure. And the nearest one available this afternoon is in Potter’s Bar at the Royal Veterinary College. It will cost about £2,000”. £2,000! Yikes. Thank goodness she is insured!
As Potter’s Bar was a two hours drive away my wife and I deliberated as to whether we should put Katie through such and ordeal or whether it would be kinder to just put her down. We asked the vets practise what they would do - and I asked the insurance company if they were defiantly going to pay. They said they would – though I haven’t had a cheque as yet!
As Katie was still relatively young the vets all thought that if it wasn’t a brain tumour and the cause of the problem could be found and treated, we should give her the chance and take her. They made her comfortable for travelling.
The only way we knew Katie was not dead on the journey was by seeing her chest rising and falling. This was all very traumatic.
Arriving at the Royal Veterinary College Hospital, Katie was taken straight in and scanned and within an hour we were sitting with the Consultant going through her results. I suddenly thought that if this had been a person seeking treatment we would probably not even have seen a doctor yet!
Katie didn’t have a tumour. That was a relief. “Could she have ingested any poison?” asked the Consultant. Again, we wracked our brains. “She has high levels of sodium chloride in her blood. Could she have been drinking salty water?”
Puddles, water, snow, rock salt. It must have been the rock salt we put down for the icy conditions which she had been drinking and licking off her paws after the thaw. Yee Gods, how dumb have we been?
A few nights in intensive care at the Veterinary Hospital and Katie was ready to come home. She is still not yet right 5 weeks after the attack but is on the mend.
Apparently what had happened is that the salt causes the brain to swell and this then affects the nervous system causing disorientation, nausea, lock-jaw and eye catatonia. Rather like the tales of seamen going mad if they drink salt water from the ocean. Poor Katie!
Of course experience is what you get just after you needed it, so having Googled the whole phenomenon we have come across many articles about the subject and especially in relation to anti-freeze, which many road salt manufacturers put in their concoctions for the gritters, and many classic car enthusiast have lying around in their garage as they are forever filling up leaky radiators. We have found that this is not an uncommon problem.
So be warned, your dog could die if it takes in too much salt or has even a small amount of anti-freeze – like licking it up off the garage floor! Thanks goodness Spring is on the way – but March can be full of surprises!
Make sure your friends get to hear about this so they don’t have to go through what we went through – and most of all what Katie went through.
John East-Rigby
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/classic-car-news-item.php/i/y/a/Rock+Salt+and+Anti-Freeze+Poison+%96+a+Cautionary+Tale+for+Classic+Car+Enthusiasts./id/105
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