Sixteen month-old Cliff is being rushed into the Bondi Clinic,
after eating something very dangerous.
You're all good.
Hello. I'm Kath.
I called about the rat poison.
Oh, is this Cliff?
Yes, this is Cliff.
Hello, Cliff. We better get you in straightaway.
Okay. Well, let's just phone Chris.
Besotted owner, Kath, is terrified the Australian Shepherd
has ingested a potentially deadly dose of rat poison.
I took my dog, Cliff, to work today, which I've done a few times lately.
He was rummaging behind some furniture and he came out
with a packet of blue powder, and he pierced it
and there was some in his mouth.
And then I looked at it and noticed that it was rat poison.
And here we are.
How long do you think he ate it?
He ate it at 5 past 11.
So, 50 minutes ago.
There are lots of different varieties of rat bait, the type that cliff is eaten
is bromadiolone.
This one is tricky
because they only need one dose
for it to cause potentially fatal bleeding.
So, yeah. The obvious concern with rat bait
is it goes into their body and it blocks something called Vitamin K,
which is what they use in their system to cause their blood to clot.
And whilst it doesn't sound like you necessarily need that all the time,
each time you, you know, even move your arm or your leg,
"tiny little bleeds can occur. Without that Vitamin K,"
those little bleeds can cause massive hemorrhages.
You don't know how much he ate, though?
No. The sachet was about this big.
And he pierced one side of it, and a whole bunch of it fell out.
"There was a bit of swallowing, but I don't know if he ate"
maybe a thumbnail's worth or
just got it in his mouth and went, yuck, I don't like it.
And that was that.
I rang Neil. He said, you should come in.
You've done exactly the right thing in bringing in when you have,
because with this sort of poison, it takes them some time to absorb it.
So, that the sooner we can act for him,
the less a chance there is that he's going to absorb this,
and he's going to have a blood clotting problem and then a bleed.
Cliff is everything to me.
I'm completely obsessed with him, so I just hope that he's okay.
You stop eating things you're not supposed to.
The real concern I have here
is we still have no idea exactly how much rat bait Cliff has eaten.
The simple fact is that if Cliff has eaten a lot of rat bait,
it's currently being absorbed by his system,
which means that his blood will very soon have trouble clotting.
The sooner you can intervene, the better off he's going to be.
Let's just remember before
I do what I'm about to do, that you got yourself into this mess.
Let's do it, then.
"The best treatment for dogs that have swallowed"
"rat bait is to make them vomit as quickly as you can."
Alright. So, it doesn't look like much,
but in here is enough of a drug
called apomorphine to make him vomit.
"But once he does have that, I probably recommend"
"we get him down on the ground fairly quickly."
Okay.
Good boy.
Alright, Cliff. That will be enough.
Good boy. Good boy, Cliff.
Come on, buddy. Down you go.
It's rat poison and it's obviously designed to kill.
I've known dogs who've died of ingesting poison,
and I just hope that we caught it in time.
The anxious pacing is really a place we've all been.
Right.
Looks like he's starting to feel a bit spewy.
If Cliff vomits up blue, we know he's eaten a lot of rat bait,
and we're about to find out.
Here we go.
Any more to come, Cliffy?
This one's coming from deeper.
Get it all out.
It's alright, Cliff. Good boy.
That was important.
You see that?
Yeah.
"I'd be quite concerned if this was awash with blue,"
and it's not. There's little chunks of blue.
But if he'd eaten a lot of it,
it would stain the entire vomit.
So, I'm confident that seeing as though we've got him within an hour,
that he hasn't actually absorbed enough
rat bait for it to be a problem for him.
And that's the really comforting thing here.
Oh, good.
Thank you.
It's been quite an effort for Cliff, but thankfully,
"all the bad stuff inside of him is now outside of him."
"That look on your face, Cliff, really says it all, doesn't it?"
It's not a good day.
I don't know if he's going to want to watch your show anymore.
You might have lost a viewer.
Cliff does look pretty helpless right now,
but thankfully I can give him an injection
to reverse some of this nausea and make him feel a lot better.
So, you won't exactly be bounding out of here,
but at least he won't be projecting himself out of here.
Yes, and we know he's okay.
Yeah.
I feel really lucky that we found him before he ate the whole packet,
because I can't imagine him being sick or not being with me.
So, I just feel really, really lucky.
And I can go home knowing that he's fine.
Good luck.
Yes. Thank you very much.
Hopefully it'll be the last time we see you for a while, at least.
While Cliff might be leaving here today with
slightly sad and confused eyes,
it's the eyes of Kath that are always going to
need to be on Cliff in the future.
No more rat bait. Ever.