Poison?

[pie]

I saw those photos the other day when I was choosing mine, Joelle, at least he will have some nice photos to remember his boy.

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

Joelle

Sorry to read about your loss.

Our Adelaide ABC local radio did a segment on rat poison a while back. The expert said that there are different kinds of poison and he estimated that a dog that ate three rats that died of talon poisoning would probably die. The active ingredient in Talon is the strongest and fastest acting of the rat poisons.

He said something called "racumen" or "ratcumen" - I was never sure about the name of it, was slower acting and less likely to kill an animal that ate a rat that died of it. That you'd have longer to get your pet to the vet for treatment if it ate this poison.

The trouble with Talon is that it comes in purple wax blobs, which a rat (ideally) will carry off back to its nest and kill the whole family. (sorry rat lovers). But if the rat carries this wax blob into your yard and the dog eats it directly - your dog is dead.

I'd be looking for the neighbour with fruit trees or chooks or both and asking them if they were baiting rats and to let you know when they put the baits out because you're getting a puppy to replace the one that just died from rat poision. Be as nice and calm about it as you can, or send someone else who is less emotionally involved to ask. The neighbours may have been oblivious to the problem for your dog(s) and amenable to using traps instead. Or they might not but at least you'd know. Maybe they'd be amenable to getting border terriers, that would solve their rat problem without toxic chemicals.

And I guess that you would not be able to leave your dog outside alone at all ever again. I won't leave my dog outside on her own either because I'm paranoid about the rat poison problem. I do trap mice. Dunno if I've got rats. Haven't seen any but every now and again the trap gets dragged somewhere and there's nothing in it. But that could be the sleepy lizard eating the (dead) mouse. The neighbours across the road have chooks and fruit trees. The neighbours next door have a cat, canaries (eek), and fruit and veg too. The neighbour across the back lane has a gigantic fig tree infested with lorikeets, another cat and gawd knows what else.

In my old house I used to put the purple blobs in the roof of my house because there were rats up there. Every now and again I'd catch a sick rat. My neighbour over the back fence had a lilli pilli tree overhanging his yard, with rats or possums in it, and he had two dogs. Never occured to me to tell him about the rat sack, given I put it in my roof, a long way from his yard and there were no gaps under the fence. And as far as I know, his dogs never got sick. One would bark all night at the possums. I think that one might have been re-homed as there were al ot of complaints about it barking.

I didn't have a dog at the time.