Dogs are natural scavengers, no matter how much you feed them, they’ll always be on the look out for an in-between meal snack! Unfortunately though, they are not great at working out what they should or shouldn’t eat, and sometimes they are so quick to hoover things up, we miss it.

If you’ve seen my other article on poisonous foods and plants for dogs, you’ll notice that a lot of potentially life threatening foods and plants are extremely common things to have in households, making the chances of your furry friends getting hold of them all the much higher!

Out and about as well, especially in parks, you need to be extra wary as unfortunately people are disgusting, and drop all kind of litter and potential dangers all over the place. A month ago, on a trip to the park, Cooper licked a bit of grass. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary on the grass, but less than 5 minutes later he was vomiting all over the park, he then collapsed on the way home, panting excessively and his nose/ears began to swell up. Obviously I rushed him to the vet, who scarily said that if I hadn't got him there quickly it could have been a very different outcome! It turned out that 4 other dogs came down severely ill from visiting that park on that same day, they reckon it was cannabis on the grass, which is why it wasn’t necessarily visible to the human eye. Needless to say, we haven’t been back to that park since! Unfortunately though, my vets said they are getting 3-4 cases a week of dogs ingesting drugs in local parks!  

If you suspect that your dog has eaten something it shouldn’t have done and it’s displaying one of the below symptoms, get them checked out asap. It’s better safe than sorry, and dogs, especially puppies, can go downhill quickly! With vomiting and diarrhoea it’s more a judgement call, if your dog has 1 bout of either and no other symptoms, it may not be cause for concern, but if it’s persistent and presents with other symptoms then definitely speak to the vet. In fact, just speak to your vet regardless, a phone call never hurt anyone!