Double dog poisonings in Ottawa expose dangers of rodenticide

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Thanks to their quick-thinking two-legged owners, Winston and Clover are still alive.

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Winston, a four-year-old Yorkie, and Clover, a five-month-old golden retriever, each ingested rat poison in separate incidents in Ottawa earlier this month and required emergency veterinary treatment.

“I don’t think someone was trying to kill my dog, so I’m not angry. But I would hate to see this happen to another family,” said Winston’s “mom,” Ally.

Ally was walking Winston on a leash on Shirley’s Brook Drive in Kanata on Jan. 2, when she saw the tiny dog chomp down on a little blue brick near the sidewalk.

“I noticed he picked up something blue so I immediately took it out of his mouth,” said Ally, who asked that her last name not be used.

“I remembered seeing a post about this years ago that warned pet owners to watch out for these blue blocks. It sparked something in my memory so I took a closer look and thought, ‘This looks like it might be poison.’ It looked almost like chalk that a kid would play with.”

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She brought the brick home and called a friend whose husband is a vet who told her to call the Animal Poison Control Centre (1-855-864-7661). After going through some questions, poison control said it was likely a rodenticide and advised her to get Winston to an animal hospital.

“We rushed to the vet, and they pumped his stomach. They gave him an intravenous line, some medication, fluids. They did some blood work. And after a couple of days they said he was out of danger, but to keep an eye on him,” she said.

“People say, ‘Keep control of your dog or keep control of your kid’ — but they’ve probably never had a dog or a kid. They can get in trouble in two seconds.”

The day after Ally and Winston’s scare, Amy Neville was walking her dog, Clover, in Westboro near Lanark Avenue and Scott Street when the golden retriever pup picked up a similar blue block from the sidewalk. Neville quickly pulled it out of Clover’s mouth. When she got home, she used a Google image search to identify it as poison.

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She also called poison control and took Clover to the Alta Vista Animal Hospital, “where we spent a couple of hours and a little bit of money.”

Clover never showed any ill effects from her misadventure, but she also had her stomach pumped and was given activated charcoal and Vitamin K, the treatment for anti-coagulants found in many rodenticides.

“We’ll never know how that little brick of rat poison ended up in that location,” Neville said. “That’s the mystery. Maybe some raccoon found it and carried it off.

“I’m just happy it wasn’t too dark at the time and that I was able to see it.”

“These are highly toxic compounds that are meant to kill the targets — rodents,” says Allison Hansen, co-founder and campaign director for Rodenticide Free Ontario, a grassroots organization that wants the province to ban rodenticides. Hansen lost her dog, Torchy, to poison in 2021. 

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“She was a real hunter. She’d catch mice. We couldn’t stop her. Ultimately the poisons bioaccumulated in her liver until her body just couldn’t sustain it anymore,” Hansen said.

“My sister’s dog had been poisoned too and eventually I put two and two together and realized what was happening.”

While some poisons kill the targeted animal immediately, with others the death is prolonged for days or weeks. Poisoned rodents may behave oddly, spending more time in the open where they are vulnerable to predation by coyotes, foxes and birds of prey, such as hawks and owls. These animals are then, in turn, poisoned indirectly.

If it doesn’t kill them outright, it can lead to mange and reduce the larger predators’ ability to hunt and reproduce, she said.

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“These are very persistent compounds. They can exist for up to a year and they bioaccumulate in the liver of an animal, much like the way DDT bioaccumulated.”

The poison blocks that Winston and Clover ingested likely came from bait boxes, commonly placed around commercial properties or other buildings to deal with rats. But Hansen says chipmunks and squirrels have been known to remove the bait and cache them elsewhere, where they can be found by pets or other animals. The poisons are usually coated with molasses or peanut butter, as irresistible for a dog as it is for a rat.

In 2023, the City of Pickering became the first municipality in Ontario to ban the use of rodenticides, spearheaded by a councillor who’d lost his dog to poisoning.

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Hansen says there are better ways to deal with rodent problems than by putting out poison.

“It’s much simpler than people realize,” she said.

“Many pest control companies have subscription services so that they will return again and again to fill up the boxes (with bait), but they won’t deal with what the real issue is. It’s not dealing with root cause.”

Rodents are best controlled by finding how they’re getting into a building and sealing up those gaps, she said. Keeping garbage secure, rinsing clean recyclables and making sure your barbecue is clean will make a property less attractive to pests.

Avoid feeding your pet outside, but if you do, don’t leave the food outside where it will attract rodents. Avoid feeding wildlife.

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“That’s a tough one because people like to feed birds,” Hansen says. “But birdseed does attract rodents.”

Humane pest control companies will secure your house and install one-way doors that will let rodents out but won’t let them back in. That can cost more than putting out traps but is more effective and cheaper in the long run, she said.

Ally, too, would like to see the poisons banned.

“We got lucky that Winston turned out OK,” she said.

“These poisons are meant for mice and rats, but as my friend pointed out, I have a rat-sized dog!” she said with a laugh.

“But also, bigger birds are eating them and owls are dying. And if an owl dying doesn’t bother you, then there’s something wrong with your heart.”

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