I am a bad bad mother!

Lock me up!

Call the Canine Police!

A week ago Aaron and I planted about 32 peat pots containing over 100 pumpkin seedlings in the backyard. I immediately put down my dog safe  snail bait and every day was shocked to find that my little seedlings were still getting eaten! Yesterday I went to Wal-Mart and got the Cory’s nasty “black death” snail bait and said to myself “I’ll just put a little ring around each plant. The dogs wont get into it, it smells horrible and I have used it before with no problems…” Well about 4 hours later we had a problem. Our new dog Jersey either got the snail bait on her paw and licked it off or just ate a chunk of it. Around 10pm we went out to say goodnight to the dogs (a nightly ritual) and Jersey was panting like crazy like we were in the Sahara Desert. Then we noticed she was twitching and her leg kept giving out. I immediately knew what happened to her and started to cry “It’s my fault! It’s the snail bait!” As I was calling the emergency vet in Stockton I Googled “dog ate snail bait” and found that they go into seizures and overheat and basically fry their brain. The website affectionately called it “shake and bake” - nice. If left untreated she would die. Since I now knew it was the heat that would get her, I cranked up the AC in the car and we rushed her to Stockton (20 minute drive). We were all shivering when we got their but the Dr’s said her temp was already 108! They packed ice on her and wet towels to cool her off and hooked her up to an IV.  She spent the night and will be ok but still is having tremors this morning and has to spend the day at her regular vet.

After we got back last night (around midnight) Aaron and I went out to scrape up all the snail bait and flush the beds we also pulled about 200 slugs from the area. According to the Internet (now proved fallible) slugs don’t like pumpkin vines… WRONG! This morning I got up and armed with a salt shaker annihilated more slugs… I want to blame those slimy demons for this horrific event but deep down I know it was my fault.

Please let my HUGE $800.00 mistake be a lesson to everyone!

By the way - Snail bait is “flavored” with molasses and tastes GREAT to dogs (and slugs)