Rat Poison
Fri Mar 23, 2007 at 07:23:42 PM PDT
I know about rat poison because a crazy goat hearder killed my dog with it. Mr. R was in many ways the perfect dog. We found him as a stray at about six months. He like other stray dogs that survive that long had an incredibly affable disposition. He loved everyone and every creature. He just wanted to play. He was the kind of dog that wanted to make friends with every single one of earth's creatures he met. At one party I turned around to find him with his head in the baby stroller that was hosting some our good friends' six month old. I immediately thought, "Oh God, I hope he isn't eating the baby." I rushed toward them to make sure everything was okay and found the two of them licking and laughing. The would dog lick the baby's face and the baby laughed and the dog encouraged by the baby's happy response licked again - again the giggles and laughter from the baby - it was very cool. It was a heart-breakingly sweet exchange.
The dog spent most of his time with my sig other whose biz was housed on a few acres of land by the sea. Mr. R. was a mutt, but predominantly a Rhodesian Ridgeback. As such he did have a bit of the "lion hunter" in him that was bred into those dogs, but his responses to encounters with other creatures interestingly corollated with their relative strength and aggressive disposition. So, a teeny tiny baby illicited only a sweet response, but a big angry dog would provoke him to protect us, other creatures and himself. So all of a sudden on this private land, a heard of goats moved in without permission. Goats and dogs often have a tenuous relationship with one another. People who keep goats often don't like dogs because they threaten their livestock. Understandable. Of course, when one is squatting with one's goats, it is a bit cheeky to be insistant that all previous inhabitants of said land make way for the goats especially if one is not paying for rights to the land in question.
So the goat hearder showed up one day and said that he would kill the dog if it wasn't taken off the land. The sig other wasn't around when that happened. His assistant was confronted. The thing about Mr. R was that he had saved the goats on at least three occasions that we witnessed from being attacked by other dogs. When another dog strayed into the area, Mr. R. would judge the situation and protect the goats from intruders. His interactions with the goats when there were no threats was as sweet as pie. He would go and hang out with them like he was their guardian angel. So the assistant didn't really know the culture well enough to respond appropriately when confronted unfortunately. None of this is his fault or should be construed as such, but he didn't understand the importance of the threat that the goat hearder delivered. He didn't understand the importance of telling the goat hearder that if anything ever happened to the dog, it wouldn't matter who really did it the goat hearder would be on the hook. The culture was different from his. These are not the kinds of conversations we have in North American cities that often. He could not have known.
About two months later, I was at a luncheon (that I really didn't want to attend, but had to even though all I wanted to do that day was spend the day at the beach with my dog) when one of our friends received a call. I knew in my gut that it was bad news. I even knew it was my sig other. People whispered and I tried to ignore it thinking that it might go away if I did.
No one wanted to tell me that Mr. R. had died this incredibly violent death as a result of rat poison being spread all across our land. Rat poison as I found out is quite possibly the most cruel and inhumane way for any creature to die. It gives the victim have unbelievably horrible convulsions. Torturous convulsions. Gonzales, Bush and Rumsfeld would love it. It was one of the greatest heart-breaking moments of my life. I promise there have been many others, but this was so wrong because he was so completely defenseless.
Mr. Sig. Other curled up on the sofa for days in a state of depression. I could not. My response to death and injustice is to figure out how to stop it from happening again. So while Mr. Sig Other sort of moved in and out of consciencousness on the sofa with the TV baring I surfed the internet to understand what had happened. I read every study I could find even though I was on dial up at the time.
What I learned during that time motivated me to write a letter to the editors of the local papers because what the goat hearder had done had put all of our lives in jeopardy. I learned that small children who weighed the same or fewer than the 60 lbs. that Mr. R did could land up dead from waterborne exposure to the rat poison that the goat hearder scattered around the property. Rat poison is deadly for people too. It is a weight volume thing, but a toddler could have been killed by the amound of rat poision that killed Mr. R. If enough was dropped into a pond of water, a small child would not have to ingest it to end up dead. Becuse the culture in that place was not terribly sympathetic to dogs, I focused on the disgusting nature of the death process and how humans could be subjected to it in my LTE. But regardless of whether the culture was sympathetic to dogs or not, I felt it was important to warn people that this practice was endangering all of us.
I have all of the links to my research on another computer and I am frankly too tired to recreate, transfer, update that research tonight. Forgive me. If you can't take my word for it and accept that rat poison is deadly for people and animals, I am sorry. It has been a long day, but I felt the need to tell this story because if we have rat poision in our food chain we are in trouble.
So now today we find out that we may be importing wheat from China that is contaminated with rat poison. Frankly, when I read the headline on dKos this evening the wind was knocked out of me. Rat poison in any food regarless of who the consumers are is completely unacceptable. Can we please get back to the olden days when our food was properly regulated by our government?
One thing that I encourage everyone to do is to research poison control and response. Both for your family members and your pets. They may benefit from your study and preparedness one day. It turns out that we might have been able to at least give Mr. R. a much better shot at survival had we known about using hydrogen peroxide in the first few minutes.
He was the best. I have always thought that he was the kinda good guy whose appearance on earth might help the rest of us out. Hopefully, Mr. R. will inspire you to take the time to understand how to identify and respond to poison if you are ever unlucky enough to encounter it in your lifetime.
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