09/11/2025
Fall is in the and Mushrooms are popping up in the lawns and forests. This is a reprint of an article I wrote about Mushroom poisoning.
Mushroom Poisoning in Dogs
I am posting this information in hopes of preventing another very scary afternoon. Gaby almost died on Wednesday. Thank heavens for a great vet clinic and quick action on both my and their part. Please check your yards and places you walk for mushrooms. Gaby is almost four months old and puts everything in her mouth. She has been housebroken for a while now and after we came back from an on leash walk she made a huge dumb in the house.
I put her out in the dog yard to clean it. Set my Spot Bot and went out to find her as usual chewing on something which turned out to be a piece of Styrofoam. But I noticed she was salivating a lot. I wiped her face and feet, she had been digging and brought her into the house. She immediately asked to go out. Peter took her out she had loose stool and once again began salivating a, drooling and her eyes began to tear.
Peter called me, I called the clinic it was 4:20PM. We got their by 4:30 by which time she was pretty much down. They induced vomiting, started an IV and she was leaking water and stool out her butt. She was in shock. She slowly started coming around, pinking up as we medical types say. Once she was no longer vomiting they gave her activated charcoal.
Well by 6pm she was up and wagging her tail just a little twitching. My friend Cheri who is a vet tech and watches my dogs came into the clinic during treatment. The staff, we are all friends, called her. Gaby went home with Cheri for the night. She still has her IV in and other than being exhausted is no longer vomiting or having diarrhea. So it looks like Gaby has used up one of her nine lives. I have printed an article below for everyone’s information.
The information below may help you save your dog's life! Jeanne Hampl
The following was written by Jo Ann Pavey of Whitegates Shelties in Ontario... "For those who don't know, we lost a 5 month old puppy to mushroom poisoning and have one family of dogs who will get into them on occasion. I keep a mushroom poisoning kit on hand at all times. There is more than one kind of poisonous mushroom. Some are very deadly. The deadliest ones don't do their damage immediately, but will completely destroy either the liver or the kidneys over a period of days.
"The toxin I have run into is "muscarine". Symptoms of muscarine poisoning is leaking of water from the eyes (like big tears), lots of drooling, and leaking of water from the a**s. P**p will be mixed in but it is not diarrhea, it is quite copious amounts of water coming out and the p**p just sort of comes with. If you see the tears, drooling and wet "pants"....this is what you are dealing with. Usually the dog will recover just fine. However, in one case we had that one puppy that died a very short time after ingestion. Why him and not the others, I don't know. Muscarine is present in Amanita Muscaria, which I'm pretty sure we don't have. However, mycologists have found that some LBM’s (literally - little brown mushrooms - so numerous in variety they are not classified beyond that) contain even more muscarine than Amanita Muscaria. This is what I've run into. Muscarine slows the breathing and the heart, etc.
"There is an antidote for muscarine toxin, which is atropine. It increases the heart rate. It works REALLY well, even if a dog seems very flat. I keep this in my kit, along with hydrogen peroxide (to make them vomit if I catch them at it), activated charcoal, ipecac, atropine and two types of syringes, one for sub q and one for going right through the chest into the heart. I've never had to give the atropine myself (I did take one to the vet for her to do it...he wasn't badly off) and obviously only would in a dire emergency. However, I'm pretty sure if I had had it, my puppy would still be here.
"NOTE that I learned all this after the fact and at the time did not know what they were getting into (I thought toads). ALSO my vet did NOT know about this antidote for this type of poison (most do not) so it's worth remembering. Anything else doesn't really help at all. "ALSO, if you think you don't have these mushrooms around, think again, they are extremely common and are everywhere. You probably just don't have dogs that bother with them, as some of mine don't. I have one "family" that every single one of them has done it at one time or another."
Jo Ann Pavey Whitegates Sheltie
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