This is forwarded with permission by the
writer. Hopefully her telling this story will
help prevent this near tragedy from happening
again.



Hi all,

Yesterday, just after lunch, I decided that tick season was upon us. So, I took the Preventick collars out and put them on the dogs.

Around 4 PM, I noticed that Pickels was behaving oddly. She was acting kind of 'stoned'. I don't know what made me even look at her neck, but I did, and realized that her Preventick collar was gone. Freddy and I, quickly started searching for the collar. Fortunately, we found it in the room she had been in for a couple of hours, so we knew she was the only one of the dogs who would have had access to the collar. I looked at the collar and realized it had broken off...how this happened, I have no idea. I also saw that she had chewed the end of the collar that goes through the connector and out the other side. Fortunately, she had only chewed a small piece. It must have tasted bad. The vet said if she had chewed more, it would have killed her. She only weighs 14 pounds.

I looked on the box the collar came in and called the hot line listed on the box. They told me that I needed to get her to a vet asap. This particular poison causes the blood pressure to go down and the heart to slow. I called every local vet I could find, and either I got a message telling me that it would cost $125 dollars if you have an emergency, just to see the vet...didn't think that vet would care about my dog, or a message telling me to leave my number and if the vet didn't call back in 15 minutes, to call another vet. Also, I actually spoke with a vet who wouldn't help me because I wasn't a client. I asked him, "...so it's Ok for my dog to die?" to which he replied, "I'm sorry!" I finally called my vet, because they are an hour and half away from us, and told them I was on my way to the clinic. Of course, by now, the clinic regular hours were over, but they told me someone would meet us at the clinic.

Got to the clinic at 7:30 PM. Pickels was so lethargic by now, I kept forcing her awake. Her heart rate was really low, by now.The vet gave her the antidote(yes, there is an antidote), and filled her full of liquid charcoal. In about 5 minutes the antidote caused her to get so hyper that we almost had to restrain her. The vet had me walk her around for about a half hour as she said it would help the side affect of the antidote. It took about an hour until Pickels calmed down again. By now, the trick was to not let her go into a deep sleep, so all the way home and all through the night, I had to keep waking her up to make sure she didn't sleep to deeply.

I finally got to sleep about 5 AM, cause Freddy got up. I got about 3 hours sleep, and boy do I feel hung over...but Pickels is good as new.

I don't think I'll be using that collar again. I'm switching to Frontline.

Bobbi