Dogs and the Danger of Oleander Poisoning

Some plants can be a real danger to pets if they are consumed, sometimes a single leaf can even be deadly, so it is important to know the plants that are poisonous to dogs.

In this article I am referring to one specific plant, the 'Oleander'.

Oleander, the wonderful shrub that stays Green all year round, it blooms such beautiful blooms in a range of gorgeous colours such as a pure White, a delicate Peach tone, a lemon Yellow colour and finally the marvelous shades of Pink.

Our dog had a lucky escape last month after consuming an Oleander leaf, he never nibbles leafs and is a fussy eater, so we never thought such a problem would exist with him.
Our Oleander shrub was dropping leaves due to a minor disease, so we were regularly sweeping up the leaves.

One night our boy was outside with us and I turned to see him chewing something, something so small that we couldn't see what it was, we forgot all about it until the next morning.
The next morning on the walk he had severe diarrhea and there was no explanation for it, we remembered back to the following evening and suddenly thought maybe he had actually been chewing an Oleander leaf that had dropped off.

When we got home his heart was racing and he seemed restless, he stood by the front door as he needed to go to the toilet again.
We went to the vets, the vet said activated charcoal (which is normally used for this problem) couldn't be used as it was too late, the poison was already in his blood stream, so he had several doses of laxatives to get all the poison out from his body and we spent many hours walking around giving him the chance to go to the toilet.

Once back home that evening he was tired and weak, the vet gave us a hydration sachet for him, which we gave to him, this was to replace the lost body salts and to make him feel stronger.

The next day we saw a bigger improvement in him, so was very happy, it was such a worrying time for us, especially as we had researched and found out that Oleander is one of the most poisonous plants for dogs.
Our boy was lucky because he only consumed one small leaf and he weighs over 30kg so he was strong enough to fight back but if he was a smaller dog it might have been a very different outcome.