Wow, I received this information yesterday from the Dogster website. I was not aware of this danger, and wanted to pass it on to everyone else:
"Dogs have so much fun nosing about in the fallen leaves in autumn. But be watchful if those leaves are from an oak tree. While acorns are part of a healthy diet for pigs, bears and deer, they can cause renal failure in dogs.
Similarly, drinking water in which fallen oak leaves have been soaking can cause renal failure as well. While gastrointestinal trouble is the early warning for dogs and oak tree products, the best practice is to get out and rake it all up if your dog starts to forage like a pig, bear or deer in fall."
We have lots of trees around our house, plus the squirrels are always bringing walnuts, etc. into the yard. I don't know that I have ever seen acorns, but now I know I will need to be even more careful about what the girls are getting into!
OMG!!! Thanks for posting this. They are everywhere here. Tucker LOVES acorns. He'll pick one up and carry it with him. I say leave it and he'll drop it. Sometimes he gets one that has a little nut showing and so he's eaten a little of it. So scary.
ReplyDeleteOne thing to keep in mind about acorns is the shape of them. You know how many of the acorns start growing the sprouts of a tree. If an acorn is standing upright in the digestive system, dogs can sometimes pass them. We had a dog who did this once. It was a hard night for her, but after having an IV to flush it out, she was fine.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if the acorn is turned or it has a sharp point from one of these sprouts, it can get lodged in your dog's digestive track. If this happens and you are unaware of it, this can be fatal. Unknown to us, this same dog ate another acorn a few years later which got caught in her intestine. Sadly, she had no real warning signs that she was sick until it was too late to save her. We did opt for an expensive surgery where 18 inches of her intestine were removed, but after the surgery, we learned she was already in kidney failure before the surgery and she had septis after surgery. Sadly, she did not survive this ordeal.
After this happened, we learned that it's fairly common for dogs to eat acorns and our vet usually performs a surgery like this a few times every autumn season.
We have 2 other dachshunds and a chihuahua. Our chihuahua doesn't really play outside because we have hawks and coyotes in the neighborhood. In the fall, our dachshunds try to eat acorns. Literally they are in the hundreds in our yard with all our trees, so we rake and pick up as many as we can. In the fall, our dogs do not go outside without us, and we try to stop them if we see them eating acorns. It's hard to get all of them, but if you can, I would try to stop my dog from eating as many as possible.