Dog poisoned by unknown substance

A Stittsville woman is shocked and upset after her dog was poisoned in her own backyard sometime Saturday night.

“She was lifeless,” Eleanor Elliott said about her puppy, Salsa.

“It was just horrifying. I was hysterical.”

Elliott said the three-and-a-half year old peekapoo started acting strange.

She took Salsa, who weighs eight pounds, to the Ottawa Veterinary Hospital at 3 a.m. Sunday.

“They did her blood, they did x-rays, they did everything. Her kidneys haven’t been damaged, hopefully,” she said.

Elliott said the veterinarians told her it wasn’t antifreeze.

But the vet confirmed a toxic substance has been absorbed into Salsa’s body.

That has the distraught owner — whose eyes are swollen from crying — wondering where the poison came from.

She said some neighbours in the new Jackson Trails housing development are having issues with rodents.

And that has her worrying twice as much because Elliott has another dog, Winnie, a peekapom, weighing 10 pounds.

Winnie keeps to herself, while Salsa is a hunter.

“She’ll root out anything that’s living,” she said.

Elliott recalls Salsa coming home with a mouse in her mouth a few months ago.

“I thought she’d killed it. But when I took it from her, there were no teeth marks, nothing, no blood. It was a dead mouse,” she said.

Elliott expressed concern about children in the neighbourhood finding dead rodents and being exposed to poison.

Her backyard has a chain-link fence which Elliott put up specifically so her dogs could roam free.

She said she doesn’t take the dogs out for walks because of knee issues.

“My concern is that whatever it is will happen again. I don’t know who’s doing it. I don’t know what it is,” said Elliott.

So far, she’s forked over about $1,500 for the vet bill.

“It’s a fortune on the weekend,” Elliott said. “I’m just grateful that she’s still alive.”

Govindh Jayaraman can relate.

His five-year-old chocolate Labrador, Teddy, swallowed rat poison along a National Capital Commission trail last September.

Jayaraman said Teddy spent three days at the veterinarian’s office.

“Thankfully, it took about a month for him to get back to normal,” he said.

“They rarely survive.”

Teddy ingested the toxic substance at the Green’s Creek Conservation Area.

Jayaraman said he’s sad to hear about Salsa.

“The thing that’s completely mind-numbing is, what happens if a little child picks it up?”

kelly.roche@sunmedia.ca