[LuvMySissy]

I was talking with one of my YT friends last night and telling her about Sissy's run in with a toad and realized this is important, so I should post.

For whatever reason we have lots of toads in our yard, particularly at dusk. I had taken Sissy outside to pee before bed. She has her usual path of sniffing she does before she goes into the grass. As she was sniffing, she obviously picked up a toad in her mouth that I did not see. Well, she starts spastically running around and suddenly stops in the middle of the driveway and opens her mouth and out comes a very large toad (Sissy has a TINY mouth). The toad hopped away, so she didn't bite any part of it off.

But she then starts foaming at the mouth and twitching her head and foamy spit is flying everywhere as she continues running aimlessly. I finally get ahold of her, take her in and wipe out her mouth with a wet paper towel. She stopped the twitching, but I was freaking out having remembered reading a post on YT about a pup simply licking a frog or toad and getting really sick.

Once I got her calmed down, I gave her to my hubby to hold and watch while I got out the phone book to call the ER vet. The woman who answered the phone (I'm assuming a tech) was not very nice. I explained that Sissy is a 4lb Yorkie and the foaming/twitching issue and that I thought toads were toxic. Her words were "not in Michigan" and "I don't see a problem". After I explained again about her size/foaming/twitching, she says "its $65 to walk in the door with an additional charge for everything we do". Well, I was a little more than ticked at her reaction and since Sissy was appearing okay, had taken a drink, I decided to wait till morning to take her to our regular vet. Sissy sleeps with us, so I kept her tucked into my chest. An hour later, she starts running around on the bed (which means outside, NOW and she never gets up in the middle of the night), so I take her outside and she starts with lots of diarrhea. When we come back inside, I gave her a some Pedialyte and we went back to bed. Well, it was a VERY long night as this was repeated very hour till 8:00am. Thankfully, she did not vomit during this ordeal.

So when I took her to the vet the next day, she got subcutaneous fluids, a Dextrose injection and some additional medication for the diarrhea. My vet explained that although the toad itself is not toxic, their defense mechanism is secretion that has toxins in it intended to make the attacker ill with vomiting and diarrhea. Had Sissy been a medium or large sized dog, this would probably not have fazed her at all. But being 4 lbs, the toxins she ingested caused the diarrhea. Our little babies can go down really fast from dehydration and that is why this is a big issue for them. (and a $135 vet bill)

So watch out for those toads!!!