Peroxide Could Save Your Dog's Life

Please understand that the dogs in this story are not my dogs and the owner of the dogs takes good care of the dogs and these were isolated and unusual occurrences so don't flood my comment box and email trying to tell me how irresponsible the owner was in this story.

I learned something yesterday that could be handy to know if you're a dog owner.

There are some, and I stress some, instances when 3% hydrogen peroxide can be used on your dog to induce vomiting if they have swallowed a harmful substance such as rat poison.

Now, please understand that vomiting is not always the best option when some substances have been swallowed. I'm not going to go into which ones are or aren't because I'm not a veterinarian. Just beware that if you have a pet, you really should determine what you should do for your pet in these types of emergencies. Once you're in the emergency, you don't have time to do the research. The time to research it is now, before it happens.

I witnessed such an instance yesterday.

The dog had gotten into a house that had no pets and found some poison blocks put out for killing mice. Before she could be captured she had begun to munch on the block. We were able to retrieve most of the block from the dog's mouth, but were unable to determine how much it had ingested and since I had never had any experience with it, I didn't know what the owner's options were. To me, a trip to the vet was inevitable. However, the owner of the dog had experienced this same thing with another dog before. They had called their vet and were told to use household 3% hydrogen peroxide, so they knew this would work. I am happy to report that it worked well on this dog as well.

The purpose of this hub is to stress the importance of knowing what your options are in a pet medical emergency before it happens. If you have a pet, start researching now what peroxide will help and what it won't. If something should happen, time is important. Make sure you also have your veterinarian's phone number handy as well. You won't have time to look it up later.