Homemade Playdough Poisoning in a Dog: Daisy’s Trip to Veterinary Emergency

If you make your kids’ modelling mixture at home, it is perfectly safe, isn’t it?

After all, everything you put in there is edible, right? Right. But not everything that humans can eat is safe for dogs. Let’s take a look at an example homemade playdough recipe. The ingredients include:

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup salt
  • 4 teaspoons cream of tartar (potassium bitartrate)
  • 2 cups lukewarm water
  • 2 tbsps vegetable oil (coconut oil works too)
  • food coloring (optional)

Source: i heart naptime

Do you see the problem? If you don’t, please brush up on salt poisoning in dogs.

Homemade Playdough Poisoning in a Dog: Daisy's Trip to Veterinary Emergency

Salt poisoning in dogs

The means by which excess salt can hurt your dog is severe dehydration. All that salt pulls water directly from the tissues. The most damaging effect is on the brain, and it can result in seizures and come. The load on your dog’s heart also increases, which can be especially dangerous for dogs with pre-existing heart problems.

Symptoms of salt poisoning progress over time and include:

  • vomiting
  • diarrhea
  • loss of appetite
  • lethargy
  • incoordination
  • excessive thirst and urination
  • fluid retention
  • tremors
  • seizures
  • coma

Daisy’s story

Daisy was a 7-year-old Beagle—curious and full of energy. Daisy also loves food. When her human housemate brought home some homemade playdough from school, Daisy sniffed it out right away. Daisy found it on a dressing table and quickly gobbled down the whole lot. When her human housemate returned to the room, all he found were pieces of the plastic bag the playdough came in.

Daisy seemed fine, and nobody was overly concerned about her eating it since it was made of edible ingredients.

Daisy isn’t well

Twenty minutes later, Daisy started feeling unwell. She became extremely thirsty, emptying her entire water bowl and looking for more, and she began to lick the walls and floor.

That prompted Daisy’s mom to look up what happens when a dog eats homemade playdough. To her shock, she learned that it is a serious emergency. She rushed Daisy to the emergency hospital at once.

At the emergency hospital

The veterinarian immediately gave Daisy medication to make her throw up any modeling mixture that might still have been in her stomach. They put Daisy on IV fluids while rechecking the sodium levels in her blood.

At this point, Daisy was very sick; throwing up and feeling miserable.

With aggressive treatment, Daisy made it past the critical stage, but it took two days to stop feeling ill. As soon as she got over the ordeal, she went to check her human housemate’s dressing table to see if she could find any more of that yummy stuff. She had no idea it was what made her so ill. Keep homemade playdough away from your do.

Source article:
Daisy the 7-year-old Beagle Became very Unwell

Related articles:
Dog Symptoms: When Is It an Emergency?

Further reading:
Homemade Playdough – salty and dangerous for pets
Play Dough (Homemade)

Categories: Conditions • Dog health advocacy • Poisoning • Real-life Stories • Salt poisoning

Tags: : • •

Jana Rade

I am a graphic designer, dog health advocate, writer, and author. Jasmine, the Rottweiler of my life, was the largest female from her litter. We thought we were getting a healthy dog. Getting a puppy from a backyard breeder was our first mistake. Countless veterinary visits without a diagnosis or useful treatment later, I realized that I had to take Jasmine's health care in my own hands. I learned the hard way that merely seeing a vet is not always enough. There is more to finding a good vet than finding the closest clinic down the street. And, sadly, there is more to advocating for your dog's health than visiting a veterinarian. It should be enough, but it often is not. With Jasmine, it took five years to get a diagnosis. Unfortunately, other problems had snowballed for that in the meantime. Jasmine's health challenges became a crash course in understanding dog health issues and how to go about getting a proper diagnosis and treatment. I had to learn, and I had to learn fast. Helping others through my challenges and experience has become my mission and Jasmine's legacy. I now try to help people how to recognize and understand signs of illness in their dogs, how to work with their veterinarian, and when to seek a second opinion. My goal is to save others the steep curve of having to learn things the hard way as I did. That is the mission behind my blog and behind my writing. That is why I wrote Symptoms to Watch for in Your Dog, which has turned out being an award-winning guide to dog owners. What I'm trying to share encompasses 20 years of experience.

Share your thoughts