Sydney vet hospital confirms ‘deliberate’ dog poisoning attempt in Annandale backyard

A dog in Sydney’s inner west was presented to a veterinary hospital, which has described the alarming incident on social media.

A vet has described the most common ways dogs are deliberately poisoned.

An inner west veterinary hospital has revealed a dog was the victim of deliberate poisoning in the form of laced mince meat.

Balmain Veterinary Hospital posted to its Facebook page of an incident that reportedly occurred on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately we can confirm that one of our patients presented to us this morning after being deliberately poisoned,” the vet hospital wrote in its Facebook post.

“This mince laced with a poison product was found in a backyard in Annandale. Clearly, it is a malicious act and the owners of the dog will follow this up with the police.”

The vet said the dog was being monitored but confirmed no other dogs had presented to the hospital with poisoning.

“There is no evidence to suggest that the baiting is more widespread than this at this stage,” the post read.

“Thankfully, the patient appears to be well and did not eat much of the product, and the owners got them in very quickly.

“We will keep a close on the patient over the next 24-72 hours to make sure they are okay.”

The vet warned pet owners to look out for poisoning symptoms in dogs while detailing the most common forms of poisoning.

“The most common baits used to poison dogs and cats tend to be rat poison and snail bait.

“Rat poison tends to make your pet bleed out internally. In these cases we tend to measure your animal‘s clotting times 72 hours after presenting to us after ingesting the product.

“If they have not eaten a toxic dose, their clotting factors will be normal and no further treatment will be required.

“If there is an abnormality with the clotting factors we start treatment with vitamin K which is an antidote for the most common types of rat bait.

“Snail bait has no antidote and if an animal eats enough of it, it is lethal. For these cases we decontaminate their digestive system and put them on supportive care and hope they survive.”