Vets warn pet owners of potential danger lurking in backyards following recent rain

After all the rain we’ve had you’ve probably noticed a boom in backyard mushrooms, but a warning from vets: these, can actually be toxic to your pet who doesn’t know any better.

“Remove them before your dog removes them,” said Dr. Mandrusiak, a Veterinarian at Harvest Pointe Animal Hospital.

Dr. Mandrusiak has seen cases of mushroom toxicity in dogs before. In one case it resulted in death.

“The thing about mushroom toxicity, is there are hundreds of different types of mushrooms and they can all have different varying effects on different animals. We have mushrooms that can affect the liver, some can affect the kidney.”

While he hasn’t seen any recent cases of mushroom toxicity in dogs, other vet clinics in Edmonton have told CityNews they’ve seen a handful already this year.

“They are everywhere, all around the dog park, all over my yard, growing on trees,” said one Edmontonian CityNews spoke to.

Another saying, “In the dog park here there are all kinds of mushrooms here in the trees, its just a part of the weather and the season.”

In Alberta alone there are more than nineteen hundred species of fungi.

In 2020, 1,920 species of fungi were reported in Alberta. He says they release new data every 5 years.

“It’s not like these mushrooms weren’t there before, they were in your soil before, just sort of as microscopic filaments in your soil, or in a piece of wood, or whatever they are growing in. And its only know when certain environmental variables, particularly having lots of moisture, then they can put the energy into making a fruiting body, making a mushroom that can help them spread their spores and help them reproduce,” said Michael Schulz, instructor of natural resources at Portage College & Vice-President of Alberta Mycological Society.

“While there are certainly some toxic mushrooms, and there are some deadly toxic mushrooms.”

This Mycologist says identifying them can even be difficult for the experts.

“Certainly you shouldn’t be eating any mushrooms that you have not been able to absolutely identify with absolute certainty. And having that level of expertise of knowing what to look for takes a bit of training, it’s not necessarily as intuitive as identifying say a bird, it’s a lot more complicated often with fungi,” said Schulz.

Common symptoms of mushroom toxicity include vomiting, diarrhea and lethargy. If you suspect your dog ate a mushroom, Dr. Mandrusiak recommends grabbing a sample, and don’t wait for symptoms to show. Even if you aren’t sure if it’s toxic or not.

“See veterinarian and we will do what we call decontaminate the animal, so induce vomiting, administer charcoal, that kind of stuff so that we can stop the uptake of oxen, and then we can deal with figuring out what mushroom it is and what it’s going to cause for clinical signs later,” explained Dr. Mandrusiak

He says the best way to prevent it from happening at all is to make sure there aren’t any fungi in your yard at all, especially if your pet is the type to get into anything it finds.