What Every Dog Owner Ought to Know About Xylitol Sweetener

My wife and I came home from grocery shopping about 4:30 p.m. As I walked in the front door, my very first thought was where's Archie? Archie, our dog, is a very lovable tan and white 3 year old, 10 pound Chihuahua-Terrier mix and he's always at the front door with a happy tail wag whenever we walk in. But this time no Archie. I looked over into the family room and there the little fella was, lying on his floor-bed, ears down and all the way back, eyes open but glazey. His breathing was shallow. I walk over to him, bend down to pet him, and Archie doesn't stir when I do and his tail doesn't wag at all.

What's the matter Arch? Your not feeling good? Archie just laid there. He made an occasional odd sound, like a cross between a whimper and a sigh. I'd never heard it before. He looked sick. Archie looked very sick. So then, being an optimist, I thought to myself, Archie will eat or at least try to eat anything that's edible. Raw broccoli and carrots, celery, olives - any type of what you'd call people food - he'll eat it. So I was saying to myself, someone left a whole bag of cookies or potato chips or pretzels out and Archie helped himself to the entire bag and now he's suffering the consequences. You can't blame the dog, he's just a dog, they're like perpetual two year old children. Now eating a whole bag of anything is not a good thing, but it's not the end of the world either. Archie would be feeling better in a few hours. But the thing was - we couldn't find anything that indicated that's what happened.

Then we walked upstairs. What we did find, on the bed in our bedroom, were two empty gum wrappers. Stride chewing gum wrappers. When we went upstairs, Archie who has always been a heart-stealer, sick or not, followed us up the stairs from the living room to our bedroom. Archie doesn't walk up stairs. He rockets up the brown carpeted wood stairs, screams around the hairpin corner and flys down the long narrow hallway leading to the bedroom like a bullet and catapults himself onto the bed. Tonight was painfully obvious something was very wrong. Tonight Archie walked. Actually he was almost trudging, very slowly behind me, falling behind as he tried to keep pace, staggering and swaying down the hallway on four feet.

My wife and I concluded, after we found the two small Stride chewing gum wrappers, that Archie had gotten the two small pieces and swallowed them. Now he was sick because he ate Stride gum.

We stayed home that evening watching a DVD movie on the TV in the bedroom with Archie, half-sleeping, listless, lying on his blanket in the corner of the room. We talked about the usual things that you'd talk about at a time like this. Who left the gum out, why did Archie seem so much sicker this time than before?- when he'd eaten a whole pack of Wrigley's Rain chewing gum some months earlier; and we talked a lot about how Archie was looking. We talked about that. About every 15 minutes, looking for any sign he was recovering.

At about 7:00 p.m. with no sign of improvement from Archie I said, "I think I should go on line and see what I can find out about this gum." So I ran a Google search from the laptop computer lying on our bed. The search was -my dog ate chewing gum-. That search led me to a number of websites all saying the same thing; If the gum has Xylitol in it as a sweetener it can kill your dog. Thoroughly alarmed, I kept reading and found out that, even worse, often there is nothing you can do about it.

We snatched the little cardboard Stride chewing gum box out of the waste basket and my heart sank as a read the ingredients to my wife. Sorbitol, Malitol, coloring agents, Xylitol. Archie had been poisoned by two little pieces of Stride chewing gum containing Xylitol. Wrigley's Rain chewing gum doesn't have any Xylitol in it but Stride did.

I frantically started looking around the web for information on what to do. Unfortunately, Xylitol's lethal effects on dogs are a relatively new discovery. All I could really find was story after story in the form of comments in pet forums and on pet related message boards about dogs being poisoned and many times dying because of Xyltol. One little piece of Stride chewing gum can and has, killed dogs weighing as much as 150 pounds. It's that toxic to them.

As I read the message boards I slowly realized how lucky we were that we were able to even determine that Archie had been Xylitol poisened. Maybe he had a chance. There were so many stories about dogs being poisoned by chewing gum or other substances containing Xylitol and people not realizing what had actually occurred. It was heartbreaking really. People would come home to find their dog unconscious and lying on the floor. All they could do was rush their dog to a vet. Even that's sometimes a near impossible task in itself if it's the weekend or after working hours. My wife and I each now know know both the location and the route to the nearest 24 hour animal clinic in our area.

If you suspect your dog has been poisoned by Xylitol and cannot get the dog to a vet, there is still hope. The ASPCA has a toll free hotline at (888)-426-4435 that you can call for a consultation. Although it may cost $60.00, the ASPCA's Poison Control Center is North America's premier animal poison control center. It may save your dogand they also have a website at www.aspca.org.

With further research that night I found out that Xylitol is a relatively new sweetener on the market. The ASPCA issued its first Xylitol warning in 2003 when there were 70 reported cases. Yet it was apparent from the many very recent message board stories that many vets and pet owners don't yet know yet about its toxic effect on dogs. Many people mentioned in their messages that their veterinarian had to call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in mid-procedure for treatment advice.

Xylitol causes dogs to secrete insulin and this drops their blood sugar level very rapidly which causes hypoglcemia. If it drops too low it can easily kill them. Aggressive treatment includes starting a dextrose IV to try to stabilize the blood sugar level and and also pumping the dogs stomach to remove as much of the poison as possible. Sometimes treatment works, often it isn't enough.

As I continued wading through web pages, I realized that Archie showed only moderate symptoms of Xylitol poisoning. He was listless, but he was awake, and at times he would even stand up. About 8:00 p.m. I saw something on a website message board that said induce vomiting with hydrogen peroxide for Xylitol poisoning. But how much hydrogen peroxide? It didn't say.

My wife gave Archie 1/2 teaspoon of hydrogen peroxide and then another one thirty minutes later. Nothing. Just as I was about to say "up the dose", I found a dossage formula on line. One tablespoon for every 50 pounds of dog, per half hour. Archie was only 10 pounds and we had already given him a whole tablespoon full in only an hour. So to make matters worse I had poisoned Archie myself with too much hydrogen peroxide.

I learned that Xylitol usage as a sweetener is on the rise and the number of reported Xylitol poisoning cases each year are increasing as well. Xylitol can be found in Fine & Dandy and other candies, Nature's Hollow Sugarless Jams, and chewing gums including IceBreakers brand Ice Cubes Gum from Hershey, Trident gum, Orbit Complete, Smint, Stride and many others. It's also found in baked goods and even toothpastes. It is well documented that Xylitol is actually good for humans from a dental standpoint in fighting tooth decay according to Wikipedia.com but not a lot is known about ho the poison exactly works on dogs. According to what I found on the internet, any given dog can be completely immune to Xylitol poisoning, yet In another dog, one piece will kill an adult 100 pound German Shepard.

Things got worse. Twenty minutes after the last dose of hydrogen peroxide, I learned that with Xylitol poisoning, it is only helpful to induce vomiting if it is done within two hours of the dog getting Xylitol in its system. After that it's harmful. The only good thing that was happening was that Archie was hanging in there. We decided to watch him closely and if he started to get any worse at all we would rush him to an emergency 24 hour animal clinic. We also had the ASPCA's telephone number by the nightstand. 1:00 a.m: Archie was still the same. Not better, not worse.

Archie did not make it to dog heaven that night. Little Archie, at 10 pounds, should have been quickly overwhelmed by the amount Xylitol he took in, but he wasn't. He fought it off. By first light of morning we were pretty sure that Archie had survived the rapid blood sugar level drop that kills so many dogs. But we were still very worried. Xylityol can also cause a dog's liver to completely stop functioning or damage it severely, killing the dog or damaging the dog's liver for life, shortening its lifespan. This malady can occur up to 72 hours after the time Xylitol enters a dog's system. So for 72 hours my wife watched Archie like a hawk. It was six full days before Archie was back to normal. On his next regular trip to the vet he'll have his liver checked to see if any damage was done.

I stayed on the internet most of that long night and through the early morning. I have learned so much about Xylitol poisoning in dogs that I want to pass on, so I will write another article describing the symptoms of Xylitol poisoning in dogs and how you can avoid the mistakes we almost made.