The guidance is simplistic. If you spot an item of potential concern, research it further.
One plant I've researched for my puppy is Morning Glory. First, one needs to clarify leaves? flowers? seeds? And there are many varieties of vine called "Morning Glory", both annual and perennial.
Those of us of a certain age learned in high school to recite the specific varieties of annual morning glories whose seeds contained lysergic acid amide, offering the shortest path to synthesizing lysergic acid diethylamide, aka LSD. I recall Heavenly Blue and Pearly Gates. Other varieties are of less interest.
(I was banned from my high school chem lab, but not for LSD. A friend's brother researched short-acting hallucinogens too obscure to make illegal, and picked a relatively safe synthesis for us. He forgot to mention it would coat the lab in a white precipitate.)
That would be the morning glory described in the sketchy entry here. Yes, err on the side of caution, if convenient. If one has spent twenty years cultivating a shade wall of perennial morning glory, and the puppy chews the occasional leaf without swallowing, there's no cause to rip it all out.
What was the precipitate? In high school chemistry, one is the labs involved ammonia and fairly concentrated HCl at the same time. The teacher carefully protected or removed every item he cared about in the entire room first.
Fortunately, NH4Cl is not especially dangerous, although I can’t imagine that inhaling it is a great idea.
I think the important question here is “what’s dangerous for my pet to eat”, regardless if it’s a plant, a plant-based product, or any other thing.
Adding stuff like plain old “sugar” would be useful.
Also, aren’t grapes bad for dogs? By searching “grape” there are many results that, without something like a photo or a link to Wikipedia, makes it hard to know if that’s the thing I’m looking for. I don’t know the botanical family of a grape.
Yeah, it's the tartaric acid and cream of tartar (which can be used to make homemade playdough) that is toxic to dogs, grape juice won't harm a dog but whole grapes will cause kidney damage. Tamarinds apparently also high in tartaric acid. Article on it: https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/258/7/javm...
If I may make a comment about the search experience on the website...
I searched for "onion" because I knew it was toxic to cats and dogs. I had to scroll down to find it. IMO, if there is an exact match, it should bypass the sort order and be promoted straight to the top.
Otherwise, pretty cool! I think it will be very useful.
The search algorithm does seem to be a bit wonky. Searching for "aloe", for example, returns about 20 results most of which don't seem to have any relation at all to aloe, e.g. calamondin orange or rock moss.
This is great. But I don't understand the result you get for things like 'peanut'. I'm assuming it means peanuts aren't regarded as toxic to dogs, cats and horses, but the result under the input section seems so random.
As someone with a dog who has been to the ER many times for accidental ingestion, I appreciate this. That said, one thing I have learned is toxicity is very much a sliding scale. Some plants are toxic in the sense that they will make your pet mild/moderately sick. Others are life threatening.
It’s probably not information you could easily add. But having access to information that differentiates between toxic meaning diarrhea vs toxic meaning likely fatal would be incredible useful to dog owners. Of course this is also likely dose/body weight relative as well.
Similarly, there is also a lot of misinformation out in social media and random blogs about toxicity. There are many common houseplants that your pet probably shouldn’t eat, but only a few are actually alarming if they do. We’ve learned just because you can find something at the top of Google doesn’t make it true, and for some reason plant toxicity is really subject to a lot of misinformation.
all information is from the ASPCA's website. as i'm not an animal healthcare professional, i'm refraining from adding any additional information myself.
that said, the "Clinical signs" section of each item might give u a little more information about how toxic the plant is
A number of years ago my dad's dog got really sick and died after eating a rutabaga.
The vet told us it was toxic to dogs, but it seems to not be listed in this and in my googling just now after not seeing it, I find that it's generally regarded "a safe healthy treat for dogs"...
I'm curious if the Internet is wrong or if maybe the vet was wrong and my dad's dog may have just had some sort of allergy
Remember that toxicity is relative. You can (and do) eat arsenic and cyanide in your everyday life. You will only die if you eat n amount of it.
Lots of plants are apparently toxic for dogs. Garlic, onions, etc. But whereas your poodle might die from one bite, my fat seal of a husky would have to eat an entire clove, or a bag of them. I freaked out when she ate a chocolate bar but she was fine...no incident at all.
This is a valuable thing to point out. Garlic is toxic to dogs, but a lot of dog treats have garlic and it's not hurting them. In large amounts, it is toxic. But it is stinky even in small amounts, and that's what dogs love about garlic.
This is something that works remarkably well with GPT-4V. Take a picture of plants, flowers, foods, and ask if anything in this photo is toxic to dogs. I tested it on a bouquet of flowers and 100% correctly identified each flower and it's potential toxicity. Results may vary, please verify before feeding anything to your good boi.
This is somewhat misleading and inaccurate. I searched for apples and it tells me it's toxic to all animals. Apple _seeds_ are toxic, but apples are a healthy treat for dogs.
A single search yields a lot more useful and detailed explanations of both the risk and acceptable parts of an apple than this interface.
It's actually not apple seeds by themselves. Apple seeds will pass through the digestive tract intact. However, the seeds contain amygdalin inside them, which will react into cyanide in the stomach. So what's toxic is chewing and then swallowing apple seeds. Peach seeds also contain amygdalin, although you're much less likely to try to eat one of those.
Also, a note at the top along the lines: "cats are obligate carnivores. They can't eat plants." would be a good notice. Basically, if your cat is eating a plant, it's going to be sick (or is eating them because they are sick).
The normal reasons for a cat to be ingest plant matter are:
- because you mixed it with something they do eat. For example, onions in gravy. Onions are very toxic to cats but they are unlikely to eat a raw one. A nice beef or chicken gravy however, is much more palatable.
- because extracts are dissolved in a liquid, and the cat gets that on their fur, which they then lick. Example: Aloe Vera scent spray.
I guess you've never seen a cat that eats grass or catnip?
> Onions are very toxic to cats but they are unlikely to eat a raw one.
Just so anyone reading this knows: Cooking onions does not reduce toxicity for cats. (As dangerous if not more depending on concentration, think onion sauce reductions)
I thought throwing up was sort of normal for cats. That's how they get excess fur out of their stomach if they ingest too much while licking themselves.
i was surprised by that too! but if i'm not wrong it's relatively okay in small doses, but large amounts can cause mild discomfort like vomiting and stuff
One plant I've researched for my puppy is Morning Glory. First, one needs to clarify leaves? flowers? seeds? And there are many varieties of vine called "Morning Glory", both annual and perennial.
Those of us of a certain age learned in high school to recite the specific varieties of annual morning glories whose seeds contained lysergic acid amide, offering the shortest path to synthesizing lysergic acid diethylamide, aka LSD. I recall Heavenly Blue and Pearly Gates. Other varieties are of less interest.
(I was banned from my high school chem lab, but not for LSD. A friend's brother researched short-acting hallucinogens too obscure to make illegal, and picked a relatively safe synthesis for us. He forgot to mention it would coat the lab in a white precipitate.)
That would be the morning glory described in the sketchy entry here. Yes, err on the side of caution, if convenient. If one has spent twenty years cultivating a shade wall of perennial morning glory, and the puppy chews the occasional leaf without swallowing, there's no cause to rip it all out.