I wasn’t sure where to put this since it’s not related to Johnson’s wrestling or acting career. Mods, feel free to move this if it fits in another forum.
Dwayne Johnson’s French bulldog, Brutus, who the Rock rescued from drowning in the pool earlier this month, had to be put down this week after eating a poisonous mushroom in the back yard.
I feel sorry for the little fella. I was just watching a video of the Rock trying to get his dogs used to the leash and it was so cute the way the pups just flopped onto their bellies and lay there on the grass. You can anticipate hazards around the house such as electrical cords and chocolate and keep those things away from your pets, but you can’t always protect them from nature and their own curiosity.
I had a dog eat a bad mushroom (found the half eaten mushroom) and her head and ears puffed up a lot. If I remember correctly, the vet told me there wasn’t much to do but let it pass which it did slowly over several hours.
Unfortunately I have witnessed many of these cases of dogs eating these mushrooms. There are many different types of mushrooms and some are more toxic than others but the Death Cap and Destroying Angel in the Amanita genus are the worst. If the name wasn’t enough to tell you how bad they are …
We often have these cases where they seem to improve and we have to send them off to their regular vet with the dire warning that they may yet experience liver and kidney failure.
I suspect domesticated animals may be more trusting. If a house pet had grown used to human food*, maybe mushrooms would be more appetizing to that animal than to a pet whose whole diet was kibble or yard prey.
Also, there’s a bit of confirmation bias here: if a wild animal ate toxic mushrooms and died, who would know? Unless there’d been a plague-like influx of deadly but attractive mushrooms decimating whole local ecosystems, no one… the occasional isolated mysteriously-dead feral dog would be completely unnoticed.
*Not to say that Dwayne Johnson feeds his dogs table scraps, but it’s possible in a generic sense.
On the flip side that sure would prevent him from sinking to the bottom of any pool.
The first think I did when we got a pup was go over the list of poisonous plants and cull them from the yard. #1 danger here in the south… Sago Palms, especially the seeds.
I think my dog has pica or something. He’ll go out and eat what appear to be rocks. He’s done it for years, so I think he’s fine. He also likes grass, but that’s not uncommon.