Wild mushrooms and dogs in the fall

VCA describes mushrooms as growing best in warm, wet weather, in wooded areas, rocky ground, grassy parks and backyards, with spring and early fall the main seasons across most of the country. The ASPCA's professional resource on mushroom poisoning makes the same point from the dog's side: mushrooms appear suddenly, they are hard to identify, dogs reach them easily, and their toxicity runs from no big deal to deadly. A dog does not need a forest to find one. It needs a lawn the morning after rain.

On Cape Ann the early fall pattern is easy to see. The late-summer warmth hangs on, the September and October rains arrive, and caps appear in lawns, along mulched beds, in the grass at parks and in the leaf litter at Ravenswood and on Dogtown Common. Fall is also when the beaches reopen to dogs and the trail season peaks, so dogs are out more just as the mushrooms are up. VCA's advice is to patrol the yard regularly, because new ones spring up quickly.

The call comes first. Your vet or the nearest emergency hospital will want to know that you suspect mushrooms, when the dog ate them and roughly how much, and VCA stresses describing any signs and when they started. If you cannot reach a vet right away, ASPCA Animal Poison Control answers 24 hours a day, every day of the year, at (888) 426-4435, and a consultation fee may apply. When your own clinic is shut, the Woburn referral hospital takes emergencies through the night.

Then the sample. VCA's advice is to bring a specimen to the hospital wrapped in a damp paper towel rather than a plastic bag, which keeps it in better shape for identification, and to photograph the cap, the gills, the stem and the ground around it. Treatment comes before identification. Once the dog is stable, VCA says, a mycologist at a local college or the North American Mycological Association can put a name to the mushroom.

Plenty of mushroom cases start with a dog that ate something nobody saw. VCA's list of signs covers vomiting and diarrhea, weakness and dehydration, drooling, a wobbly gait, tremors, disorientation, agitation and seizures, and, with the liver toxins, a dog that becomes jaundiced, weak and lethargic. Jaundice shows as yellow in the gums and the whites of the eyes. If your dog shows any of these after time in a yard or on a trail in mushroom season, tell the vet where it has been.

Some situations skip the wait entirely. Seizures, collapse, repeated vomiting or a dog that cannot stand go to the nearest emergency hospital now, with a call ahead from the car. A dog that ate a mushroom hours ago and is still bright and hungry goes to the vet anyway, because the Amanita delay is exactly what makes those mushrooms so dangerous.