Plant Clinic Question of the Week:
Did these mushrooms poison my dog?
written by Jill B.
A client came into Plant Clinic on Monday with two different kinds of mushrooms that she found in her yard. She is suspecting that these mushrooms might have made her dog (Harley) sick. He almost died two different times, about a year apart. Luckily, Harley is ok now, but the client wants to know if either of the two mushrooms are indeed the culprits.
We called the Olympic Peninsula Mycological Society (OPMS) to see if they can help her identify the two mushrooms. The president of the club gave us the name of someone here in Port Townsend to help her with identification. We’ll post the results on the blog once we hear.
For future reference, the OPMS has volunteers in different parts of the peninsula, so feel free to give clients the web site (http://www.olymushrooms.org/) or phone number (360-670-3798) and have clients can call OPMS directly to get a name closest to their location.
Interesting because I had a friend that I hiked with in New Mexico. She had to muzzle her dog on hikes. The dog was wild for mushrooms and would sniff them out. He would eat any and spent his time nose to ground seeking. Eventually the vet discovered that the dog was very allergic to ’shrooms. This was after many big vet bills, close calls with death plus trauma for both the dog and the owner. M. Parsley