Beware of Sugar Free Gum

Last night was long and scary. When I went to bed last night, my dog followed me as usual, but was restless. I let him back out of the bedroom thinking that he needed to go out, and my husband who was up late working on a project would let him out. I dozed off and at some point the dog came back and was curled up on the bed when my husband came in and woke us up. He had found a chewed up box from Orbit gum under the dining room table. Now my dog gets into things once in awhile, but sugar free gum is dangerous. The sweetener Xilitol can cause their liver to shut down and they pass into fatal hypoglycemic shock. We know this because we had to have his stomach pumped once before for this very same thing.



Anyway, we discovered that the wrapper had come from my daughters backpack, so we had to wake her at one am to find out if there had been any gum in the pack. Thank goodness it had just been an empty box he took out of the open front pouch. He regularly inspects her pack because she carries lunch in it and he must have found it. Although she assured us there was no gum only cardboard, I simply couldn't get back to sleep with the thought that I might wake up with a dead dog asleep at the foot of the bed. Happily that didn't happen.



So if you have a dog or two, be extremely careful, xilitol is in gum, toothpaste, and chap stik type lip balms. All of which my dog is very attracted to, I swear he can tell when it is there as good as if he could read the label. Even small amounts can be fatal.



To bring this back to Art, it has me thinking that I should do more than a small sketch now and then about my dear doggie. My last pug didn't get onto a quilt until he was gone, I shouldn't let that happen to this one.