Dog Training: Your Dog’s Best Defense Against Poisonous Plants

Dog obedience training is essential if you want to train your dog to keep his mouth away from what doesn’t belong to him. It’s even more important if you want to protect him from the things that can hurt him the most. A top dog trainer recognizes the many dangers that face your dog, including toxic plants, and recommends dog training tips and dog training techniques for the safety of your best friend.

Training your dog has probably taught you that your pet uses her nose to explore. And secondary to her nose is her mouth. If she’s left to her own devices, many things will end up in her mouth, and many of them aren’t good for her.

This behavior can be destructive to your home and landscape, but it can also be destructive to your dog. Plants can recover from a good ravaging, but the real destruction comes in the form of toxicity to your dog’s system, which can result in terrible sickness, or even death.

Beware of these plants, on behalf of your dog:

Ham ‘n Eggs, Lantana, or Yellow Sage; whatever you call it, its pretty yellow, orange, red, blue, and white blooms cause ulcerations, weakness, constipation, loss of appetite, and sensitivity to sunlight.

Dumbcane, or Dieffenbachia, is not a smart snack idea. It’s big, variegated leaves are composed of sharp cells that cause burning sensations, excessive drooling, edema, erythema, and irritation and swelling of oral tissues.

Philodendron is a common household vine with heart shaped leaves that causes extreme drooling, swallowing difficulty, vomiting, and oral cavity irritation.

Caladium: This plant’s leaves are heart shaped and display varying patterns of pink, white, and green. Ingestion can result in oral irritation, excessive drooling, difficulty swallowing, and vomiting.

Elephant Ears: Sounds yummy, but its nature dictates otherwise. This plant is a larger version of the Caladium described above, with similar ingestion symptoms.

Ivy doesn’t have to be Poison Ivy to be poisonous to dogs. Its leaves are culprits for excessive salivation, diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain.

The Prayer Bean, or Rosary Pea, is recognizable by its red berries, which are frequently used to craft rosaries. That’s a nice image, but the fever, diarrhea, bloody vomiting, tremors, high heart rate, and death that can result from ingestion of the berries aren’t.

Mistletoe is best left hanging high overhead, from doorways at Christmastime. This plant’s shiny green leaves and white berries hold the potential to cause suppressed blood pressure, diarrhea, vomiting, erratic behavior, bradycardia, dyspnea, cardiovascular collapse, and gastric disorders.

Castor Bean: This plant bears large, green leaves with seven or eight points, and prickly blue beans. A mere ounce of seeds, which contain ricin, can cause oral irritation, increased thirst, vomiting, diarrhea, kidney failure, convulsions, loss of appetite, weakness, trembling, difficulty breathing, coordination loss, central nervous system depression, fever, blood in stool, coma, and death.

Peace Lily is not peaceful once consumed. Its large white lilies and sizeable green, drooping leaves contain calcium oxalate crystals, which trigger swallowing difficulties, excessive drooling, and oral irritation.

Schefflera: Also known as the Umbrella Tree, this plant has woody stems and sectioned, multi leafed bunches of glossy green foliage. If ingested, it can cause oral irritation, excessive drooling, vomiting, and difficulty swallowing.

Chrysanthemum: This common plant, affectionately known as the Mum, and characterized by multicolored fall blooms, can elicit gastrointestinal upset, drooling, vomiting, diarrhea, depression, and loss of coordination.

As extensive as this list may seem, the inventory of plants that are poisonous to dogs doesn’t stop there. Iris, Daffodil, Poinsettia, Aster, Fox Glove, Delphinium, Hyacinth, Jack in the Pulpit, Lily of the Valley, Sago Palm, Narcissus, Tulip, Rhododendron, Azalea, Marijuana, Oleander, Cyclamen, Kalanchoe, Amaryllis, Yew, and Autumn Crocus are also notable villains.

Firstly, put houseplants out of your dog’s reach. Then supervise her when she’s outside. The dog training techniques included in practices like clicker training and crate training will assist you in training your dog to “leave” plants alone. Training a dog can greatly contribute to her safety, especially when positive dog training tips teach her to make the good decisions that you expect: the ones that will keep her mouth off of poisonous plants.

Learn more about dog obedience training. Stop by Dr. Nortey Omaboe’s site where you can find out all about dog training and what it can do for you and your dog.

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