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Here's a great story for those kids (and older kids) who complain about having to take math classes. "When will I even need this?" etc.
I came downstairs this afternoon and saw that in my 5 minute absence my dog got into the garbage and tore up a used coffee filter, eating most of it, plus the used coffee grounds.
Okay panic mode....caffeine can be toxic, lethally toxic, to dogs.
But in my experience whenever I've called the Pet Poison Helpline, I paid $35 to have them look up the info and say "Well, he'll probably be okay, but maybe take him to the emergency center just to be safe." Gee thanks. Before loading him into the car and putting him though the trauma of going to the Vet ER, I decided, to calm down and figure out what kind of danger he was really in.
Looked online. Lethal dose of caffeine is 150mg per kg of body weight. Damned metric system!!! No search yielded the info with pounds. Okay, saw that there are about .454 kg in a pound. My 45 lb dog weighs about 20.5 kg. So his lethal dose would be 3,075 mg of caffeine (20.5 X 150)
The largest amount of coffee grounds he could have possibly eaten was under 2 tablespoons (that's all I had used, and some was still on the floor). How the heck do I know how much caffeine is in 2 tbsp of coffee grounds??? Agh!
Web searched some more...dog eyeing me curiously....
Lots of sites that say how much caffeine is in a cup of brewed coffee, but I know the grounds have much more....keep searching...
Okay, found that coffee grounds contain about 13.5 mg of caffeine per gram of grounds. Again, damned metric system!
Best I could find was a recipe site that had a conversion that said that 2 tbsp of a powder could be 29 grams at the heaviest.
So okay, 29 X 13.5 = 391.5 mg
So he ate, at the most, 391 mg of caffeine.
That's far below the 3,000 that would kill him. So know I know to just watch him and go to the vet ER only if he starts shaking, panting, vomitting, and looking agitated.
Saved $35 on the poison phone call and about $200 for the emergency exam.
Now that's why it's good to be able to do basic math!
It's a good story about self-diagnosing in general too. People can save a lot of money by looking up symptoms and seeing how serious (or not) they are.
You have to pay $35 to call poison control? Ours is free here.
Glad your pooch is okay! (My mom had a dog who ate the coffee grounds out of the garbage can on more than one occasion... she was a big 80-lb horse of a dog, though, and I'm sure that it did not affect her in the least.)
ASPCA national poison control hotline costs $35. Do you have a free animal poison control number? I'd love to have it. I'll pay long distance charges over paying $35 any day of the week.
Human poison control is of course free. Thank goodness! I'd have to start an emergency fund otherwise.
Glad he's okay Tracy! I don't know how you could have maintained your composure while researching all that! Kudos to you!
What I do to teach my kids to do this conversion is to give them measuring cups and spoons when cooking quite opposite to what the recipe calls for. If the recipe calls for pounds and ounces, I look for ingredients in metric and force them to convert. Same thing with giving meds to the dog when the dropper is in the metric system and dosage is in the English system.
ASPCA national poison control hotline costs $35. Do you have a free animal poison control number? I'd love to have it. I'll pay long distance charges over paying $35 any day of the week.
Human poison control is of course free. Thank goodness! I'd have to start an emergency fund otherwise.
Oh, I see... I didn't realize there was a separate pet poison control. I was referring to the human one, LOL. And I hear ya on needing an emergency fund... I've had to call at least two or three times for each child, and once for myself (that was embarrassing, lemme tell you...).
You can read about my own fiasco on my blog. I decided to take my blog URL off of this public forum, so DM me for the address.
As for the kids, I've called for a toddler drinking bubble solution (it's non-toxic), for a toddler eating toothpaste (not enough to do any harm), a preschooler taking a big bite out of a plant outside for no reason, and a kid sucking the glow-in-the-dark juice out of one of those neon necklaces they pass out on the fourth of July. Motherhood is a fun gig.
Last edited by TouchOfWhimsy; 02-16-2009 at 10:30 AM..
, and a kid sucking the glow-in-the-dark juice out of one of those neon necklaces they pass out on the fourth of July. Motherhood is a fun gig.
Haha! that was my very first call to poison control. Mine got a hold of one off of his dresser during nap time and gnawed the cap off. Apparently the liquid is very irritating, but not caustic or toxic.
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I decided to take my blog URL off of this public forum, so DM me for the address. 
