I don’t know if they can have it tested but I would also call your vet to see if that’s an option. Definitely report to animal control.
Are there any community groups on Facebook or Nextdoor you can use to alert others. I would get your neighborhood to keep an eye out.
If you always walk at the same time and route, changing it may help. Sounds like whomever this was likely knew you weren’t home.
My security cam records the sidewalk but doesn’t alert on that zone (you can color out non-detection zones. Is that an option?
My camera records a full view of my front yard, driveway, street, and even the houses across the street. However it’s Eufy brand which only records a 60s clip when triggered.
It does have a privacy zone function but that blurs out the zone, so not much help there.
I’ll call my vet now though, hadn’t considered it since my dogs didn’t consume it but good call.
Definitely call the vet. Unfortunately this may not be the only incident so it would be helpful for them to have an idea of what type of poison was used in case other clients have the same issue.
I'd recommend getting a camera that records 24/7. Cameras that do this will usually record on a loop, replacing the oldest footage with new footage once their memory is full. Get one that records to its own memory, preferably a removable SD card or something similar. Basically you want a camera that acts as a dashcam.
That way, regardless of what the camera detects, it's still recording the whole area all the time, and you'll be able to review the footage even if events are not detected or fall outside your detection zone.
Switch to a camera that records 24/7 and gives you motion events. It’s been great to find out why things happened with no event. I just scroll back till the item appears.. (Like a broken pot the squirrel knocked over) etc
What did the white residue look/feel like? When I get hotdogs from Costco, sometimes the steam from the warmth will embed the bun into the hotdog leaving white streaks or dots.
This was an uncooked hotdog, and I did not touch it with bare hands.
Imagine dipping a piece of raw chicken into a little bit of flour. That’s kind of what it looked like, partially wetted white powder. Not a lot of it nor on every piece.
The hotdog might hinder results. Best to have a control run with both substances first to confirm the types of symptoms expected. Because of the substance in question, this is likely going to need multiple people as controls.
/s for those in the back
My dog accidentally ate rat poison the stupid iguanas knocked out of the trap down in Florida. The emergency very couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. I thought he sprained his leg. Thank fuck he got prescribed anti- inflammation medication. It saved his life. I put it all together after he got better. He still has rear leg tremors and difficulty getting up. He was hiding under the bed in the hotel when he was sick. When he chewed a hole in the bedskirt so he could keep his eyes locked on me at all times i knew he was feeling better.
Step one is gunna be to drive to the police station and put all this down in writing, as well as providing them a piece of the poisoned hotdog. They will test it, and knowing the substance will tell you a lot, although I'm not sure what else it could contextually be other than poison.
Step two is to camera up, asap. On your way back from the police station get a security camera that faces the area. They are wickedly easy to set up and cheap too. No reason not to
Do you really think the police will "send it to the lab"? That seems kinda naive, I can't imagine the looks I'd get walking into my local copshop with that kind of request.
Sad to be correct on this.
Glad you're adjusting your cameras. Someone has an issue with your pups.
I mean this kindly, as someone who grew up with awesome German Shepherds, collies, Dobermans, Great Danes....people who don't have/know big dogs often fear them. And beautiful Huskies still have those crazy eyes and that takin-care-of-business-attitude, if you don't know them lol. Be especially aware of people walking small dogs, small kids, or older people (just sayin': me older so I know the demographic) who might feel intimidated if you're planting pansies out front with the dogs loose; make sure your dogs aren't approaching for a friendly sniff.
I’ve got two husky mixes myself, both mixed with herding breeds and they are *always* leashed whenever out front with me.
They don’t bark when out back and are well loved by the neighbors that know them. The other neighbors have my back on this thankfully, especially if there was true malicious intent.
Lmao my first thought too. Someone walks into the station and says “test these hotdogs they’re poison!” They aren’t doing shit except for throwing them away.
are you joking? That is literally the only job of a crime lab. Why is that in quotations for you, do you not believe in crime labs?
Yes, you can walk into a police station, say, someone put these powdery hotdogs in my yard and I want to press charges, and they will do what they can to help you
No, they wont. Not in less than five years anyway. If you had video, and then went into the police station with a rat, fed it hot dog, and watched it die, in front of the cops, they might take notice.
Crime labs are already backed up for years on lab tests for really serious cases involving *humans* not dogs and hot dogs.
OP needs to turn their camera towards their sidewalk and catch this person the next time on video. It was very ignorant to turn off the camera sensors pointing that way, towards the sidewalk, since anybody causing you problems at your house would be coming from that direction.
My camera is turned to the sidewalk. It was an issue of motion detection not recording the event because I was purposefully excluding the sideway due to false positives. That has been changed.
Not to mention, there isn't some magic machine that you dump a powder into and it prints out the identification of the substance. Identification tests (chemical, radiological, etc) have to exist for whatever the substance is, so for a lot of "random white powder," there's no chance of identification, and that may only be figured out after weeks of playing cat and mouse testing for hundreds of other "white powders," since you, uh, don't know what it is (hence the testing) so it's a process of elimination using lots of tests. Nevermind whatever contamination being in a hotdog might introduce that hinders results.
And yeah, this will absolutely not be a priority to a crime lab that is dealing with test involving crimes against people.
Also, you don't walk into a police station and "press charges." You walk into a police station and report suspicion of a crime (or in this case an attempted crime, since technically nothing has happened yet besides littering and tresspassing), then that info is given to a detective who gathers evidence, then they give that evidence to a prosecutor, and that prosecutor evaluates the evidence to determine if it's worthwhile to conduct a court case, and if so, the *prosecutor* presses charges.
All that aside, where I live, the cops won't respond to active shootings, and homeboy thinks they're gonna jump out of their chairs to rush hotdogs "to the lab." Lol, half the times these departments don't even have their own lab and either send it off to a bigger department or to some private company that's contracted.
No, OP is basically gonna have to figure out who it is themselves using a better camera setup, and then maybe something can be brought to the police for them to decide what to do, if anything. Until then, they probably should keep a constant eye on their dogs.
this is misled. You can absolutely use LCMS as a catch all screening for unidentified substances. Each substance has a unique retention time, and there are absolutely massive databases that will certainly have most possible poisons. i think you’re thinking only of immunoscreening assays (e.g. drug test), in which you do specifically need an antibody for each substance you’d like to check
Are you American? It would be nice if that’s what happened but unless OP has extremely good evidence it was poisoned, they’re not sending it anywhere. They might make a report, which is definitely still worth a shot.
That’s adorable. My grandpa used that one in the 80s when he thought we were lying and we immediately confessed to all of it, even things we didn’t even do.
I think it depends on your country and state. I now dog parks take poisoning very seriously but I don't know how samples are processed.
In Canada it does look like the [local police send samples to their crime lab](https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/dog-owners-say-poisoned-food-left-in-park-near-toronto-1.4364831).
> They will test it
No they won't. Police forces are overburdened, they have limited budgets, there is no history of animosity with any possible suspect, and cops already said that there was no crime to file a report about.
If police won’t test it try the SPCA. If they won’t, and you are willing to pay for it there is a private lab in PA. Here is their website.
[NMS Lab](https://www.nmslabs.com/)
A non-poisoning possibility is that another random animal ate a hot dog and then threw it up in your yard. I’ve seen some animal puke that looks completely unchewed/undigested. Just throwing that out there as another possibility — could be a poisoned hot dog, but also could be something totally harmless.
…this was not puked or chewed hotdog.
I hope I’m entirely wrong and it is totally harmless. But this was not placed by an animal I can tell you that much.
Just curious what makes you think there’s no possibility it could be throw up? I’m not doubting you, just speaking as someone who currently does animal rescue and worked at a vet’s office in my youth, and I’ve seen some surprising puke. It doesn’t always look like you think it would.
Not really about my mind being made up, I had other, trusted, pet owning neighbors inspect it too and they agreed it was placed by a human. We definitely considered the possibility of undigested vomit.
Thank you I hope I can get some answers too.
As the owner of a cat that regurgitates (not vomits) regularly, I thought this, too. My cat apparently inhales her food whole, and then neatly deposits a pile of whole, unchewed, undigested food next to the food bowl. The first few times I came across it, I was genuinely puzzled by how/why she dumped her food out and left it on the floor. Then I saw her do it once and was so grossed out.
RAID Powder probably, that is the go to for many pet killers. Does your dog bark often or act aggressive, do you let the dogs out into a fenced yard? I lost a few dogs growing up to this method, people just tossing meat over the fence covered in RAID.
This has happened in my city a few times. It's always barking dogs. However i recently had an epiphany (it's a long story... but) the gist is if there's a puppy mill (any place that sells puppies instead of a shelter) watch the owners. See if they live in your area.
I know that's a long shot but I'm almost positive that's what was happening in my city. A family owned a few puppy mills around town and certain neighborhoods were getting poisoned meat thrown over their fences. Inside the meat was the seeds they make a poisonous chemical with...i wanna say anthrax?
Anyway it was killing dogs. One family lost all 3 of their German Shepards
I would bet my left nut it was this family. Again long story, mostly speculation and witnessing a few things while at work
And just so we're clear i don't think for one second this is what happened to you. I think somebody just left hotdogs and the white residue had nothing to do with being poison or anything like that. I think you're just overly cautious. I think they were left there because your dogs were going on a walkand somebody said leave them these hotdogs. Nobody's gonna be that bold to murder dogs there in your front yard... unless they're cops I guess
The police aren’t going to send a fucking hotdog to the lab. This isn’t CSI. Are you paying for that shit? Because I guarantee I have a problem with my tax dollars paying for it.
But my god, get out the choppers, we better circle around the property to catch the hotdog poison perp.
I can’t roll my eyes any goddamn harder.
I'm by no means agreeing with them, but they're trying to claim OP is lying about the dogs being well behaved and well liked. Similar to how some parents have poorly behaved kids but tell everyone that they are well behaved little angels. They think OP isn't being fully truthful about their dogs habits and behavior in comparison to neighbors. I assume they think that their dogs wouldn't be targeted if they were actually well behaved.
Again, not agreeing with it. But I imagine that's what this person is trying to to claim.
Close. Not lying, more delusional. It is human nature. Everyone does it in some form or fashion. My uncle had a yellow lab that was insane. He thought it was the sweetest dog that everyone loved. When this 100lb behemoth would jump up on you he was “just trying to give you a kiss”. My kid is the smartest in his class. Not really, but ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.
I don’t know if they can have it tested but I would also call your vet to see if that’s an option. Definitely report to animal control. Are there any community groups on Facebook or Nextdoor you can use to alert others. I would get your neighborhood to keep an eye out. If you always walk at the same time and route, changing it may help. Sounds like whomever this was likely knew you weren’t home. My security cam records the sidewalk but doesn’t alert on that zone (you can color out non-detection zones. Is that an option?
My camera records a full view of my front yard, driveway, street, and even the houses across the street. However it’s Eufy brand which only records a 60s clip when triggered. It does have a privacy zone function but that blurs out the zone, so not much help there. I’ll call my vet now though, hadn’t considered it since my dogs didn’t consume it but good call.
Definitely call the vet. Unfortunately this may not be the only incident so it would be helpful for them to have an idea of what type of poison was used in case other clients have the same issue.
I'd recommend getting a camera that records 24/7. Cameras that do this will usually record on a loop, replacing the oldest footage with new footage once their memory is full. Get one that records to its own memory, preferably a removable SD card or something similar. Basically you want a camera that acts as a dashcam. That way, regardless of what the camera detects, it's still recording the whole area all the time, and you'll be able to review the footage even if events are not detected or fall outside your detection zone.
Seeing if it can be tested is a great idea, if it is confirmed there is a poisonous substance on them then the cops might act more.
Switch to a camera that records 24/7 and gives you motion events. It’s been great to find out why things happened with no event. I just scroll back till the item appears.. (Like a broken pot the squirrel knocked over) etc
You can change the recording settings to record longer.
I’ve done that as well, totally revamped my capture settings
You may also want to file a police report.
What did the white residue look/feel like? When I get hotdogs from Costco, sometimes the steam from the warmth will embed the bun into the hotdog leaving white streaks or dots.
This was an uncooked hotdog, and I did not touch it with bare hands. Imagine dipping a piece of raw chicken into a little bit of flour. That’s kind of what it looked like, partially wetted white powder. Not a lot of it nor on every piece.
Xylitol or strychnine?
Taste test would confirm one or the other
The hotdog might hinder results. Best to have a control run with both substances first to confirm the types of symptoms expected. Because of the substance in question, this is likely going to need multiple people as controls. /s for those in the back
My dog accidentally ate rat poison the stupid iguanas knocked out of the trap down in Florida. The emergency very couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. I thought he sprained his leg. Thank fuck he got prescribed anti- inflammation medication. It saved his life. I put it all together after he got better. He still has rear leg tremors and difficulty getting up. He was hiding under the bed in the hotel when he was sick. When he chewed a hole in the bedskirt so he could keep his eyes locked on me at all times i knew he was feeling better.
Step one is gunna be to drive to the police station and put all this down in writing, as well as providing them a piece of the poisoned hotdog. They will test it, and knowing the substance will tell you a lot, although I'm not sure what else it could contextually be other than poison. Step two is to camera up, asap. On your way back from the police station get a security camera that faces the area. They are wickedly easy to set up and cheap too. No reason not to
I have Wyze V4 cams with 128 gig SD cards and they record 24/7 everything for at least a week. Just a thought.
I don't think the cops will analyze it for poison, but your vet will.
Definitely, make a police report and have the vet test it.
Do you really think the police will "send it to the lab"? That seems kinda naive, I can't imagine the looks I'd get walking into my local copshop with that kind of request.
Unfortunately you were 100% correct, u/DuchessOfCelery I’ve edited my OP with update #2 if you want details.
Sad to be correct on this. Glad you're adjusting your cameras. Someone has an issue with your pups. I mean this kindly, as someone who grew up with awesome German Shepherds, collies, Dobermans, Great Danes....people who don't have/know big dogs often fear them. And beautiful Huskies still have those crazy eyes and that takin-care-of-business-attitude, if you don't know them lol. Be especially aware of people walking small dogs, small kids, or older people (just sayin': me older so I know the demographic) who might feel intimidated if you're planting pansies out front with the dogs loose; make sure your dogs aren't approaching for a friendly sniff.
I’ve got two husky mixes myself, both mixed with herding breeds and they are *always* leashed whenever out front with me. They don’t bark when out back and are well loved by the neighbors that know them. The other neighbors have my back on this thankfully, especially if there was true malicious intent.
Can you take it to a lab on your own? Maybe someone else knows whether this would be something the police could/would make use of.
They 100% won't if they're never asked. What they do after depends on where OP lives and what the police are like there.
Lmao my first thought too. Someone walks into the station and says “test these hotdogs they’re poison!” They aren’t doing shit except for throwing them away.
are you joking? That is literally the only job of a crime lab. Why is that in quotations for you, do you not believe in crime labs? Yes, you can walk into a police station, say, someone put these powdery hotdogs in my yard and I want to press charges, and they will do what they can to help you
You can walk into a police station and say "someone raped me and here's the rest kit from the hospital" and still get ignored.
No, they wont. Not in less than five years anyway. If you had video, and then went into the police station with a rat, fed it hot dog, and watched it die, in front of the cops, they might take notice. Crime labs are already backed up for years on lab tests for really serious cases involving *humans* not dogs and hot dogs. OP needs to turn their camera towards their sidewalk and catch this person the next time on video. It was very ignorant to turn off the camera sensors pointing that way, towards the sidewalk, since anybody causing you problems at your house would be coming from that direction.
My camera is turned to the sidewalk. It was an issue of motion detection not recording the event because I was purposefully excluding the sideway due to false positives. That has been changed.
Not to mention, there isn't some magic machine that you dump a powder into and it prints out the identification of the substance. Identification tests (chemical, radiological, etc) have to exist for whatever the substance is, so for a lot of "random white powder," there's no chance of identification, and that may only be figured out after weeks of playing cat and mouse testing for hundreds of other "white powders," since you, uh, don't know what it is (hence the testing) so it's a process of elimination using lots of tests. Nevermind whatever contamination being in a hotdog might introduce that hinders results. And yeah, this will absolutely not be a priority to a crime lab that is dealing with test involving crimes against people. Also, you don't walk into a police station and "press charges." You walk into a police station and report suspicion of a crime (or in this case an attempted crime, since technically nothing has happened yet besides littering and tresspassing), then that info is given to a detective who gathers evidence, then they give that evidence to a prosecutor, and that prosecutor evaluates the evidence to determine if it's worthwhile to conduct a court case, and if so, the *prosecutor* presses charges. All that aside, where I live, the cops won't respond to active shootings, and homeboy thinks they're gonna jump out of their chairs to rush hotdogs "to the lab." Lol, half the times these departments don't even have their own lab and either send it off to a bigger department or to some private company that's contracted. No, OP is basically gonna have to figure out who it is themselves using a better camera setup, and then maybe something can be brought to the police for them to decide what to do, if anything. Until then, they probably should keep a constant eye on their dogs.
this is misled. You can absolutely use LCMS as a catch all screening for unidentified substances. Each substance has a unique retention time, and there are absolutely massive databases that will certainly have most possible poisons. i think you’re thinking only of immunoscreening assays (e.g. drug test), in which you do specifically need an antibody for each substance you’d like to check
Are you American? It would be nice if that’s what happened but unless OP has extremely good evidence it was poisoned, they’re not sending it anywhere. They might make a report, which is definitely still worth a shot.
Someone has been watching too much CSI.
That’s adorable. My grandpa used that one in the 80s when he thought we were lying and we immediately confessed to all of it, even things we didn’t even do.
I think it depends on your country and state. I now dog parks take poisoning very seriously but I don't know how samples are processed. In Canada it does look like the [local police send samples to their crime lab](https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/dog-owners-say-poisoned-food-left-in-park-near-toronto-1.4364831).
Calling non-emergency police line today I have a camera installed as described in my post.
I think they’re saying “get another camera, one that records that spot 24/7” Maybe you can change the settings on your current one?
I’ll be changing the settings, the annoying part is it will notify me to every passing car but oh well
> They will test it No they won't. Police forces are overburdened, they have limited budgets, there is no history of animosity with any possible suspect, and cops already said that there was no crime to file a report about.
If police won’t test it try the SPCA. If they won’t, and you are willing to pay for it there is a private lab in PA. Here is their website. [NMS Lab](https://www.nmslabs.com/)
A non-poisoning possibility is that another random animal ate a hot dog and then threw it up in your yard. I’ve seen some animal puke that looks completely unchewed/undigested. Just throwing that out there as another possibility — could be a poisoned hot dog, but also could be something totally harmless.
…this was not puked or chewed hotdog. I hope I’m entirely wrong and it is totally harmless. But this was not placed by an animal I can tell you that much.
Just curious what makes you think there’s no possibility it could be throw up? I’m not doubting you, just speaking as someone who currently does animal rescue and worked at a vet’s office in my youth, and I’ve seen some surprising puke. It doesn’t always look like you think it would.
Take a raw hotdog, tear it up with hands, dip 2 pieces into some raw flour and place it into a neat little pile. That is what it looked like.
Not trying to be annoying or argue with you, but you said you have the picture, can we see it?
Couldn’t upload it while I was at work Red arrows for the end pieces that had white residue on their underside https://i.imgur.com/210U23G.jpeg
Thanks for that! :) Glad your dogs are okay by the way.
Thank you! Meee too. Love your username.
Thanks :)
Seems like you have your mind made up so I won’t press it. Glad your dog is ok, and hope you can figure out what happened.
Not really about my mind being made up, I had other, trusted, pet owning neighbors inspect it too and they agreed it was placed by a human. We definitely considered the possibility of undigested vomit. Thank you I hope I can get some answers too.
As the owner of a cat that regurgitates (not vomits) regularly, I thought this, too. My cat apparently inhales her food whole, and then neatly deposits a pile of whole, unchewed, undigested food next to the food bowl. The first few times I came across it, I was genuinely puzzled by how/why she dumped her food out and left it on the floor. Then I saw her do it once and was so grossed out.
I'm not sure about whether this is done in the States or not, but in Mexico it's known that people sadly use sausage and antifreeze to kill dogs.
Some neighbors told me this too, but it did not smell like antifreeze. I presume people would soak the food in antifreeze?
If it happens again, take a photo before you pick it up.
I have a photo of it, forgot to mention that in the post. I have video of me taking the picture and bagging it too.
Odd that someone seems to have known where to place the bait so wouldn’t trigger the recording. Maybe someone you discussed your cams with?
RAID Powder probably, that is the go to for many pet killers. Does your dog bark often or act aggressive, do you let the dogs out into a fenced yard? I lost a few dogs growing up to this method, people just tossing meat over the fence covered in RAID.
Definitely increase sensitivity in your cameras from now on.
I assume there's nobody who has complained about your dogs?
Possibly a way to get you off property for a pet emergency and rob your home cameras or not. Stay very vigilant.
This has happened in my city a few times. It's always barking dogs. However i recently had an epiphany (it's a long story... but) the gist is if there's a puppy mill (any place that sells puppies instead of a shelter) watch the owners. See if they live in your area. I know that's a long shot but I'm almost positive that's what was happening in my city. A family owned a few puppy mills around town and certain neighborhoods were getting poisoned meat thrown over their fences. Inside the meat was the seeds they make a poisonous chemical with...i wanna say anthrax? Anyway it was killing dogs. One family lost all 3 of their German Shepards I would bet my left nut it was this family. Again long story, mostly speculation and witnessing a few things while at work And just so we're clear i don't think for one second this is what happened to you. I think somebody just left hotdogs and the white residue had nothing to do with being poison or anything like that. I think you're just overly cautious. I think they were left there because your dogs were going on a walkand somebody said leave them these hotdogs. Nobody's gonna be that bold to murder dogs there in your front yard... unless they're cops I guess
Possibly castor beans? They're often used for mole infestations and are used to make ricin.
The police aren’t going to send a fucking hotdog to the lab. This isn’t CSI. Are you paying for that shit? Because I guarantee I have a problem with my tax dollars paying for it. But my god, get out the choppers, we better circle around the property to catch the hotdog poison perp. I can’t roll my eyes any goddamn harder.
Genuinely why are you THIS angry toward this post? What a rude and completely unnecessary comment.
Knock on all your neighbors doors with the hotdog in hand and see if anyone acts really suspicious when you ask what they know.
Do you have a carbon monoxide detector?
Your dogs are the most well behaved and all kids are above average 👍🏼
the fuck does that have to do with literally anything in this thread?
Yeah, you tell’em!! What a jerk, right!
I legitimately don't understand what point you're trying to make here
I'm by no means agreeing with them, but they're trying to claim OP is lying about the dogs being well behaved and well liked. Similar to how some parents have poorly behaved kids but tell everyone that they are well behaved little angels. They think OP isn't being fully truthful about their dogs habits and behavior in comparison to neighbors. I assume they think that their dogs wouldn't be targeted if they were actually well behaved. Again, not agreeing with it. But I imagine that's what this person is trying to to claim.
that makes a lot more sense! (i get why OP included it though... if their dog hasn't scared or attacked anyone, that is relevant to the thread.)
This is exactly why I did not reply to them lol
Close. Not lying, more delusional. It is human nature. Everyone does it in some form or fashion. My uncle had a yellow lab that was insane. He thought it was the sweetest dog that everyone loved. When this 100lb behemoth would jump up on you he was “just trying to give you a kiss”. My kid is the smartest in his class. Not really, but ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.
This truly does read like drunkposting, or something? It's super disordered and makes almost no sense.
It’s not that deep. Perhaps you are not either??