Unlike tomatoes that can still be consumed in small quantities, grapes are one of the fruits that shouldn’t never be eaten by dogs. It is known that grapes contain highly toxic to your dogs and can even be fatal, even one grape toxicity. Whether your dog eats a grape or ingested many of them, there will be a cause for concern, since grape poisoning is very real.
If your dogs accidentally eat grapes and you don’t know it can lead to grape poisoning, you can start seeing the signs that your dogs show. If you do not know the symptoms of grape poisoning, you can dive into our post to find out the information about it. Here you go!
What Happens If Your Dog Eats Grape?
Once your dogs eat or ingest grapes, even one grape, it will lead to something known as grape poisoning. All varieties of grapes are toxic to your dogs including green grapes, red grapes, purple grapes and seedless grapes.
In addition to grape fruits, you shouldn’t also give your dogs any grape products such as wine, grape juice, raisins and currants. According to research, a toxic substance which mold or fungus produce in the grape may lead to health problems in your dogs.
Furthermore, grape toxicity in dogs will lead to serious disease such as kidney damage which can cause acute kidney failure that can be fatal in your dogs. Well, the exact toxic substance in grapes is really unknown. However, it is believed that it can be the inability of dogs to metabolize tannins, flavonoids and monosaccharides from the grapes.
If grapes are good for human health, but grape products do not provide any nutritional value which cannot be substituted with dog-safe fruits such as apple slices. So, make sure to not give your dog grapes or grape products and do not give access to them at all times.
Talking about toxic dose, there is no certain toxic dose for any of those fruits. However, there are two principles you should know:
- Dogs will be more likely to become poisoned if they eat large amounts of fruit
- There may likely appear to be individual sensitivity in your dogs.
However, some dogs may tolerate small doses of the fruit without consequence, while other dogs probably develop poisoning once eating just a few grapes or raisins. Currently, there is no way to predict which dogs can be more sensitive.
What Are the Symptoms of Grape Poisoning?
There are some certain signs that you can find if your dogs eat grapes. After knowing the symptoms, you can take the next steps to take your dogs to the veterinarian. Well, the most common early symptom of grape toxicity is vomiting that is commonly seen within 24 hours following ingestion.
Within the next 12-24 hours, lethargy, lack of appetite and diarrhea may also be seen. For 24 – 48 hours after ingestion, more severe signs may not be seen, but it often leads to acute kidney damage. Here are the following symptoms of grape poisoning:
- Loss of appetite
- Drinking a lot, at first
- Diarrhea
- Vomiting
- Abdominal pain
- Weakness
- Lethargy
- Bad breath
- Increased urination
- Dehydration
When your dogs are experiencing grape poisoning, they may have increased urination at first. After that, they will decrease in urine production as the kidneys begin shutting down. Hereafter, the kidneys will stop functioning and your dogs cannot produce urine again.
After this, the blood pressure on your dogs can frequently increase dramatically. Your dogs probably lapse into a coma because of a buildup of substances that the kidneys commonly eliminate from the body through urine. The prognosis is poor, after the kidneys have shut down and urine output has dropped.
Diagnosis of Grape Poisoning
The symptoms of grape poisoning are non-specific and early symptoms are similar to various things including simple dietary indiscretion. In this case, more severe symptoms may be similar to kidney failure from other causes.
Hereafter, your vet will base a diagnosis of grape poisoning on a history of eating grapes, currants, raisins or the presence of pieces of grapes or raisins in the dog’s vomit. Your vet may recommend diagnostic tests such as a serum biochemistry profile, a complete blood count (CBC) and a urinalysis to assess the amount of damage to the kidneys. The result of the test will help determine the dog’s recovery.
How to Treat Grape Poisoning in Your Dogs?
Grape poisoning treatment aims to block absorption of the toxins and also minimize damage to the kidneys. Decontaminating the dog by inducing vomiting and administering activated charcoal is the best treatment that the vet will do in your dogs.
Those ways will help to prevent absorption of the toxins from the stomach or intestines. Since grapes stay in the stomach for a prolonged period of time, inducing vomiting is very crucial for you.
After decontamination, aggressive intravenous fluids treatment will be necessary to help support the kidney in hopes of minimizing damage to your dogs. In this case, drugs that are used to control nausea or vomiting and blood pressure, and to help maintain blood flow to the kidneys can also be given.
Ideally, your dogs have to be hospitalized on intravenous fluids for 48 hours following ingestion. For affected animals, they will need to be hospitalized for several days. During the treatment, your vet will monitor the dog’s kidney function level daily to assess the response to treatment. The vet can then determine whether the treatments should become more aggressive. Well, the blood work is probably repeated 1 – 2 days after going home to ensure kidney function levels have not increased.
How to Prevent Grape Poisoning in Dogs?
The only way you can do to prevent grape poisoning is to keep all grapes, currents and raisins out of reach of your dogs. Make sure to not share any food which may contain grapes or raisin with your dogs and particularly don’t use grapes as treats for your dogs. You also need to avoid your kids to give grapes to your dogs.