ALL Dog owners NEED to read this!!!! *ALERT Important* Don't let your doggie have this near tragedy like mine is!

This one tonight i fear is a bit more serious than my normal tales and antics of my little house of princesses. (and now prince puppy as I like to call him...doesn't he look like he thinks he is one there?)

I want to be sure ANYONE you know who has a dog is aware of this, because from what I understand, and have found out today, most people do not know this.

Dogs can NOT tolerate gum.  The sugar free kind.  The ingredient to be exact Xylitol.  It is LETHAL for them!!!!

I write this after having one of those "when it rains it pours" kind of days.  And the ending was the thunderstorm, lightning show and downpour all in one.

It is only by the grace of God that my sweet little pup Bucky is alive at all right now. (If you dont know, my little ones have begged for years for a doggie of their own, and I wrote about our newest family member (3 weeks ago) here)

See, at 4 I dropped off the girls at dance, and as always I left the little stinker in the car for the 5 minutes it takes me to walk in and out.  When I came back out I found this....

Empty on my seat.  I chew it often, so I knew there were 7 or so pieces left.  My initial thought, I'll be honest here,  DUMB DOG.  But then I thought about how we swallow gum and it uhhhh appears again at a later time, ya catch my drift??  But for some reason, I had this nagging in the back of my head.

So once I arrived back home, I found the vets number and called them.  They told me to bring him in right away.  My first thought to this was, "are you kidding me?"  It can't be THAT serious.  My second thought, I JUST (like an hour ago) put a furnace in and I really don't feel like another bill.

As I was talking to the vet, I checked snopes, and it said that it is no rumor or exaggeration.  I didn't read any further to find what would happen, I just packed my guy up.

 I dragged my fun loving guy in to be forced to throw up.  I then went to pick up the girls from dance and come back still not realizing the type of effects that were happening so quickly.

In the short time from him arriving to me coming back, a total of about 40 minutes, his blood sugar (I believe, glucose) dropped from a fairly normal 140 to 60.

I guess that a 3g of Xylitol (2 trident sticks) can KILL a 65 lb dog!!  Poor Bucky is only 11 lbs!

The things that happen upon ingestion include, fatigue, nausea, loss of coordinaton, and seizures  All of these happen with in 30 minutes of ingestion!  Once this has happened, if the animal doesn't get to a vet, they will die!  From brain injury and more.  It also can attack their livers.  I am unclear if this will affect his liver in the future as of now or not.

So I learned that gum isn't the only culprit either, there are more foods with the sweetener in it.  She informed me STORE BOUGHT cupcakes (bakery kind) have it in them and a dog shouldn't ingest that either (though it will be a much less does than the gum)  There is a list f foods they shouldn't have.

So PLEASE take this seriously!  As my sweet Bucky lay in a hospital on IV's literally fighting for his life.  (Side note she did seem to think he will make a full recovery, because I got him in so fast (15 minutes from ingestion))

PLEASE pass this on and post it on your wall as a warning to all your friends and family who own and love their doggies!!!

Thank you.