This morning the pup was feeling a bit under the weather.  We are never really sure what his problem is.  He does tend to pick up things and eat them - bugs, dead fish, bits of food, and, of course, grass.  He never did eat his breakfast, which is unusual for him as he gets up at 4 a.m. wanting to eat.  So it got me to thinking about the time the older and now wiser black lab ate a toad. 

Now, these are Minnesota toads and not something out of a rain forest.  And why he actually ate the toad I don't remember.  He does like to play with toads and frogs, which never lasts long as he weights around 80 pounds and has huge feet, which means the toads are not much of a match.  But the toads do have a secret weapon - they are somewhat toxic to things that eat them, including dogs.  

So here it was early on a Saturday morning and an excited black lab pushes this poor little toad around for awhile, and then decides maybe it could be a tasty snack.  Now, mabye he remembered the time he saw a big snake in our yard eat a toad and he just wanted to see what the appeal was.  So before we could stop him (dogs can be quite quick when they are eating something they aren't supposed to) he had swallowed a toad.  Not a huge toad, mind you, but probably a toad around 2 inches across.  

It was just a few minutes later that the toad, and a lot of white gooey stuff, came back up.  Then we had a very, very quiet dog.  We did a quick search on the internet and, of course, all of the information there indicated frogs were extremely toxic and most likely the dog would be dead in 15 minutes.  As it was extremely early and as we live around 20 miles from the vet, there would have been no way to even get him to the vet in 15 minutes.

But after a couple of hours the dog recovered.  Now, this is a smart dog and I believe he learned his lesson.  He has not eaten a toad since.