A Raisin at Dusk

One recent evening, my wife and I and our dog Argos are hanging out watching the news, playing with our phones, eating some organic trail mix.  I am mostly on my phone, trying to follow some outrage that my brother's twitter page has alerted me to that is competing to monopolize my attention despite the annoying handicap of being a non-user, when through the fog, I hear my wife observing out loud in a very amused tone of voice that Argos seems to love raisins.  Indeed, I look over in time to see him eagerly devouring a big juicy one from my wife's outstretched palm.  That's odd, I think.  Was she not around when my daughter warned me about grapes for dogs that time she saw me innocently feeding one to Argos' predecessor to the throne, Penelope?  The news was both counterintuitive and shocking.  Grapes?  The delicious little things you almost always have around are really bad for dogs? The creatures in your house that keep the floor and your lap clean of food debris? And no one knows about this?  I'd been feeding dogs grapes all my life by that point.  It bore further research but it stuck in my brain.  

I tell my wife that I've heard grapes are bad for dogs.  She shrugs the comment off as the typical kind of malarkey she's used to hearing from me, but something about the dread in my voice makes her instantly seal the trail mix container and set it on her end table like it's a bomb.  Between the two of us, the validity of the statement will not be confirmed because nothing in either of our long histories on earth with grapes and dogs seems to support this insane notion.  If this were a thing, wouldn't grapes come with a warning?  Wouldn't dogs come with a warning?  I take it to google.

"Dogs and grapes" 

The results come back instantly.  Grapes are very bad for dogs.  How bad?  One grape can kill your dog.  What??!  Well, what about raisins?  Raisins are probably worse.   How??!  No one knows for sure, but google seems to be as positive about this as about anything that while some dogs can survive a grape incident with no harm, some unspecified number will develop symptoms of toxicity within 12 to 24 hours-- vomiting,  prolific nasty diarrhea, unusual lethargy.  If this happens, you can kiss Rover good-bye.  The lucky ones will have severe kidney damage that will infirm them for the rest of their miserably short lives.  Most dogs will die within 3 to 4 days.  What??!!  How many dogs does this happen to?  50 to 75% of dogs that die of kidney failure have had a grape.  Okay!! Whatever that means!!  Can anything be done?  Induce vomiting with hydrogen peroxide.  On the other hand, don't induce vomiting.  If you see your dog eating a grape call your vet immediately!  On second thought probably best just to take the dog to the vet for several days' observation.  What do vets say?  What does the AKC say?  These are vets and the AKC!!  One site offers to diagnose your dog over the web for $75.

As I'm scouring page after page in search of some reasonableness, some ounce of pushback, some voice of sanity and calm and coming up empty, I'm sinking deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole of despair.  For my wife, who went across three states to get Argos just before COVID hit and for whom he has become a kind of totem of health and youth and entertainment sustaining her through a dark time, this is all too much.  She begs me to stop reading it.  My heart is breaking for her.  How many raisins did he eat?  A few.  The words almost choke on the way out of her mouth: Maybe ten.

Through all of this Argos is sitting on the couch observing us, looking particularly healthy, innocent,  adorable, puppyish. Probably wondering where the next raisin is.  

Could we be witnessing the end?  In my mind I'm trying out the notion of resisting my reluctance to believe that by allowing raisins into our house we have murdered our dog to get the oomph to rush the dog to the vet for a stomach pumping as google seems to be urging me to.  My wife just wants to go for a walk.  She does not want to yield to the panic that google is trying to enflame in us.  For me it's too late, but a part of me wants to rebel against this unprecedented unanimity in the google results.  We agree that we will not take the dog to the vet. We will not call the vet.  We will not induce vomiting.  We will go for a walk.  If Argos starts vomiting or squirting diarrhea everywhere or becomes catatonic over the next few days we will be chastened and take immediate action.  In the meantime, we will not speak of this again.

In spite of our resolve, a dark cloud hung over proceedings for the next couple of days.  What were those ten raisins doing to our baby in there?  There was no vomiting, no diarrhea, no lethargy.  In fact, there was no poop for 2 days.  A little alarming, but even through the dark lens of doom, Argos persisted in being Argos.  In 2 days, poop came.  It was normal.  

He has survived the 4 day death watch, but will Argos survive this episode indefinitely?  I have no idea.  His forbear, Penelope, lived to a ripe old age following her brush with a grape (and who knows how many other dozens of grapes, raisins and currants were fed to her or scavenged by her without being brought to anyone's attention).  But it has been several days and those ten raisins Argos ate are fading from prominence in our minds.  In the cooler light of day I've gone back to those results in search of some statistic, some fact, something real to hang this panic on, and my conclusion is that the search itself is the only thing real about it.  Apparently for some small percentage of dogs, it was only recently (some say 1989) discovered that grapes could be toxic.  As to why this is so or even if it is real, a case could be made that the scientific results are not yet conclusive.  The google results on the other hand are overwhelming.

From what I can tell, in spite of the unanimity in the google results, there is no way to use them to overcome any skepticism you may feel about the quality of information you can find on the topic on the internet; and to the shame of the veterinary profession, that is with plenty of input from vets.  The volume of sudden panic on this in spite of millennia of dogs and grapes coexisting peacefully is somewhat reminiscent of the emergence of peanut allergies and satanic daycare facilities as cause for national alarm within the same time frame.  For all of the internet's abundant power to answer a multitude of questions that cross our minds, there are some areas-- our dogs, our children, other people's fetuses-- that seem to invite hyperactive concern and a leaping to conclusions: 

If you are contemplating sharing a bowl of grapes or raisins with your dog, maybe don't.  But if your dog has had a grape and you'd like to know what to do, I'll make a case as a reformed inveterate grape pusher for taking your dog for a walk.