blue button jellyfish sends dogs to emergency vet with violent vomiting in Queensland Gold Coast
Grim warning for pet owners to beware of tiny, dime-sized jellyfish after vet treated six dogs in a single day for horrifying symptoms including ‘violent vomiting’
- An alarming number of dogs are swallowing this poisonous sea creature.
- Symptoms include lip licking, fever, vomiting, and dark mucus.
- Veterinarians warn that they are hard to spot at only 2.5cm in diameter.
A vet issued an urgent warning to pet owners after treating a series of dogs that had eaten a dime-sized jellyfish, leaving them vomiting and shaking “profusely”.
In what is becoming an annual plague, dozens of blue button stingers washed up on the beaches of the Sunshine Coast last week and were eaten by unsuspecting canines.
Noosa vet Divya Nemani told the abc she had treated six dogs in a single day last Wednesday, the most she had seen in a single day.
“They all came in with very, very similar clinical signs,” he told the station.
“They had been on the beach and then 15 minutes into being on the beach, they started throwing up and then throwing up profusely.
Dogs tend to interact with any foreign objects they come across, which is why the blue buttons (pictured) are so dangerous during walks
Jan Bolton, a Peregian Beach resident, was one of those forced to take her furry friend to the clinic after seeing her Spoodle, Lily, swallow the coin-sized creature during a walk.
“Lily was doing this horrible howl and scream when she was trying to throw up,” Bolton told the network.
“The vet (who) also ended up giving him an antihistamine because he thought he might have had an allergic reaction.”
Typical symptoms of a dog that has eaten a blue button include lip licking, lethargy, excessive drooling, and fever, with some dogs developing dark mucus.
The large number of sick dogs Dr. Nemani saw in the past week led her to advise owners to clean their dogs’ mouths with a cloth if they interact with a blue button.
If symptoms develop, Dr. Nemani told owners to take their pets directly to the vet for treatment.
Local vet Divya Nemani (pictured) said her team had never treated so many blue button poisonings in a single day.
An emergency animal clinic in Noosa, Queensland (pictured) has told dog owners to be careful after an extraordinary day of work when six dogs were rushed in last Wednesday.
These latest cases follow a trend of dogs eating blue buttons as tropical climates, high tides, and strong coastal winds wash countless numbers of them onto beaches each summer.
Speaking to ABC more than a year ago, a nurse at Paradise Point warned owners not to walk their dogs on beaches where they might see the jellyfish-like creatures have washed up.
“We go through seasons where there are so many on the beaches (and) we just try to make sure that people avoid them, because dogs are known to eat anything they can find,” Nolan said at the time.
“The key is to get the dog to the vet within the first hour of eating something and just get over it as soon as possible.”