Ten dogs poisoned in three weeks

At least 10 dogs have been fatally poisoned across Grand Cayman in the past month, according to local veterinarian Brenda Bush. 

Ms Bush of Island Veterinary Services said the dogs had been brought to her clinic from East End, George Town and West Bay and all showed typical symptoms of having ingested the deadly herbicide paraquat. 

One of the dogs that died belonged to Joanna Laws, a nurse at Island Veterinary Services. Six-year-old Rupert, while being walked on a leash, ate a small amount of meat that had been heavily laced with the herbicide paraquat and left at the side of the road in West Bay. 

Ms Bush said an analysis of the bait and poison done at Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory in the United States, to which previous samples of poison used on other animal victims have been sent, showed that the concentration of paraquat in this case was far higher than seen in previous instances. 

“In the normal samples the lab does analyses on from the stuff they get from here and elsewhere, they typically find about five parts per million of paraquat in the samples. This was at least 1,000 parts per million,” Ms Bush said. 

In his report on the analysis of the meat, toxicologist Merl Raisbeck from the laboratory said: “I really don’t see how this level of contamination could have resulted from merely spraying weeds.” 

Ms Bush said the poison had clearly been poured over the meat, which had been left as bait for dogs. “It is so malicious and you can tell the intent is to kill as many dogs as possible,” she said. 

“Why this case is extra concerning is that paraquat can be absorbed through the skin. If a child walked on that poison or got it on his foot, the child could get enough of it on his skin to make him really sick or could even cause death. This is going to a whole new level now. I’m afraid something really bad will happen to a human,” Ms Bush said. 

“It scares me. It really scares me. I just don’t want to see a child poisoned and I really hope it doesn’t come to that,” she added. 

Ms Laws, who was off island when her pet was poisoned in early May, said her friend who walked Rupert collected as much of the poisoned meat as she could gather so it could be analysed. A pile of meat, including sausage, chicken bones and oxtail had been liberally spiked with paraquat and placed in the grass beside the road. 

“This was no accident,” said Ms Laws. “It was a lethal dose that had been put down.” 

Rupert ate the poisoned meat while being walked on Yates Drive in West Bay, near his owners’ home. Ms Bush said Rupert ate only a small amount of the bait because his dog walker spotted that he had picked something off the ground immediately. “It was only a tiny bit but it made him so sick, so quickly, it made my head spin,” she said. 

Paraquat is almost always fatal once ingested, usually causing a slow and painful death by suffocation because of the damage it does to the respiratory system. There is no cure for paraquat poisoning. 

“He was my Rupert the bear, he loved to be cuddled,” said Ms Laws of her pet, a rescue dog she adopted when he was 6 months old. 

“The bait was on the side of the road, on the grass verge … I have a 2-year-old and there’s nothing stopping him from running through the grass and falling on it and landing on it. Not only is this person trying to cause harm to animals, he could be causing harm to human beings as well,” Ms Laws said. 

The Agricultural Department’s Animal Welfare Officer Margaret Baldino, who visited the scene in West Bay where Rupert was poisoned, cautioned owners to be vigilant when walking their dogs. She also urged pet owners to ensure they walked their dogs on leashes and not let them roam freely.  

The most recent case of poisoning was reported on Wednesday, 23 May, when a dog who ingested poison in George Town was brought to Island Vets and euthanised the next day. 

Ms Bush said she has seen many spates of paraquat poisonings in her almost 20 years of working as a vet in Cayman. Despite lab tests showing that many of the dogs that have died were victims of paraquat poisoning, the herbicide can still be legally imported into Cayman. It is banned in several countries because of its high toxicity. 

In 2009, because of abuse of the herbicide, the Cayman Islands Department of Agriculture stopped importing paraquat. Prior to that, the department restricted its sale of paraquat, sold under the brand name Gramocil, to registered farmers.  

However, there is nothing to prohibit private individuals from importing paraquat as there are no regulations or legislation in Cayman controlling the use and importation of pesticides. 

“I don’t know what it will take for this community to wake up and see how dangerous paraquat is,” Ms Bush said. She recalled that several years ago, a petition was circulated calling for the banning of paraquat locally, but nothing came of it. 

“Maybe there’s one person doing this, maybe there are lots of people out there putting down poison for dogs, I don’t know, but it’s time this was investigated,” she said.