Dog lover's pet pain

Derek Wendt and his rottweiler which was poisoned with ratbait.

Mike Knott

AS soon as Derek Wendt stepped out into the courtyard of his Elliott Heads home, he knew something was wrong.

His beloved rottweiler, Shari, makes a habit of greeting him each morning with a wagging tail and an excited yelp, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“I was calling out to her and making a fair racket, but she wouldn't come over,” he said.

A concerned Mr Wendt found Shari curled up into a ball in the far corner of the yard, shaded from the morning sun by the back fence.

The six-year-old desexed bitch was bleeding heavily from her uterus and was unable to move her hind legs.

“She looked up at me with these big, sad eyes as if to say, ‘help me', but it looked pretty bad,” he said.

An inspection by a mobile vet suggested Shari had been the victim of an anticoagulant poison used to kill rodents.

Mr Wendt believes Shari has been deliberately baited in retribution for a spate of late-night barking in the area, for which she was not responsible.

“It's a callous, heartless act,” he said.

Shari has been administered a Vitamin K injection to promote clotting of her blood and will be given tablets each day for two months to battle the poison.

Mr Wendt spoke out in the hope others would not have to go through the pain endured by him and his wife, Denise.

“My children, my grandchildren, they've all grown up with Shari,” he said.

“She's a part of their lives.”

Bundaberg Veterinary Clinic's Dr Tim Hill said if dogs ate rat poison, a vet should be contacted immediately.

“If you get on to it early you have a chance of being able to get rid of it by induced vomiting,” he said.

“But once it gets into the system, things can get pretty ugly.”