Are Lawn Chemicals Endangering Your Dog?

It’s time to let your pup roam free in your front and back-yards, but could this fun activity be dangerous for dogs?

HuffPost Live recently dug deeper into lawn poisoning, and found that apparently, exposure to certain lawn/yard chemicals may increase your dog’s chances of getting diseases, such as bladder cancer. Mike Mallon, marketing director of Espoma, a maker of organic lawn care product, joined the conversation on HuffPost Live. As did Diane Silver, blogger of To Dog With Love, who believes that chemicals found in her lawn could be the reason her own dog was taken too soon from lung cancer. “I thought it must have something to do with the environment … so I turned to my environment in my own backyard, and I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want my own backyard to be killing my dog,'” Silver said. “So I quit all the pesticides and chemicals that I had been putting on my lawn, and since [Cosmo] has passed, my lawn has been chemical-free.”

Silver has a point. After all, we keep our pets away from chemicals in cleaning products and mouse traps because we’re afraid of them being poisoned, so why would a yard filled with chemicals be any different? In fact, any kind of herbicide, pesticide or chemical fertilizer that’s ingested (whether it’s through skin-to-skin contact or orally), can be dangerous.

So what can you do?

Malllon suggests only using lawn care products that are chemical-free, natural and organic. Espoma sells quite a few, FYI.

It’s also important to make sure you know the symptoms of poisoning including: difficulty breathing, diarrhea, chemical burns, drooling, lethargy, mouth irritation, vomiting, etc.

Head over to The Huffington Post to read more about lawn poisoning.

Has your dog experience lawn poisoning?

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