Many people’s dogs are part of their families, but Daniel Luck’s connection to his German shepherd is especially profound: His wife and children gave him Sheba when he was diagnosed with cancer six years ago.
On Friday, when Luck learned that Sheba had swallowed poison-laced bread left in his St. Paul yard, “I do admit I was a little bit traumatized,” he said Monday.
“She’s been my shadow and by my side every minute of every day since she’s been here,” said Luck, whose cancer is in remission. Luck rushed Sheba to an emergency animal clinic and she survived.
The case is the latest in a spate of dog poisonings in St. Paul, most in the Frogtown or Hamline-Midway neighborhoods last summer.
Sheba was sickened in the West Seventh area. A police investigator will look into whether there’s a connection between Friday’s poisoning and previous ones, said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a police spokesman.
Over the summer, eight dogs in a four-block radius fell ill, after apparently eating biscuits laced with rat poison pellets that had been left in their yards. Three later died — though at least one appeared to perish, in part, from unrelated health issues.
On Dec. 29, a man found ripped-up pieces of bread next to his dog’s bowl in his yard in the 1200 block of Minnehaha Avenue, in the same area as the cases over the summer. His dog had not eaten it, but he noted his next-door neighbor told him bread had also appeared next to her dog’s bowl.
The next day, the police department’s Western District posted on Facebook, saying people should call police if they find bread in their yards with what they believe to be poison and meant for their dogs.
Since then, St. Paul police have been swamped with calls about people finding bread.
“We have one investigator assigned to investigate all animal poisoning incidents, and we’re very concerned that someone is targeting people’s pets,” Ernster said. “But we also have limited resources and cannot recover all the bread found in the city and test it for poison. A large portion is not believed to be connected to animal poisoning.”
But that was not the case Friday. Luck said he let his dog into his fenced-in yard on Canton Street, near Scheffer Avenue, about 11 a.m. when he saw Sheba pick up an object in her mouth.
“I couldn’t tell what it was and she started nibbling,” Luck said. “She started coughing on it and I said ‘Ick.’ That’s our safety word — whatever’s in our mouth, she drops. When I went to go pick up what she had dropped, I realized it was kind of clumps of bread put together and that allowed me to recall a couple of posts on Facebook regarding tainted bread, and that set things in motion.”
Luck called a nearby veterinary clinic, who told him to take Sheba to an emergency animal clinic. But his car was in the shop and he initially didn’t know how to get his dog there.
His car was at Jose Auto Repair on West Seventh Street, and Luck called there, finding out it was ready. An employee quickly picked up Luck and his dog, dropped them off at the animal hospital and left his car there for him.
“Fortunately, I got her there in time,” Luck said. He said they induced vomiting in Sheba and found evidence of rat poison in her vomit. She’s still a little lethargic, Luck said Monday.
Luck said he also collected the bread that he’d found in his yard — it looked like Hawaiian sweet rolls mashed together.
He posted on Facebook to warn people after it happened and many encouraged him to start a campaign on GoFundMe to recoup the veterinary costs and raise money for reward. He did at gofundme.com/37d2gns.
“I hope neighbors are continuing to be vigilant and to understand that animals are a part of families,” Luck said. “My children (who are 14 and 16) were very upset that someone would do this. … It breaks their hearts.”
Police also received a recent report about a dog poisoning in the Highland Park neighborhood.
A woman reported she was walking her dog on Dec. 27 when the pet ate something unknown in the area of Cleveland and Itasca avenues. The dog was lethargic the next day and the owner took the dog to the vet, who determined the pet had internal bleeding and believed it had been poisoned, Ernster said.
On Sunday, officers were called to collect bread and other food items found in a yard in the Payne-Phalen area. A woman told officers that her dog had died recently and she was unsure how the items came to be in their yard on Wells Street near Forest Street, according to a police report. The dog was believed to have cancer and the bread contained no visible poison, Ernster said.
Ernster urged people to be cautious but not to call police for every piece of bread they find because the evidence collection process is time-consuming.
“If you’re in your local park and find a piece of bread, don’t let your pet consume it,” he said. “But just because it’s in the park doesn’t make it criminal or suspicious. We’d ask everyone to judge each situation on its own merit. Does the bread look like it’s been soaked or had anything inserted into it? We’d like to focus our resources on any cases where a pet has been affected by poisoning. If your animal exhibits symptoms of poisoning, get your animal to a vet and file a police report.”