A necessary warning indeed. It happened to a neighbour of ours many years ago who got a new puppy and forgot they had left slug bait down. Very upsetting.

I use a type by Ortho, and it states in the warnings that dogs are at risk. I use a 6" plastic soda bottle with the top cut off- slugs and snails will find their way in while my cats cann't.

How awful! A timely reminder that slug pellets can and do kill other animals. So sorry for your friend Magnadoodle, rip Jess.

So sorry to hear about your friends dog magnadoodle, how awful!

I am really worried now I have them scattered in my borders, I have been using them for 2 summers now and I have 3 cats. Are all slug pellets dangerous or are there any pet friendly ones out there?

I think that some are less poisonous than others but I wouldn't risk any of them with Rosie which is why I tried Nemaslug which has so far proved useless.

Slug Gone is a sheep's wool pellet totally harmless, or so it states, to any other wildlife or pets.

http://www.sluggone.com/how-to-use

This is why I Squish em :( very nearly bought pellets a few weeks ago and glad I didnt now :(

thanks MG I will go and get some and clear my other ones up.

Not only dogs, but birds too will pick up the dead and dying snails and slugs and eat them. I wonder how many of our wonderful blackbirds and thrushes have been poisoned this way.
Slug pellets if used at all should be used very sparingly and the dead molluscs picked up, and there should be much larger warnings on the containers about their danger.

Here Here Bertie :(

If we look at the toxicity of metaldehyde (http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th11a%287%29.htm) then it takes ''a 4% metaldehyde to be toxic to wildlife''. Eraza, the one I use, is 1.5%. Its toxicity decreasing ever week by 50%. Unless the cat ate several kg of the stuff I doubt it was the primary cause - more likely it was suffering from another aliment.

Bertiefox - I would be worried about birds eating dying molluscs, but they ignore the dead ones.

It was an 11 year old dog and pellets were the cause of her having to be put to sleep x

Kildermorie's info is accurate - hedgehogs aren't killed by eating slug pellets either, the level of metaldehyde is too low, they'd have to eat a massive amount. Lord knows what was in those slug pellets the dog ate, and he must have eaten a huge amount for them to kill him. Unless he had a pre-standing condition...
I think one problem is that people use too many - I was at a garden today where so many had been put down I mistook it for blue soil initially...

Over usage is certainly a problem and the dog may well have had a pre-existing condition that no one was aware of but still better to hide the pellets where only slug and snail can find them. Bulba scatters them, very lightly, in our greenhouse where the show plants are plunged and the siamese girls do go in and out of there they've never been tempted to eat them neither would I expect them to do so but I know dogs do eat all sorts of things.

Oh dear, so sad. I have a black lab (Bonnie), she'll pick anything up, my 2 cats do too so I avoid slug pellets except on the bench in pots in the greenhouse. I had a scare in the spring though, I was using bone meal and didnt fork in around a couple of shrubs, she ate it in a flash, her mouth was dripping like a tap, she was ok but a warning.

Oh gosh we used to have a siamese who would leap into the hole we had put the bone meal in to eat before we could get the plant planted - never seemed to affect him though :-)

I'm also not sure how harmful or not bonemeal is - cats and dogs really like it, my cats used to try and get inside the packet in their attempts to eat it... I can't imagine a boxful would do them much good though.

I rang the vets, as she had not eaten a great amount she was fine but as a greedy Lab., I'll be keeping well away from her in future. Her mouth was irritated, dripping like a tap.

I imagine it must burn soft tissue, bonemeal, so I bet she was drooling like mad.

Thats what it must have been Bamboo, her mouth was dripping like a tap :(