The hazards of roach and ant traps to pets, how dangerous is this?

Where a dog ate an ant or roach trap then the owners are often understandably concerned that this may be a dangerous situation for their pet. 

When reading the label on the packs of roach or ant traps you will think that these products are highly toxic to dogs and they present a severe hazard to your dog if eaten. Happily, this is far from the truth, most ant and roach traps which are on the market these days are of very low toxicity to dogs. Even a small dog would have to eat the contents of quite a few of these traps before there would be any serious toxicity concerns. These devices also contain a substance like flour or peanut butter to attract the insects and of course, this attracts the dogs as well.

In many countries, the law mandates that all household insecticides no matter carry the same label warnings despite wide variations in toxicity.

My dog ate a roach or ant trap, what should I do?

So if your dog just chewed the plastic housing but did not swallow any of the plastic fragments then in almost all cases you have nothing to worry about. In this sort of situation, all that you would need to do would be just to keep an eye on your dog as the chances are that your dog is going to be just fine.

But what if your dog swallowed some of the plastic housing as well as the contents? Well, first off in my experience most dogs do tend to get away with this, so again the best thing to do in these circumstances is to just sit it out, monitor your dog and see what happens. Usually, any swallowed fragments of the plastic housing will be small enough to just pass straight through your dog’s intestinal tract. However, if your dog got hold of the insect trap the last hour or so and may have swallowed some plastic fragments then feeding your dog some mashed potato or a few slices of bread would be a good idea. The idea is that these will form around and cushion any sharp plastic fragments as they pass along your dog’s alimentary tract and so help protect it.

What should I look out for?

So you can see from the above that the plastic housing is usually more of a hazard than the actual contents of these traps. However, there are no guarantees and very occasionally in the past at my clinic, I saw problems related to intestinal obstruction or alimentary tract damage where a dog has swallowed plastic of some sort. You would be therefor wise to monitor your dog over the next few days for such symptoms as vomiting, lethargy, not eating, straining or abdominal pain. And of course, have a local vet check your dog over as soon as possible if any such symptoms should occur. But as I said this would be unlikely with ant or roach traps.

Where a dog swallowed the contents a larger number of ant or roach traps then you might consider inducing vomiting. More information via this link: LINK

Please follow this link for another article which covers the situation where a dog ate a roach or ant trap: LINK