Houzz Logo Print
ninapearl_gw

help with mushroom i.d.

last year

i posted this in the "weeds" and "farm life" forums but i'm not sure how much activity those places see so i'm going to post it here to see if any of my kt friends might be able to help...


i'm not sure if this would be the proper place but i'm trying to i.d. some mushrooms.

in a nutshell, a friend of mine in georgia has a 4 year old great dane. two days ago, this dog became violently ill and ended up at the emergency vet for exploratory surgery. it was found that her g.i. tract was terribly inflamed. she was full of gas and her intestines, in the vet's words, were "very angry and looked very 'bruised'". he said she almost had to have ingested something to cause this sort of problem.

the owner went out today and scoured her yard and found these mushrooms. she said she has never seen them anywhere on their property in all the years she's lived in this house.

could anyone shed some light on if any of these could have been poisonous or cause such an irritation if the dog ate any (even a small part) of one or more?

dog is doing fine and recovering from surgery. thanks for any insight you can provide!



this is the bottom of this one.







Comments (20)

  • last year
    last modified: last year

    I don’t know but found this link to see if it’s helpful. I’d be beyond leary of what your pic shows. So very glad the dog will be okay!

    My sister almost lost her golden retriever after he ate lots of plums from their tree. He was completely plugged up with the pits.

    ETA - I removed the link since it was too vague. I did see some pix online that looked similar to your first example with the dark center on the cap.

    Ninapearl thanked chloebud
  • last year

    If the mushrooms could possibly be a cause of the dog's illness, why wouldn't your friend want to have them removed immediately and keep the dog away from the area unsupervised until then?.

    Hypothetically, they're ugabuga mushrooms. No, that's wrong, they're lelelala mushrooms.

    Does it matter what kind they are?

  • last year

    Try Name That Plant forum as well. People post fungi there occasionally, and get more answers.

    To me, it looks like what I call fairy ring mushrooms.

    Ninapearl thanked carolb_w_fl_coastal_9/10
  • last year

    why wouldn't your friend want to have them removed immediately and keep the dog away from the area unsupervised until then?.

    she did not go out immediately because she would not take her eyes off of her dog until she was fully awake from anesthesia. not that i have to defend her from YOU, this woman could probably tell you how many times a day her dog blinks her eyes.

    they're ugabuga mushrooms. No, that's wrong, they're lelelala mushrooms.

    as is normally the case, you are your usual unhelpful self. you must be such an uhappy little man. 🙄

  • last year
    last modified: last year

    Not at all, my comment was most useful. I think you or your friend (or both) are pursuing the wrong approach. Disregard the irrelevant - the kind of mushroom doesn't matter- and take a simple step to avoid any potential problem.

    Let's say it's not a dangerous mushroom from a poison sense. So what? If the digestive system had a reaction to something it found disagreeable, an easy first step is to limit or prevent the dog's access to any or all non-normal things it might ingest. It's not so complicated.

    You too seem to have a problem hearing views that differ from your own. I didn't insult you, try to act more like an adult.

  • last year

    Why do some people assume the worst of others without evidence?

    I prefer to only assume the worst with evidence 😄

    Ninapearl thanked carolb_w_fl_coastal_9/10
  • last year

    And another with the same problem.

  • last year

    Ninapearl, let us know if you find anything out. With my sister’s dog, they were clueless what was wrong and never even thought of plum pits. The dog had been playing in the yard with the plum tree for years and there was never a problem.

    Ninapearl thanked chloebud
  • last year

    But Elmer, they don't even know what the dog ate or if it even ate any mushrooms. If that were me and my dog was sick, I would want to rule it in or out of the equation. Our friend's dog was very ill and it turned out she was eating on a YEW shrub. It could even be some treat they gave the dog. It's so hard to figure out sometimes. Maybe the dog was eating some grass after a lawn service treated it?

    Ninapearl thanked arkansas girl
  • last year

    Yes, AG. I agree to a point. But as mushrooms can cause irritations and worse, that's a start without any further identification. Another good practice would be to not leave the dog unattended outdoors.

    As most dog owners and lovers know, some dogs are "mouthy" and will put anything they find into their mouths. In such cases when it's too late to train away the bad tendency, such dogs need human help to protect them from their own bad habits.

  • last year
    last modified: last year

    Another good practice would be to not leave the dog unattended outdoors.

    you are assuming she does.

    You too seem to have a problem hearing views that differ from your own. I didn't insult you, try to act more like an adult.

    pot, meet kettle.

    chloebud for sure, i will let you know.

    arkansas girl they do not use any chemicals on their lawn. that's not only to prevent exposure for her animals. like i do, she feeds wild birds so chemicals are a big no-no.

    eta: morz8 the vet didn't say if he found any remnants of anything. he did say it was the worst case of this sort of inflammation he has ever seen and was glad they didn't take a "wait and see" approach.

    i did suggest a county extension office to her and she is going to check that out first thing on monday.

  • last year

    Nina, I'm so sorry about your friends dog. Removing every mushroom from that yard looks like it could be a tedious job if even possible. Did she know, did the vet find any mushroom remnants in the dogs tummy, possibly it had quit digesting if so sick?

    I am hopeless on mushroom ID. I know exactly ONE that I trust to recognize without fail and will harvest and cook. The others, I leave alone no matter how tempting they might look.

    Are there any state or county Extension Offices anywhere convenient to her? We're a small community but do have an extension office just a few miles away. If no one there knew, I suspect they would know someone to call who would know....

    Ninapearl thanked morz8 - Washington Coast
  • Ninapearl thanked amylou321
  • last year

    amylou thanks for this, it looks to be very informative. i will send it to my friend!

  • last year

    I ask my DH who knows mushrooms generally but this is Washington. Anyway your mushroom has a veil-that ring around the stem that you can see and that is generally not a good thing in a mushroom. Still it is really hard to identify this way. You can take a fresh cap and put it on a piece of white paper to see what color the spores are. That can help. Rake the lawn and mulch them in? Hopefully not mushrooms.

    Ninapearl thanked Patriciae
  • last year
    last modified: last year

    Fungi come and go - some last only 1 day. You could remove every mushroom you see only to have others spring up anew within days.

    And then there are slime molds.

    This reminded me that my friend told me about their young Airedale acting strangely lethargic some time back. They had no idea, but guessed he might've eaten something outside. He's fine now.

    A dog can gulp something down in a second. Insinuating that's somehow the owner's fault is neither helpful nor kind.

    Ninapearl thanked carolb_w_fl_coastal_9/10
  • last year

    Can an owner with a mouthy dog do things that are helpful to avoid problems?

  • last year

    Mushrooms generally have their season because what we see is the fruiting body and the mycelium in the soil have to build up to the point of fruiting. This mushroom is not particularly obvious. Too tiny for it to attract mushroom eaters. Most books and we have several either show you edibles or dont eat this specimens. I dont know if the collar on the stem really indicates anything. I did take mycology in college and my professor who had had a bad experience was very anti eating wild ones. I actually found an unknown iridescent Myxomycete that my professor took and probably named after himself. So it goes. It is hard to imagine a dog sucking up these tiny things. Some times mean people toss poisoned things into people's yards.

    Ninapearl thanked Patriciae
  • last year
    last modified: last year

    Nina, I’m sorry to hear about your friends dog being so ill and I’m glad he’s on the mend.

    My late husband and I used to spend hours foraging for wild mushrooms – – both to eat selective mushrooms, but also to identify mushrooms and learn about them. He grew up foraging for mushrooms in Europe, and he was also very academically oriented and was aware and cautious about eating any mushroom that wasn’t positively identified and not just from a book.

    I probably have about 15 mushroom books. I’ve also taken a mushroom class. It was very elementary but interesting. One of the things that instructor said was a caution about little brown mushrooms or “LBMs.” Most of them are inedible, often toxic, and too small to bother with from any culinary point of view.

    I have owned dogs and I’ve never seen any of my dogs eat any mushroom or go to any mushroom; in fact I would think that if I had a bowl of grocery store, button mushrooms, the dogs would not be interested in them. (I mean raw from the grocery store, not put into butter.)

    The other thing is that from those above photos, unless somebody knows these mushrooms well — like the face of a friend, they are not going to be able to to identify what mushroom it is from photos that are less than optimal. For the most part, a lot more detail and information is required to identify a mushroom.

    Of course there are well-known culinary mushrooms, or legendary, toxic mushrooms that are easy to identify. And some are so characteristically unique you can identify them while driving past them in a car.

    I don’t think that attempting to eradicate mushrooms in a yard would be a fruitful enterprise, because, as you probably know, they can just pop up and a lot of the mushroom is under the soil. It’s only the fruiting bodies that emerge – – say following rain.

    Her great dane might have consumed or swallowed anything, if indeed consuming or swallowing an item was the cause of the gastrointestinal damage.

    I’m relieved to hear that the dane is now okay.

    Edited

    Ninapearl thanked petalique