Police investigate dangerous dog treats turning up in Lakeville yards
Dog owners in the Twin Cities suburb of Lakeville are on high alert after tainted dog treats have been found in their neighborhood. They believe someone is deliberately trying to harm their pets.
Nails, screws, pins and balls of steel wool have been hidden in hot dogs and other dog treats, and some pets have ingested them and had to be hospitalized.
Some neighbors also found pills inside. A veterinarian tells KMSP the contents of the pills are unknown, but speculates it could be a homemade concoction using "some sort of rat poison or antifreeze."
Seth Paulson tells WCCO he was taking his dog Trucker for a walk, when he noticed something was off.
“I saw that it wasn’t something ordinary that a dog would eat, and I told him to spit it out and saw it was a nail,” Paulson says.
It was a piece of a hot dog with a half-inch screw inside. The Paulson family found more suspicious hot dogs, went on a door-to-door campaign and found more food in other yards – even "balls of steel wool with unknown capsules inside," WCCO reports.
Lindsay Durland, who lives in the neighborhood, had 11 screws removed from her dog's stomach. Another swallowed a hot dog with an open safety pin. Her two dogs were both hospitalized.
Lakeville police are investigating as a criminal case.
