Black Walnut is Toxic for Dogs
Beware. One of the most beautiful woods used by all YouTube woodworkers is a neurotoxin, for dogs. I’ll explain the symptoms and what to do if your dog has been affected by black walnut and I’ll share my story about how I, or rather my dog Ginger, found out.
Symptoms
Black Walnut wood is toxic to dogs especially when the wood, bark, or nut husks are left out they can develop a fungus which is a neurotoxin and can cause the most harm to your animals when ingested. Even clean, kiln dried wood, which has killed the fungus on the wood, doesn’t mean it’s safe. Walnut wood contains the mycotoxin Penitrem A. The dust from black walnut can cause these symptoms to occur.
Panting
Restlessness
Excess salivation
Vomiting
Incoordination
Tremors in the muscles
Fever
Hyperresponsiveness to stimuli
Seizures
Liver damage (signs could be jaundice, abdominal pain, and fatigue)
Death
My Dog Was Exposed, What Do I Do?
If symptoms are sever, take your dog to the veterinarian immediately. They will assess the severity and provide proper treatment.
The good news is, if symptoms are in the top 3 - 4 above, likely your dog will recover at home, give them plenty of rest and a few extra snuggles.
After you realize your dog has been exposed to black walnut, the first step you must take is to remove them from the source. That means get them out of the garage or shop and clean up as best you can. If the exposure was from a tree in your yard, clean up the walnuts, sticks, and leaves and keep your dog away from the area. Second, help them rest, they will need it. Provide plenty of water to help flush the toxins out of their system and monitor their potty activities to make sure their stool is normal looking. If they aren’t recovering by day 2, consult with your vet.
Having a sick pet is scary, especially since they can’t communicate how they are feeling, so be diligent and pay attention to the signs and symptoms. If something looks off, address it immediately. The last thing you want is over exposure which can result in sever consequences.
Ginger’s Encounter
At the time I knew none of this about black walnut, so please learn from my mistake.
I’ll begin by saying, Ginger is happy and healthy, recovering after a few days of rest and leaving me hyper-vigilant when working with black walnut.
In 2019 I was still a novice woodworker and like many beginners, I wanted cheap or even free wood. Being the thrifty person I am I went to Craigslist to find people giving away wood from downed trees on their property and stumbled upon a load of black walnut, the holy grail. I thought I hit the jackpot, but instead I ended up with a truckload of half rotted wood.
The culprit. You can see the bits of debris causing Ginger to get sick.
I had the idea to take this rotted wood and remove the bad wood so I could turn the rest into lumber or even pour some brightly colored epoxy in the voids to make a cool table. Thank goodness I didn’t follow that trend.
But I did break out the power washer, hatchet, and safety glasses and got to work removing the rot and cleaning the wood up, letting the rotted bits fly all over the driveway.
All the while my dog Ginger, who was 2 at the time, had her tennis ball and was rip roaring ready for her favorite activity, fetch. She does this thing where she will put the ball down and kick it with her front paws to send it toward me so I’ll throw it.
As I worked, I would pick up the ball and throw it for her. But as I worked the soaking wet, rotted walnut fragments were hitting the ground, being picked up as the ball rolled over them to end up in Ginger’s mouth as she loyally returned the ball to me. Being 2, she had endless energy, so we did this roughly 250 times in the 3 hours I was out working.
What I started noticing was all the saliva. She isn’t a drooly dog, but the drool was getting to be a lot. Enough that I could notice it amongst the driveway filth and it made me a little worried. I also noticed she was panting, normal for a dog working so hard. Thinking she was getting tired but persistent to keep getting her fix to satiate her tennis ball addiction I decided it was time to put down the pressure washer wand, pick up the ball, and take a break.
We clean up and headed inside and that’s when I noticed she was walking a little funny. At first I thought her feet hurt from running on the blacktop, but it wasn’t a, “my feet hurt” walk. It was a, “I had too many drinks on a Friday night and can’t walk straight” kind of walk.
I got her to her bed, watching her lay there, salivating and panting as if she was in pain and I knew something was really wrong. I broke out my phone and started researching. Unfortunately, at the time there wasn’t much information about black walnuts and dogs. Eventually I found an anecdotal account on a forum where a farmer talked about how every fall when the leaves fell on the farm, the horse trough would fill with leaves and it would make the horses and dogs sick, the dogs would also drink their water from the trough. That’s when I knew it was the walnut all along and forever since I have been extremely cautious when working with black walnut. I take my dust collection up a notch, sweeping up and vacuuming more often than normal and putting all my offcuts up in a separate, out of reach bin. Ginger likes stealing scraps and taking them into the yard to use as chew toys.
Back to Ginger, I kept an eye on her and let her rest. After three days she was back to her normal, crazy self. Luckily I stopped the play when I did, who knows what could have happened if she consumed more material.
So let Ginger’s experience be a lesson to you, keep your dogs away from all things black walnut.
