Moruya resident Kate Raymond was visiting her parents in Canberra when she got a call from her 15-year-old daughter with shocking news.
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The family's four-year-old rescue dog, Frank, had eaten some "red and blue cubes" strung on a piece of wire, which Kate quickly determined was rat poison.
"My daughter brought the dogs out for their morning business, and she noticed Frank eating these strange red and blue cubes that were strung onto a piece of wire tied in a loop," Ms Raymond said.
"She didn't know what it was and she couldn't stop him from eating it, so she contacted me and told me there was this weird stuff he'd eaten.
"She drew it for me and sent a photo, and I thought 'that's rat poison'."
What followed was a "pretty intense" half an hour when the Raymond family tried to rush their beloved dog to the vet.
"I was freaking out, I was worried about my daughters and whether they'd find it stressful," Ms Raymond said.
"For a while I was thinking about how the heck I was going to get this dog to the vet. It was a pretty intense half-an-hour while we got the wheels in motion."
Thankfully, Ms Raymond had a friend who was able to drop everything and take her daughters and Frank to the vet quickly enough to stop any potentially deadly impact from the poison.
"We got onto the vet who was relaxed at first, but when I told her how much he'd eaten, it was action stations," Ms Raymond said.
"A friend took my kids and the dog to the vet, and it was all dealt with in about an hour.
"He was induced to vomit and given a vitamin-K based antidote.
"He's fine now because we got onto it quickly, but now we've got three weeks of daily medication because you can't stop all the poison from getting into his system. We just have to keep an eye on him now."
Ms Raymond said she contacted the police about the incident, but they were unable to determine whether it was a deliberate act.
She now wants to spread the message of how important safe and responsible use of poisons is.
"I don't want to think it was deliberate, but what does concern me is someone has used poison in this dangerous manner, and somehow it's ended up in my backyard," Ms Raymond said.
"Imagine if I had toddlers who had found it? These poisons are meant to be used in the proper containers that are critter proof, and they need to be used responsibly.
"Somehow chunks of this poison has ended up in my backyard, and that's really concerning.
"If you put poison in your backyard, it has to stay there. You could come up with a million different theories on how this poison got into my backyard, but the point is a human put that bait out, and it was used in an unsafe manner."