My MinPin friend did the post mortem biopsy with her second dog because after the first one she had mushroom specialists come out and tell her it wasn't mushrooms, that the mushrooms in her yard were not the poisonous kind. Opps, she has four other dogs!! Well, the next dead dog proved them wrong, sadly. These two dogs were dead within 5 days of symptoms. Really, really sad. She has other dogs. She always has. They have always gone into this yard, it's her fenced in back yard for the dogs. Luckily, she does have a fenced in front yard, so since last year her dogs are only allowed in her front yard. This fall she thinks she found the mushrooms in her back yard -
With confirmation from some other mushroom specialist, these are called "Death Caps" and what killed her two dogs. They look so "normal", so benign. She wants to move. She has lived in this family home for many years. It's an awful situation. Getting rid of them isn't easy, so they say. Basically, one would need to bleach the whole yard, remove all plant material and start over with different types of growth. Here is what the mushroom person said -" It appears to be a species introduced from Europe over the years, and she has done some elegant tracking studies. Amanita phalloides has an ectomycorrhyzal association with trees, often oaks or other hard woods. This means it may well be helping your trees. My closest connection to it is that it is easily confused with the paddy straw mushroom that southeast Asians eat in Asia. They tend to find phalloides here, assume it is fine to eat, and get poisoned. Every year we seem to hear of a poisoning or two. I teach lots of southeast Asian 3rd graders, and make it my business to tell them *not* to let their families collect mushrooms here, unless they talk to me! There is reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, and there is survival!"
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