Last night I was, not surprisingly, watching TV and snacking. Upon dropping a pistachio nut on the floor, Winnie very helpfully got up and ate it, shell and all. Not alarming, certainly. Doubtful it would appear in a list of the top 30 concerning things our dogs have eaten. But I thought I had remembered hearing something about nuts being toxic and since I had my laptop on my laptop, I did a quick Google:
"my dog ate a pistachio."While some of the search results were responses to inquiries by people whose dogs ate large amounts of pistachios, it's comical to me how directly contradicting the results are. Below is a sampling of the opinions found on just the first two pages of search results:
“Pistachios contain high amounts of phosphorus which can cause bladder stones in dogs.”
“He should be fine.”
“extremely poisonous.”
“Dogs can just about eat anything.”
“my dog ate one and almost died.”
“Pistachio nuts naturally contain aflatoxin, a fungal Aspergillus strain.”
“they contain an unknown kind of toxin.”
“causes liver degeneration/failure/cancer and possibly liver necrosis.”
“my dog eats them, and she is fine.”
“Call a vet.”
“he will be just fine.”
“They have been known to cause symptoms as severe as seizuring and hind end paralysis.”
“Pistachio nuts have never been shown to cause neurologic signs.”
“I would get him to your vet ASAP.”
“Pistachio nuts are not toxic to dogs.”
“Pistachios can be highly toxic to dogs.”
And FINALLY, one voice of reason slipped through the web of opinions:
“Call the animal poison control instead of asking strangers on the internet. Their phone number is 1-888-426-4435.”
Well by this time both Winnie and I had lost interest in the exercise. She is of course fine, no signs of paralysis or liver necrosis. But that is a good phone number to have on hand.
We're getting a really beautiful snow here today, even though it was predicted to go farther south. 
Last night I was, not surprisingly, watching TV and snacking. Upon dropping a pistachio nut on the floor, Winnie very helpfully got up and ate it, shell and all. Not alarming, certainly. Doubtful it would appear in a list of the top 30 concerning things our dogs have eaten. But I thought I had remembered hearing something about nuts being toxic and since I had my laptop on my laptop, I did a quick Google: "my dog ate a pistachio."
We've been feeding both Winnie and Gromit the same Regal dog food for several months and are very happy with it. The price is a lot lower than we're used to (we switched from Eagle Pack when that became difficult to find around here), plus the store I get it from has a card where you buy 12 bags and your 13th is free.
These two match up nicely.
Here's a view of our house from across the river. In the bottom left of this picture you can see the shelter.
Here is a closeup of those luxurious accommodations at the riverbank.
And here is that shelter today! (I know I should have brought the kayak up, but I had no idea it would get this high!)
Another view of the shelter from farther away. Those stairs in the lower right, there are I think four steps underwater.
I put this in there because this is about as low as the river ever gets. You can see the bottom of the shelter on the left part of the photo. The river today is about eighteen feet higher than it is in this picture!
The river is rising fast! Massive rain on top of saturated ground is sending a stunning volume of water down the Potomac.
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