A B.C. dog who was featured in a film about survival had a real-life brush with death in a Langley park.
Raleigh, a seven-year-old yellow lab who appeared in “The Mountain Between Us” starring Kate Winslet and Idris Elba, has recovered after barely surviving an encounter with a poisonous mushroom in McLeod Athletic park in November.
He was rushed to the Animal Emergency Clinic of the Fraser Valley (AECFV) in Langley after developing severe symptoms that included weakness, salivating, and abdominal pain.
Pieces of the poisonous mushrooms he consumed were identified when he vomited them up.
AECFV owner Dr. Nadine Koreman described it as “probably the most severe confirmed mushroom toxicity [case] that I’ve seen.”
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Severe vomiting and diarrhea led to liver failure, and over several days, Raleigh underwent what was described in a Facebook posting by the clinic as “extensive” treatment, including numerous lab tests and medications, multiple ultrasounds as well as a plasma transfusion.
“Ultimately Dr. Koreman aspirated his gallbladder, which not commonly performed in veterinary medicine, which she feels helped considerably with his recovery.”
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Dr. Koreman said the clinic sees around five serious cases a year of mushroom poisoning involving dogs, usually when the weather gets damp and more mushrooms appear.
Dog owners should keep a watchful eye on what their dog tries to eat while out on walks, and if their pet develops severe symptoms, they need to get to a vet quickly, Koreman advised.
“There’s a lot of mushrooms that doen’t cause problems, [but] there’s a lot that do,” Koreman observed.
Humans need to be careful, too.
“If they are poisonous to dogs, they are poisonous to people.”
Raleigh is credited as one of two yellow labs who play the unnamed heroic dog in the 2017 film about two strangers stranded by a plane crash on the mountain of the title.
When a promotional trailer for the film featured intense images of the dog challenging a mountain lion, it upset so many viewers that the production company, Twentieth Century Fox, felt the need to released a follow-up video to assure everyone that: “spoiler alert: the dog lives.”
In the movie, the dog belongs to the plane’s pilot, who has a heart attack in the opening minutes of the film.
“The Mountain Between Us,” based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Charles Martin, was filmed at Invermere and Panorama Mountain Village in January of 2017.
Released to mixed reviews against “Blade Runner 2049” and “My Little Pony: The Movie,” it made $62.3 million, with a production budget of $35 million.
Raleigh’s Instagram page, raleigh_ace, recorded his recovery, commenting that “2020 sure has been a doozy.”
dan.ferguson@langleyadvancetimes.com
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