EMERGENCY SERVICE HELPS SAVE OUR PETS' LIVES

From dogs swallowing batteries and a penguin that can't stop licking paint to an owl high on LSD...just a few of the cases handled by the poisoned animal team

- BY SUE LEE

Wobbly tigers, drunk canaries and hallucinating birds of prey make up a few of the 380,000 cases on the database of a unique emergency service.

Manned 24 hours a day all year, the Animal Poison Line at the Veterinary Poisons Information Service takes some extremely unusual calls.

"We had a call where a tiger had been accidentally given too much worming medication and the animal was a bit wobbly," Head of Service Nicola Robinson tells the Mirror.

"Tigers are tricky to treat. They have to be sedated but we were able to reassure the zoo the effects would wear off.

"Then we had a penguin who would insist on licking the paint in the aquarium if it started to peel.

"We had a couple of calls about him - he was a repeat offender."

Inquiries from worried owners of pets that have chomped on everything from superglue to hearing aids account for many of the VPIS's 25,000 annual calls.

Explaining how this little known service was founded in 1992, Nicola says: "We used to be part of the NHS, because there was a human poison centre in London - Guy's Poison Unit.

"Doctors across the UK could access it but so too could vets. They had nothing of their own, so would ring there. We grew out of that."

The service then became a private firm in 2011 and is the only pet poison centre in the UK.

Nicola - who qualified as a vet in 1999 - is keen to expand the public helpline, manned by vets, toxicology experts and veterinary nurses.

She says: "I felt strongly that owners should have access to our information.