Chemotherapy and Dogs

For anyone who missed me (is anyone actually out there?), this post will explain the absence. I am facing a new cancer, and have been in a whirlwind of visits to a variety of medical specialties, eating up huge chunks of time. Now I have started ongoing treatment, and the new-to-me addition is IV chemotherapy. And something dog-related cropped up almost immediately.
In the treatment center, chemo patients are advised to flush twice to protect themselves and family members from the potent chemo drugs being excreted in their urine and feces. And the staff even had the foresight to mention that dogs should most definitely be kept from drinking from the toilet bowl. I was impressed that they had thought this far!
As you probably know if you think about it, sooner or later, almost any drug you take winds up in at least trace amounts in that toilet bowl. Hence part of the source of prescription drugs detectable in streams and rivers (other sources are unwisely dumping unwanted drugs down the toilet). So although dogs drinking out of toilets has long been fodder for the humor mill, it's actually not so funny. Don't let your dog ingest potentially harmful drugs. . . or, at the very least, those products so many people hang in their toilet tanks to help keep the bowl clean.
The extremely simple solution is to keep the lid down. In conjunction with that, always provide plenty of clean fresh water for your dogs. And there will be no need to lap out of that bowl.