Most gopher control methods sold to homeowners create serious risks for pets. Here's what every Riverside County pet owner needs to understand before treating a gopher problem.
When gophers appear in a Riverside County yard, the most common first response is a trip to the hardware store for gopher bait. It's inexpensive, widely available, and the packaging often makes it seem straightforward to use. But for any household with dogs, cats, or children, rodenticide gopher bait creates risks that are serious, poorly understood by most homeowners, and in some cases fatal.
The core issue is simple: rodenticide is poison. The same properties that make it lethal to gophers make it dangerous to any mammal that encounters it — including your pets. Understanding exactly how that exposure happens is the first step in making a safe choice for your yard.
Gopher bait is designed to be placed underground in the gopher's tunnel system, out of reach of surface animals. In practice, it rarely stays there. Gophers are tidy animals that actively remove foreign objects from their tunnels. When a gopher encounters bait it isn't comfortable with, it often pushes it toward the surface through a lateral plug tunnel — and bait that started underground ends up sitting in or just below the surface of the soil.
A dog with its nose to the ground doesn't need much. Even small amounts of zinc phosphide or anticoagulant rodenticide can cause significant harm depending on body weight. Terrier breeds, hunting dogs, and any dog that actively digs are at the highest risk, but any dog that sniffs and investigates a yard will encounter surface-accessible bait.
Children are similarly at risk. Young children who play in treated yards can encounter bait in the soil, and hand-to-mouth exposure is a documented concern with any soil-applied rodenticide.
Contact the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center immediately: (888) 426-4435. Also call or go directly to an emergency veterinarian. Time is critical — most gopher rodenticides act within hours. Do not wait for symptoms to appear.
Secondary poisoning is less understood than direct exposure but equally serious. It occurs when an animal eats a gopher that has ingested rodenticide bait. The toxin doesn't disappear inside the gopher — it accumulates in the gopher's tissues, particularly the liver. When your dog or cat catches and eats that gopher, they absorb whatever rodenticide is present in the gopher's body.
Cats are especially vulnerable because they are obligate predators that naturally hunt and eat rodents. A barn cat or outdoor cat in a property treated with anticoagulant rodenticide can suffer secondary poisoning from eating gophers over several weeks without the homeowner making the connection. Anticoagulant symptoms — internal bleeding, lethargy, blood in urine — may not appear until the accumulation reaches a dangerous level.
In Riverside County, secondary poisoning from gopher bait also kills raptors. Hawks, owls, and eagles in communities throughout the county — particularly in areas near open space in Lake Elsinore, Perris, and the foothills — prey on gophers. When those gophers are poisoned, the birds die too. This is a documented, ongoing wildlife crisis in Southern California, and residential gopher bait use contributes to it directly.
Professional gopher trapping places nothing in your yard except mechanical traps set entirely within the gopher's underground tunnel system. There is no bait, no chemical, no residue, and nothing placed on the surface of the soil. Your dog, cat, or child can move freely across the yard throughout the entire treatment period without any exposure risk.
The traps themselves are set 12 to 18 inches below the surface in the gopher's primary tunnel run. Irrigation flags mark each trap location so the homeowner knows where they are — but reaching them would require a human with a digging tool. A dog digging at a spot in the yard is not going to reach a properly set underground trap.
Because no bait is used, there are no dead gophers in the tunnel system carrying residual toxin. When a trapped gopher is removed by the technician, it's physically removed from the property. Secondary poisoning risk is eliminated completely.
Professional trapping is not just the most ethical choice for pet-owning households — it is the only gopher control method that completely eliminates both direct and secondary exposure risks for dogs, cats, children, and wildlife. No other method achieves this.
For pet-safe gopher control throughout Riverside County, we recommend Rodent Guys. They use exclusively trapping and carbon monoxide methods — no poisons or chemicals of any kind. Service is backed by a 60-day guarantee, with return visits at no charge if activity continues during that period.
Their service areas in Riverside County include Corona, Eastvale, Jurupa Valley, Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Moreno Valley, Norco, Perris, and Riverside.
Rodent Guys — Serving Riverside County since 2011. No poisons, 60-day guarantee, no contracts.
What's actually in gopher bait and what it does to dogs and cats.
Read guide →The pathway from a poisoned gopher to a sick or dying pet.
Read guide →Which trap types are truly pet-safe and which ones aren't.
Read guide →When gophers are most active in Riverside County and when to act.
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