Are several pill-laden meatballs found along a local stream an attempt to poison dogs? That’s what the Animal Welfare League of Arlington is trying to determine.

On Thursday, a local mother wrote to a local email listserv to warn about meatballs her dog scarfed up along Four Mile Run in Bluemont Park. The meatballs, she said, contained what her vet thought was rat poison. (The vet was able to quickly induce vomiting and the dog is expected to be okay.)

The story quickly made its way around other local listservs and attracted the attention of Fox 5, which interviewed the dog owner.

“For me, it’s a sick psychopath or something like that,” Natascha Weber told Fox 5’s Lauren DeMarco. “I have no idea why somebody would do something like that.”

AWLA is testing the meatballs, the organization’s COO, Susan Sherman, told ARLnow.com Friday.

“We received a call [Thursday] afternoon from a resident who thinks her dog may have ingested poisoned meat while they were walking in Bluemont Park at the intersection of Four Mile Run trail, near the stream,” Sherman said. “The dog owner gathered some of the meat and kept it refrigerated. We are picking up the sample now and will send it to a lab for testing.”

A similar incident was reported last year, after a resident found sausages stuffed with caffeine pills along a residential street near Lee Highway.

As of Tuesday morning, Sherman said the testing was still in progress and it will likely be a week before we know what exactly was in the meat.

The original listserv email is below.