With Valentine's Day coming up, there's a good chance that you'll have a little more chocolate around the house. A
recent article in
the Star-Gazette serves as a well-timed reminder for dog owners to be careful where they leave that oh-so-thoughtful
Godiva gift box. As someone whose (small) dog has taken down half a bag of Tollhouse morsels, I can tell you that the
after-effects are not at all fun. At least it wasn't a chocolate lab (I'm sure there's a vet joke out there
somewhere).As some of you may know, it's the caffeine and theobromine in chocolate that can elevate your dog's heart rate to dangerous levels, induce seizures, vomiting and other stomach problems and, in some cases, even kill them. The darker and purer a chocolate is, the higher the levels of caffeine and theobromine and the more toxic it is to your pup. According to the Star-Gazette article, it would take a pound of baking chocolate to do in a 30-pound dog. Really, any amount is too much. Keep the sweets out of your pooch's reach.
From my own personal experience, when our jack russell-chihuahua mix ate several ounces of chocolate chips, he became hyper (ok, more hyper) and shaky (ok, more shaky). On the advice of a vet who was nice enough to call us back on a Sunday afternoon, we force-fed him small doses of hydrogen-peroxide to induce vomiting. After much snorting and spitting and sneezing, our dog gave back far more chocolate than we suspected he had eaten. He's fine now. Lesson learned.
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