If you asked 10 dog owners to name a food that’s dangerous to dogs, chances are 9 of them would come up with chocolate.
Unlike lesser-known dangerous foods like macadamia nuts and grapes, the word is out about chocolate and its potential dangers when consumed by dogs. The increasing popularity of chocolate in the U.S., especially dark chocolate, has probably contributed to this, and now most of us know someone who has a dog that’s been treated for ingesting chocolate.
But there are still some things you likely don’t know about chocolate poisoning and its potential complications. Read on to learn some helpful facts that might save your dog’s life.
Dogs love chocolate, and they know what it smells like
People seem genuinely surprised to find out that their dog actually loves chocolate. When you think about it, it does seem a little counterintuitive, since they’re generally meat eaters.
However, I have treated twelve year-old Beagles that wouldn’t get off the couch if the house were on fire climb to the top shelf of a bookcase to apprehend and devour a giant Hershey bar. I’ve made dogs vomit after they ate an entire bucket of kid’s Halloween candy, wrappers and all. And I have seen dogs extract chocolate-containing presents from under the Christmas tree with surgical precision, consuming wrapping paper and all in the frenzy to consume the chocolate inside.
Never assume your dog won’t eat chocolate if given the chance.
White chocolate isn’t chocolate
White chocolate actually doesn’t contain any chocolate. It’s made from cocoa butter, but not chocolate solids (cocoa powder). So while eating white chocolate might cause some vomiting and diarrhea in your dog, he’s not going to have the often serious symptoms associated with chocolate toxicity.
What are the symptoms of chocolate toxicity? It depends upon the dose. Just like pretty much everything we do in veterinary medicine relating to dogs, dosage is important. This is because we work on 4 pound Yorkies and 150 pound Great Danes. What’s toxic to a very small dog may not cause a problem in a giant breed.
Most veterinarians keep a chocolate toxicity “calculator” handy. Typically a spreadsheet or similar software, if you can tell your vet approximately how much chocolate your dog ate, and what kind it was (semi-sweet, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, etc.) he can usually tell you whether to come in for treatment or not, and what to expect.
On the mild end of the spectrum we can see vomiting and diarrhea. As the amount ingested increases, we’ll often see agitation and nervousness, and we’ll hear a fast heart rate and breathing rate. With severe poisoning dogs can have elevated body temperatures and blood pressure, along with seizures and even comas. If sufficient amounts are ingested, death can occur.
Chocolate mulch is poisonous to dogs
Several years back someone had the brilliant idea of selling the leftovers from cocoa bean processing as garden mulch. Great for the environment, and your back yard smells like chocolate, right?
No, actually not a great idea. Many dogs enjoy chewing on mulch, and quite a few got chocolate toxicosis as a result of chewing on cocoa mulch. Similar to ingesting chocolate candy, the amount ingested determined the clinical signs. Cocoa mulch has caused quite a number of poisonings in dogs, so if you have a dog and a backyard, it’s best to choose a different kind of mulch.
Beware the “special” brownies
Now that several states in the U.S. have legalized recreational and/or medicinal marijuana, veterinarians are treating double toxicities – chocolate and pot. And while most marijuana poisonings aren’t terribly serious when the plant form of the drug is ingested, the delicious nature of many pot-containing edibles often means that dogs not only ingest very large amounts of chocolate but also large amounts of marijuana and THC, the psychoactive chemical in it.
Double poisonings involve treating dogs with often severe vomiting, cardiac problems like arrhythmias, and seizures. Sometimes these dogs even need to be put on a ventilator to assist breathing, if the marijuana toxicosis is severe. Suffice it to say that if you have these products in your house and you have a dog you should take as much care with them as if you had a small child around who could potentially ingest them.
The safest place to induce vomiting is in a vet’s office
I once worked with a veterinary technician whose dog frequently ate things he shouldn’t. She claimed he could recognize the brown plastic of a hydrogen peroxide bottle and would run when she got it out.
Hydrogen peroxide causes vomiting in dogs because it creates millions of tiny air bubbles in the stomach. The agitation caused by all of these bubbles effervescing in the stomach is usually quite effective at causing vomiting. Often owners will take matters into their own hands when their dog has eaten chocolate and will give their dog hydrogen peroxide at home to induce vomiting.
First of all, as mentioned above sometimes we don’t need to induce vomiting, if the dose of chocolate is small enough. There is a great chocolate toxicity calculator at www.petmd.com/dog/chocolate-toxicity.
Second of all, hydrogen peroxide can be extremely irritating to the GI tract, especially if the concentration is above 3%. Dogs can get severe esophagitis and gastritis from ingesting hydrogen peroxide.
Finally, if the chocolate was ingested much more than 45 minutes prior to hydrogen peroxide administration, you’re likely to get very little of it back up. Most of it will be in the small intestine, and the dog needs to see a vet and have activated charcoal administered to bind the toxins in the intestine, and possibly other supportive care.
Vets typically have a drug called apomorphine. It’s given either intravenously or dissolved in the eye socket, and it’s extremely effective at inducing vomiting with minimal side effects. So if your dog ingests chocolate, the best course of action is to call a vet for advice on how to proceed.