Over this Easter season we can get easily carried away with all of the chocolate goodies on offer. We treat the kids, we treat ourselves and we think why not treat the family's best friend! After all how bad can a little piece of chocolate be for the dog? Well the truth is it can be very bad for our furry friends and in some cases fatal. Chocolate contains theobromine, a naturally occurring stimulant found in the cocoa bean. Theobromine increases urination and affects the central nervous system as well as heart muscle.
Dark chocolate contains far higher levels than milk chocolate but that doesn't mean milk chocolate is danger free. Once a dog tastes chocolate they will ever after crave it and they won't be able to differentiate between dark and milk!
I felt compelled to write this as our household went through a chocolate trauma over the Christmas holidays. My partner and I returned from a lovely lunch in town to find an empty gold box and chocolate wrappers strewn across the dining room floor. 500g of Dark Belgian Chocolates, minus a few that had been eaten, were now inside one or both of the dogs. We couldn't tell as neither were showing any signs and we hadn't caught them in the act.
We got straight on to Google and with the help of this amazing calculator
http://www.askavetquestion.com/chocolate_toxicity.php we knew it was an immediate trip to the Vet.
They were given drugs to make them sick and therefore get any toxins out of their systems more quickly. We were convinced that Cookie, our Chocolate Lab was the culprit, after all his favourite party trick is stealing things from the counter tops. As it turned out it was Maddy, the Lab/Collie cross, who had in fact eaten all of the goodies as she is the one who got sick...wrappers and all. Thanks to the vet nurses for dealing with all of that.
In the end all turned out OK as we acted quickly and made sure they were seen by a Vet. We took turns staying with them through the night to make sure no other symptoms occurred. That was one expensive box of chocolates, both emotionally and financially! I'm still tempted to load up on the Cadbury's Creme Eggs but you can be sure I won't be sharing with the furries.
