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Dogs & chocolate: a toxic combination

I was at a friend’s this weekend and as she was seeing me off, her 14 year old terrier gobbled up half a plate of chocolates. She got him to the vet just in time but he could easily have died, because pure chocolate is highly toxic for dogs!

Not everyone is aware of this, but pure chocolate and dogs really don’t mix. The purer the choc, the worse it is for your mutt. So be careful, not only at christmas and easter, chocolate fests if ever there were any! but also on normal, average days: 40 grams of pure chocolate will kill a 50 pound dog within 80 minutes.

The best thing would of course be to avoid chocolate all together, or switch to milk varieties, but even if you’re an addict to the pure stuff, there’s no need to banish all choc from your life. Just don’t leave it lying around where your pooch can get at it. And don’t think that just because you have a well-trained, saintly dog she will never dive into a plate of sweet choc, because she just might and do you really want to run that risk????

My friend’s dog is a very well behaved dog and would never have swiped anything from a table, but he’s getting on and these days there’s no knowing what he’ll get up to.
So:
1) Be careful with pure chocolate
2) Don’t put out platters with easter eggs, christmassy, chocolate things where your dog could possibly get at them
3) educate your kids, your friends, your parents, that chocolate will indeed kill the dog. Often when you say you don’t want people to feed your dog they’ll think you’re being over zealous, but if you explain it’ll stop his heart, they’ll sit up and take notice!
4) Dog has gotten at the choc after all? Try and guess how much he’s gobbled up. Try and get him to vomit.

Useful data on choc & dogs:
This is from Kirk and Bistner’s Handbook of Veterinary Procedures and Emergency Treatment (6th edition):
* The half life of choc in a dog is 17.5 hours
* The Toxic dose in a dog is 100-150 mg/kg.
o A kilogram (kg) = 2.2 lbs.
o A milligram(mg) = 1/1000 of a gram

The concentration of theobromine varies with the formulation of the chocolate so:
* Milk chocolate has 44mg/oz (154mg/100gm): toxic dose for 50 lb dog – 50 oz of milk chocolate.
* Semisweet chocolate has 150 mg/oz (528mg/100gm): toxic dose for 50 lb dog – 15 oz of semisweet chocolate
* Baking chocolate 390mg/oz (1365 mg/100gm): toxic dose for 50 lb dog – 5 oz of baking chocolate

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