Chocolate vs. Your Dog

[princessjodi]

Hi Everyone -

Joules gave me quite a scare this morning...she got into a shopping bag and ate a WHOLE Hershey candybar! LUCKILY, it was a WHITE CHOCOLATE bar.

I wasn't sure about the toxicity of white chocolate to dogs, so I bundled her up and brought her into work with me so I could keep an eye on her. I did a search on the net and found this article: http://www.dogownersdigest.com/news/...oisoning.shtml

Apparently, it is the theobromine (aka caffeine) that is lethal to dogs and it is found in the cocoa bean, therefore brown chocolate. Since white chocolate, obviously, doesn't contain cocoa it would take 250 pounds of it to make a 20 pound dog sick.

For quick reference, here is a chart of how much it takes to make your dog sick:

White chocolate: 200 ounces per pound of body weight. It takes 250 pounds of white chocolate to cause signs of poisoning in a 20-pound dog, 125 pounds for a 10-pound dog.

Milk chocolate: 1 ounce per pound of body weight. Approximately one pound of milk chocolate is poisonous to a 20-pound dog; one-half pound for a 10-pound dog. The average chocolate bar contains 2 to 3 ounces of milk chocolate. It would take 2-3 candy bars to poison a 10 pound dog. Semi-sweet chocolate has a similar toxic level.

Sweet cocoa: 0.3 ounces per pound of body weight. One-third of a pound of sweet cocoa is toxic to a 20-pound dog; 1/6 pound for a 10-pound dog.

Baking chocolate: 0.1 ounce per pound body weight. Two one-ounce squares of bakers' chocolate is toxic to a 20-pound dog; one ounce for a 10-pound dog.

I know everyone knows chocolate is bad for dogs, but I thought this article explained it a bit more and would be helpful. It sure calmed my nerves quite a bit!

[iloveamlet]

yep, i've read stuff like that, but it's good to post if cause a lot of new people come asking questions like that. this way they can look at the info directly. it's a good thing to know the exact amount that can harm dogs!!

[linnie]

Amazingly dogs just love chocolate... my girls can smell it through two closed doors.
Glad chocolate isnt bad for humans or I would have died years ago

[brandysmama]

Considering that Brandy is 65 pounds, now I won't freak out if she were to accidentally swallow a candy bar! Not that I would feed it to her, of course, but you never know...

However, maybe I should show these stats to my FIL, who's bad about letting the family miniature schnauzer eat just about anything off the table... We keep telling him that he's actually hurting the dog, not being good to him.

[Crossfire Bulldogs]

Even though there are specific amounts listed for what is "considered" as toxic please remember that even smaller amounts can cause illness as well as potential damage to the kidney, liver and other organs.

Even when small amounts are ingested it is still always wise to watch your dog closely for signs of illness as well as making contact with your veterinarian with information on how much was eaten.

[MazieDog]

We make candy trains for Christmas every year... One year, Sheba got into our stash of Hershey's kisses that we use as the smoke exaust pipe thingy (not sure what they're called, lol) and ate two bags of them. We got home and found little foil wrappers lying all around the house and then found the empty bag.. We panicked and called the vet, who were going to be closing in 15 minutes. They told us that we wouldn't get there in time and to go down to the store as fast as possible and buy two bottles of hydrogen peroxide to dump down her throat. It took three of us to get her to hold still long enough for us to do it... the first bottle, we ended up dumping on her and all over me. The second bottle, I had to straddle her, my brother had to hold her head up, and mom had to pour it down. We chained her up outside and in about 20 minutes, she threw up the chocolate. We called the vet back and told him what happened, and he said that she was suppose to throw up and it would resemble the color of chocolate, which it did. We pampered her for the next couple of days and watched for any signs of illness, which there wasn't.. Although she didn't speak to us for about a week after that...

[Ritz459]

My brother had a Black Forest Chocolate cake for his birthday once, and we set it out on the back porch to keep it cool because we had no room in the fridge. (Jake's b-day is in November.)
Our dogs found the cake and at the whole intire thing! Luckly, they didn't get sick though. lol Jacob was really mad at them though...

[Raised By Wolves]

I'm always glad when someon posts a thread like this. There are a lot of things which can harm a dog, that many first time dog owners don't know about.