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chocolate sick
Very much YES! Overindulging the right amount and type of chocolate is not good for your pooch. Overindulgence causes gastric accidents and possibly death. Awareness from everyone is most important during chocolate times. Informing everyone in your dog’s kingdom from our uncle to the children that everyone should keep chocolate out of pooch reach or they get to clean it up!
The two toxic chemicals in chocolate to dogs (and cats) are caffeine and theobromine. Dogs are much more sensitive to the effects, they cannot metabolize theobromine and caffeine as well as people can. The theobromine amount varies with the chocolate type. The more bitter and darker, the more dangerous it is to dogs and better for humans.
Too Much
To put this in perspective, a medium-sized dog weighing 50 pounds would only need to eat 1 ounce of baker’s chocolate, or 9 ounces of milk chocolate, to potentially show signs of poisoning. For many dogs, ingesting small amounts of milk chocolate is not harmful.
Chocolate Poisoning Signs
In older pets that eat a large amount of high-quality dark or baking chocolate, sudden death from cardiac arrest may occur, especially in dogs with preexisting heart disease. In the severest cases, muscle tremors, seizures, and heart failure occur. For many dogs, the most common clinical signs are vomiting and diarrhea, increased thirst, panting or restlessness, excessive urination, and a racing heart rate.
Any doubt justifies, seeking immediate treatment by a veterinarian. Complications can arise even from vomiting. Again, the chocolate type, amount, size, and health of your dog all play heavily upon the outcome. Seek a professional.
Poisoning
Chocolate poisoning can last several days and take hours to display symptoms. Recovering may require an IV replacing lost fluids that the bladder has re-absorbed the theobromine. Also encourage frequent urination. Contacting your veterinarian when you know your dog has consumed chocolate to take care of your fur buddy.
Symptoms
For low toxicity poisoning, signs look for vomiting, diarrhea, drooling and gastrointestinal signs. Also agitation and hyperactivity. Cardiac signs like racing heart, arrhythmias, and high blood pressure occur at higher levels. Beyond that twitching, tremors or seizures causing medical complications or death.
Treatments
Early treatment, will depend upon the type and amount of chocolate consumed. If caught early enough medically inducing vomiting to remove the stomach contents. Blocking absorption using charcoal is also practiced. Your vet may provide IV fluids, medications to slow or stabilize heart rate, and increase urination.
Ingesting a small amount of chocolate is usually not dangerous as long as everyone doesn’t “give a little bit.” Taking care of fur friends means displaying and storing chocolate out of reach. Basically, overdoing chocolate can be trouble for everyone, furry or not!