OK, I take it back!

[Eliz222]

Got home from work tonight and found some of my wrapped presents torn apart!!! Those little dickens...they ate a chocolate "wine' bottle I was going to give my son, and tore apart some bath tablets that were shaped into ducks..for my daughter. They almost got to the chocolate flavered coffee by tearing through two packages. Thankfully they didn't reach the coffee!

Holiday Ho Ho Ho!!!

ps. Dear husband was watching the dogs today....right!

Lessons learned...keep the presents, especially those that smell good, up high!!

[bubba]

Make sure they don't have a reaction to the chocolate....it's not good for dogs!

pat.

[Eliz222]

Thanks, bubba, I will keep a close eye on her tonight. The "bottle" was small, and it was hollow, so that is good. She even left the foil wrapping on the floor! She usually eats that too.....sigh.

[bradl]

Eating chocolate scares me.

[Eliz222]

Should I take her in tonight?? We are not sure when she ate the chocolate. This is her first time getting into chocolate, so I don't know what to expect.

[bradl]

You may wish to call. They may suggest inducing vomiting. It would seem to depend on the quantity. This article suggests that if it was a small amount of milk chocolate it may be below toxic thresholds. This article has some addtional threshold suggestions.

A dose of 50 mg/lb can be fatal to a dog. Milk chocolate contains 45 mg of theobromine per ounce and unsweetened baking chocolate contains 400 mg per ounce.

Google: chocolate toxicity dogs

[CathyAnn]

Shoe...hope she is ok??

Please give an update when ya can.

Cathy

[wheezie23]

Y'all might remember the incident I had with Zoe. My daughter had received a basket of candy from her boyfriend for Valentine's day. I told her to keep her bedroom door closed, but apparently it wasn't closed tight enough. While I was at work, Zoe got into her bedroom and got into the candy. When I came home from work, she was very happy to see me. I noticed that she was all out of water, which I found odd since I always filled it up when I fed her. Then I started "seeing" what had happened. She had vomited on my loveseat, on the carpet, in the boys room, and in my daughter's room twice. This is what she ate:

1 Three Musketeers Bar

1 Dove Bar

3 Pecan Turtles

1 Package of Reeses Peanutbutter Cups

3 packs of Wrigley's gum

Thankfully, she was able to vomit most of it up and was just really, really thirsty. I shudder everytime I think of what the outcome could have been. I'm extremely diligent now about putting away anything that would tempt my guys.

Shoe, I know this was a funny post, and it's turned into something else. I hope they didn't have any ill effects from the chocolate. I'm sure they'll be fine.

Thela

[Eliz222]

I'm happy to report that Finch and Scout are fine. I checked on them throughout the night and they seemed ok. I don't know if they were just lucky, or if they each shared a part of the chocolate. It was a small amount, but you never know how they will react to it. We didn't induce vomiting because you have to do this within an hour of two after they ingested the chocolate and we discovered the "mess" on the floor several hours after this time frame.

Both pups are happy and frisky this morning...whew!

Now I will never underestimate the power of a Cairn's curiosity! They tore through some thick wrapping paper and cardboard box to get to it!

[wags]

I have seen "chocolate flavor" nylabones at the pet stores. What gives?

[Scully'sMom]

Shoe, I'm sure glad that Finch and Scout are doing well. Aside from the chocolate part, it was a pretty funny story. I just had images of these two running amuck thinking, "Yo, mom's gone, let's play!"

[derecskey]

Sally,

I'm not positive, because I haven't examined the nylabone packages, but my guess is it could either be some sort of artificial chocolate flavor (think grape hard candy... there's no grapes in it usually) or it could be carob flavored. I don't really know what carob is, and had never heard of it until we had Bella, but I guess it's some sort of chocolate alternative.

Wonder why humans don't eat carob. It must have different nutritional properties. Maybe it just tastes bad....

[bradl]

I think chocolate is one of those things - like so many things - that are not "all or nothing" - indeed a small amount can be tolerated, but it can get ugly fast. I suspect the problem is that dogs like the taste and it's very easy to eat too much. Most people are not going to do the math to calculate how close they are to the LD-50 level (50% of subjects who consume X amount die) based on the weight of their dog and the darkness of the chocolate - so it's just much safer to put the subject off-limits altogether.

I was recently doing some reading about some veterinary imaging test and the recommendation for getting some dogs to eat some foul thing needed for the test included mixing it into chocolate milk. You may scoff, but I can imagine some person concluding - "chocolate milk is OK! - vets use it." This is sometimes called 'extrapolating outside the data' and we all do it sometimes, usually unwittingly.