Chocolate poisoning in dogs

barbara · Chocolate poisoning in dogs

Yesterday late afternoon whilst we were walking some of the dogs Merlin and Bret (brothers of twelve and a half years old) opened the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs and hunted about in the bedrooms until they found a 200gm Lindt bunny in a carrier bag in a rucksack. When we arrived back I found the gate open and the dogs upstairs with said bunny which had been half eaten and luckily they had chosen the milk one rather than the dark chocolate. I wasn't too worried as they have stolen chocolate before with no ill effects, but a few hours later Bret was very sick and started to shake and was sick again a little later. So just after midnight I had to phone our vet who met me at the surgery. He put Bret on a fluid drip and sedated him through the drip. I asked if I could take him home with the drip and he said that would be fine ( I would have been gutted if I had left him at the vets and he had died in the night). He slept by the bed with the drip hung on a clothes drying frame and woke up to go out in the night and by the morning the fluid bag was empty and Bret was feeling much better thank goodness Very Happy

http://www.vetrica.com/care/dog/chocolate.shtml

Mugi

Oh Bret - what a scare!

Glad he is perky this morning and hope there are no lasting effects.

Lin Dyke

What a fright. So relieved he is ok.

Liz

Glad Bret is OK.

barbara

Thanks for all your kind comments, Bret is absolutely fine now and totally oblivious to the fact that his little escapade cost a mere £136 Rolling Eyes

doganjo

Cheap at the price for saving the boy's life! I think you should give up chocolate for the sake of your dogs' lives, Barbara! Wink

If you will, I will! By the way, how is that one with the lungworm?

guy

Glad to hear he is OK now - certainly an object lesson to us all.

To think years ago one of my spaniel's party tricks was to retrieve a chocolate to hand. (the reward being to be given it) The other was an egg which you could hear roll back and forth along her teeth.

Tricky micky

So glad to hear he's ok. What a scare, we will have to be even more careful in future!

Karen

Jayne Cutler

So glad he is ok. It is a real worry with chocolate we always tell the girls not to feed chocolate to the dogs and to keep it well out of the way of the dogs.
It only seems like yesterday that Brett was that tiny puppy who I remember in the litter was greedy and very clever at finding the food no matter what it was!

Jayne

Des O'Neile

I have been aware of chocolate being poisonous to dogs for some years and since I have known I would certainly avoid letting a dog have a whole lot at one go. I would not however throw a hissy fit if somebody gave my dog a sweet.
In the past I had a spaniel that hunted well but now and again would just lie down. Maybe three or four times a season. At the time it was considered that a Mars bar was as good a way to resuscitate a dog with this problem as any. I always carried a Mars bar when hunting with Ian and would give him half a bar in the morning and the other half at dinner time, if I could stop myself from eating it first.
When I think about it a Mars bar is more sugar and glucose than chocolate but I know of dogs, and suspect there are many more that I don't know of, that are stuffed with chocolate every Christmas and don't show any reaction. And most of them are small dogs.
This is the sort of thing we need to be reminded of from time to time. Just like not letting the dogs run in recently sprayed potatoes or carrots.

Hope the dog makes a complete recovery and that there are no lasting problems.

barbara

I'm not sure about giving up the chocolate Annie Laughing

There is no point in making promises I can't keep!

I haven't heard recently about Harry and the lungworm, but about three weeks ago Marilyn's vet put him on the same drugs that Cavaliers have for syringomyelia and he was improving. I presume because the lungworm must have got into the brain. I must contact her to find out how he is.

Des what is it particularly about sprayed potatoes & carrots?

Thanks again to all of you for your concern, Bret is back to normal and enjoying his saunters down the field.

Des O'Neile

When Alpha Chlorus was more or less banned for killing corvids etc. the next best thing, in fact it was more deadly that Alpha, was the chemical used for killing Carrot Fly. I beleive that there is some sort of cross over between the carrot and potato sprays.