A friend of mine called me up saying that her dog ate a bowl of chocolate. I told her to take the dog to the vet immediately, as, IIRC, Cecil did an article a few years ago saying chocolate is highly toxic to dogs. She is doing so, but thought I’d ask here what the possible ramifications could be. The dog ate several 3.5 oz dark chocolate bars. My estimate is the dog is about 50-60 lbs and maybe 3 years old, in good condition (except for the possibly dieing part from the chocolate).
Thanks for any and all assistance here, though mostly it’s for my own education as the dog is on the way to the vet.
Apparently chocolate is not as toxic to dogs as many think or it varies from dog to dog. We had a 2-3 year old 50lb dog who ate a 2lb bag of chocolate chips and didn’t seem to affect her much at all except for being a bit wired all evening. She was lying on the floor and would go “yip yip yip” every five minutes or so.
The general rule of thumb is that a toxic dose is one ounce of milk chocolate per pound of the dog’s weight, one ounce per 3 pounds of semisweet and one ounce per 9 pounds of pure pure chocolate. The dog ate chocolate candy, which contains sugar, milk, and other ingredients. A 50-lb. dog that ate less than a pound of candy probably will be induced to vomit and then given a charcoal mixture to absorb the residual. The faster she gets the dog to vomit the better. She should have taken the candy wrappers with her, if possible.
I am not a veterinarian but have taken several dog first aid courses. Please let us know what happens.
It also depends the type of chocolate. There are many different kinds (sweet, semi sweet, milk, dark (different concentrations), white), all with different concentrations methylxanthines (theobromine, caffeine, the toxic compounds). White chocolate is negligible, not a significant amount.
The major effects are cardiac arrythmias and CNS disturbances (the “yip yip yip” may have been part of that, as well as the “being wired”).
Says that the LD50 for theobromine/dogs is about 300mg/kg of body weight and that dark chocolate can have up to 16mg/g.
A 55lb dog (about 25kg) could thus take about 7500mg of theobromine to have a 50% chance of death.
That’s about 470g of chocolate which is a little over a pound. Note that they say that far lower levels can still be fatal (they mention 130mg/kg, so that’d be about 200g of chocolate).
It says that they’ll induce vomiting and some other measures and stresses that chocolate and dogs is absolutely no laughing matter. They do note that “Most dogs won’t die if they eat six ounces of dark chocolate. However, some will, and most will be very, very ill at the very least.”
Our next-door neighbor’s golden retriever ate something like a pound of baking chocolate, vomited it all over their living room and was OK.
I told her to give the dog hydrogen peroxide (to induce vomiting…it worked anyway)…hope that was ok. She called from the vet and the dog seems fine. I’m not sure what the vet gave the dog, but the vet is confident the dog will be ok. It’s a relief…they are really attached to that dog and it would have been a major bummer if anything happened to her right now.
Thanks everyone for all the help and advice! If I haven’t mentioned it lately, I love this board and the posters here so willing to help.
At the animal ER where I work we usually advise people to give hydrogen peroxide at home if at all possible, and only if it’s within 30 minutes of ingestion. (longer than that, and some may have started to leave the stomach already). So, good advise. Even if the animal vomited at home, we still recommend coming in to at least get subcutaneous fluids and a dose of activated charcoal.
If ingestion was an hour or more before discovery, we have them come in so we can give apomorphine to induce vomiting. It causes stronger contractions and a better, more complete emptying of everything that may still be in the stomach. If they’re showing symptoms (usually rapid heartbeat and hyperactivity - and I have seen one dog have seizures) we highly recommend hospitalization overnight with IV fluids and a repeat treatment of activated charcoal.
The Snopes entry on cocoa shell mulch and hazards for dogs mentions that it’s rare for a dog to eat enough chocolate to make it more than sick to its stomach (though severe toxicity can occur).
We had a cocker spaniel who was a master sneak and managed on two occasions to consume batches of chocolate brownies, which resulted mostly in heavy chocolate diarrhea (bleagggh).
I also had a cocker spaniel that jumped on the dining room table for the first time, right after I had filled a vase with Hershey’s kisses for Chrismas, three years ago. He was less than two years old, about 25 lbs, and ate the better part of a pund of the kisses, wrappers and all. By the time we got home that night, it was too late to induce vomiting, as he has already pooped them out, judging by the red and green tin foil in the poop. He was fine, not any more hyper than normal, no vomiting. We of course kept a very close eye on him all night, but no further complications, other than Christmassy poop (which is no more fun to clean up than regular poop).
My mom’s dog is a bit smaller than your friends. Earlier this week she at an entire bowl of mini Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. That was quite a bit of milk chocolate AND aluminum foil rappers. To my surprise, the dog didn’t die. She had horrible gas all night though.
You’re all talking about chocolate as if it were all the same amount, when the cites provided have said that each type is different. And when you’re talking about watered down mass produced commercial candy ( ), like Kisses and Reese’s, which also contain a lot of other ingredients, you’re talking about something that is much more dilute than the original ingredient called chocolate.
Also, the amount given is the LD50, meaning the amount which is lethal to about 50% of the dogs that eat that amount. Dogs can eat that amount and survive (it is not LD100), dogs can eat way less and die (but that would be rarer), dogs will have less signs with less amount ingested.
To those who said that you didn’t notice anything wrong, two things. First, you’ve written stuff here that indicates that the dog may have been suffering a mild case of poisoning (wired, noises, change in behavior). Second, one of the main things the theobromine does is produce arrhythmias, which you can not notice unless you’re constantly auscultating the dog, and can go unnoticed unless they’re significant enough to impair the dog’s normal functions.
), like Kisses and Reese’s, which also contain a lot of other ingredients, you’re talking about something that is much more dilute than the original ingredient called chocolate.