I’ve heard from several people that chocolate is bad for dogs, yet I’ve seen others feed their dogs substantial amounts of chocolate on a semi-regular basis, and the dog lived to be 16. So, what’s the deal¿ Is chocolate bad for dogs, and if so, how/why is it bad for them¿
I’ve heard this many times as well and I have no doubt that to some extent it is true. However, years ago my wolf hybrid helped herself to a HUGE platter of homemade candies during the Christmas holiday at my mother in law’s home - OUCH!. I would estimate that she had eaten 50 - 60 various types of chocolate confections and I was extremely worried that she was going to die. Other than a bit of vomiting though, she seemed to be fine. Hell, she lived to be 17 years old.
One interesting thing though, she ate every chocolate on that platter with the exception of the cherry chocolates. There was one cherry chocolate that had been partially chewed up and spit back out onto the platter, the rest had been left untouched.
Apparently dogs feel the same way about cherry chocolates as many humans do!
Hey! I love chocolate cherries and no one has contested my humaness!
We had a big hound dog that got hold of my sister’s one pound chocolate Easter bunny. He never even vomited, much less get constipated by eating much of the box it was in as well.
Though I don’t know if Sky Bum’s mother-in-law used high quality chocolate (containing large amounts of cocoa) I’m sure Parker’s Easter and Christmas candies don’t have much, if any, real cocoa.
Hey, they may have saved a dog’s life!
My friends had a dog that was part chow, dochsun and goat.
She ate a whole bag of some kind of chocolate something.
(M&M’s, kisses, assorted miniatures)
After my friend and I found the pup and the bag, we watched her for
several hours.
The dog didn’t even act like anything was wrong ever.
She also ate a gigantic rawhide done in 3 hours… That dog…
I’ve heard plenty of stories of toddlers who ate all matter of poisonous crap, but that doesn’t make the substances any less toxic. It means the kids got lucky. Same with these dogs.
Canines sure do love the taste of chocolate, though, I can attest to that. Peas, too, for some reason. My friend had a dachsund puppy that ate so many frozen peas (while my friend wasn’t paying attention, of course) that her belly was actually bulging down and touching the floor - it looked like something out of a comic strip. She was happy as a clam. Couldn’t move very well, though. 
Jeff
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Brad Amundsen, you stole that thing in its entirety from this website: http://www.talktothevet.com/ARTICLES/DOGS/chocolatetoxic.HTM
Not a classy thing to do. Also not allowed here.
I think the type of chocolate matters. Possibly milk chocolate is okay, and dark chocolate isn’t?
This quote is extremely self defeating. Being the dog threw up after ingesting a large amount of chocolate it probably (and luckily) never did get enough into its system to cause him any noticeable harm. There is nothing to gain out of this example. I just wouldn’t want any half-brain to read that post and think that it’s all right to give Spot a few pounds of Hershey’s Kisses for Valentines Day because this dog didn’t drop dead on the spot. It’s a fact that the “theobromine” in chocolate is toxic to dogs. I don’t know why anyone would question a long known fact like that.
Oh yeah, This just in: "Cigarette’s may be bad for your health!!"
PeaceOut,
Snoopy!!
Milk chocolate, while not good for your dog, is not nearly as dangerous as baking chocolate. The general rule of thumb according to my vet is that 1 ounce of baking chocolate per 10 pounds of dog is enough to cause serious harm or death.
To get the same amount of theobromine (the actual toxic ingredient as DeVena posted) the dog would have to ingest 10 times as much. So if you have a 70 pound dog, 7 oz. of baking chocolate would be considered toxic, but the dog could theoretically ingest as much as 70 oz. of milk chocolate to get the same amount of toxicity. I don’t know the dosage on semi-sweet, but the dog would get sick on much less than with milk chocolate.
Most cakes, cookies, ice cream etc have very little real chocolate in them. But the danger is in the dog developing a taste for chocolate and then someday eating a square of baking chocolate, a bag of semi-sweet choclate chips or a really large amount of milk chocolate.
My dog has eaten some chocolate, mostly from Oreos I think, in her day, and I never saw any ill effects. (We never gave her any on purpose, and I’ve been super-careful since I first heard chocolate was bad for dogs years ago.)
As Calliope mentions, the danger varies with the size of the dog. Not that it’s ever good for them, but a dog of Lucy’s size (about 60 pounds, I think) could sustain more than a Yorkie. Cecil discusses this in this column.
Gardeners and dog owners -
It is worth noting that cocoa shell (sold as a mulch like bark chippings) is as irresistable, and poisonous, to dogs as regular chocolate confectionary. There have been several cases in the UK of family pets dying after eating cocoa shell in the garden. Some, but not all, suppliers now print a warning on the packaging.
I have 2 dogs, a 6 yr old beagle and a 1 year old cocker spaniel.
The beagle is epileptic and chocolate will send her into seizures. The cocker has gotten ahold of chocolate many times with no ill effect.
But just watching my beagle have one seizure is enough to make sure the chocolate stays away from the dog.
InLikeFlynn, I did not question the fact that theobromine is toxic to dogs. It is. I simply illustrated through my example that a dog can SURVIVE eating chocolate (even a lot of chocolate) and not drop dead on the spot, YMMV. That was my point and I am sticking to it. If you will carefully read the thread you may notice that others have said essentially the same.
To appease InLikeFlynn, I would implore any of you readers to not give Spot a few pounds of Hershey’s Kisses for Valentines Day. It may kill them. On the other hand it may not.
Remember “toxic” does not mean “lethal”, it means something is capable of causing injury or death.
I’m sure I could eat a little bit of rat poisin and live.
A friend of mine had a labrador who ate an entire big bag of hershey’s kisses. When they called the vet, the vet said not to worry about it at all, that most hersheys, nestle, reeses etc had more wax in them than chocolate. Ew.
Also, my german shepherd/huskey ate a cookie FILLED with dark chocolate recently, and had no ill effects at all except for some lethal farting.
Ok dammit, aren’t you people listening. We don’t need any more anecdotal “My dog ate a VW Bus filled with low-grade wax-chocolate and was perfectly fine. . .” stories. The facts have been presented (and one can find countless more sources just by looking around).
In short, it does take a hell of a lot of milk chocolate to sicken your 80 lb. lab, much less for smaller dogs, but even that’s assuming good quality milk chocolate.
You don’t help anything by relating these anecdotes. Just realize that if your dachsund had eaten a pound of baker’s chocolate instead of cheap candy, today he’d be busy fertilizing the ground from below.
But, of course, you should still be careful, because sometimes dogs can and do get ahold of a hell of a lot of chocolate. And sometimes, they do die from it.
Quoted from SkyBum: To appease InLikeFlynn, I would implore any of you readers to not give Spot a few pounds of Hershey’s Kisses for Valentines Day. It may kill them. On the other hand it may not.
I’ll bet that even though your dog didn’t drop dead on the spot after his toxic adventure that he sure had a hard time finding the bones he buried in the backyard.
A good analogy is smoking pot. A little “after dinner pinner” here and there or “Twix” bar here and there probably won’t do much damage but smoking an ounce a day or a box Chunkys will sure make you stupid in the long run!!