Chocolate
If your dog eats any significant quantity of cocoa powder or dark chocolate, go immediately to the vet.
DO NOT WAIT FOR SYMPTOMS TO BEGIN.
To most of us, chocolate is a delicious brown substance, with no more problems than an expanding waistline or rotting teeth. To dogs, chocolate is also delicious, but potentially lethal. The humble cocoa bean, from which chocolate is produced, contains a chemical called theobromine.
The toxicity of chocolate for dogs is due to its theobromine content.
Theobromine has no specific antidote.
Chocolate poisoning is in every sense of the word an emergency.
If a dog consumes enough theobromine, the symptoms of poisoning will occur. Initially, the dog will develop abdominal pain and vomiting which may contain blood. The vomit in most cases will contain substantial amounts of chocolate, giving it a very characteristic smell. The dog may be restless, drooling saliva and could have difficulty standing or walking. Increased thirst is also common.
As the syndrome progresses, in the more severely affected dogs, there is an increased rate of breathing, muscle tremors, or rigidity. Urine may contain blood and the colour of the gums may take on a bluish hue. Eventually, the dog may develop convulsions and die.
In the majority of cases, the symptoms occur within a few hours, but it has been known to be delayed for as long as 24 hours.
It can take as long as three days for the dog to recover completely.
White chocolate has the lowest risk of toxicity, and dark chocolate the highest. The majority of cases of serious poisoning incidences (in the UK) involve continental
types of chocolate, because these contain more cocoa and less milk. There have also been many reports of deaths in dogs that have eaten cocoa powder.
The quantity of chocolate that must be eaten before toxic symptoms appear is different for each dog. What could be lethal for one dog, may be no problem for another. To give an example, a 20kg dog (about the size of most Border Collies), may only require 2600mg of theobromine to be a fatal dose - about 6 ounces of dark chocolate .
Most cases of chocolate poisoning involve dogs that have eaten a whole box of chocolates from under a Christmas tree.
Cocoa powder is even more dangerous. It can contain as much as 50% more theobromine than plain chocolate, so as little as four ounces could be fatal.
These figures relate to the minimum fatal doses for dogs. Most 20kg dogs won't die if they eat six ounces of dark chocolate. However, some will, and most will be very ill at the very least.
Chocolate is digested very much more slowly by dogs than people. Because of this, symptoms may not appear for many hours after the chocolate is eaten. Do not be fooled by this into thinking that everything is OK. The earlier this is treated the more likely you are to save the dog's life.
The outlook very much depends on how much chocolate or cocoa powder that the dog has eaten, and how long prior to being seen by the vet that the dog ate it.
Experience shows that:
