Last week I took my cat to the vet for his routine yearly checkup. I thought I might find some inspiration for an article from the trip. I did, but it turns out it’s not about my cat at all. While I was gone with my cat, I forgot to close the door to the pantry.
To make a long story short, although we put several safeguards in place to prevent something like this from happening, the dog still got into some chocolate. She’s doing fine, but I thought I would share what we did, and the information we learned about dogs getting chocolate, for you in case it happens to your dog.
When we discovered Chihiro had eaten only about 4 ounces of the chocolate, we decided to research the toxicity of what she’d eaten to determine our next move. We came across this National Geographic chart expounding on the toxicity of chocolate for dogs. In a nutshell, the harm chocolate does to dogs depends on the type of chocolate and the size of the dog.
The higher the percentage of cocoa in the chocolate, and the smaller your dog is, the greater the potential harm. Armed with these facts, my husband and I decided our dog wasn’t in immediate danger.
Even though she ate semi-sweet chocolate, which has a higher toxicity, she ate very little of it in proportion to her body weight. We did think it best to try to make her throw up a little, just in case. The most common methods used are hydrogen peroxide and salt.
To play it safe, we just put a small amount of salt behind Chihiro’s tongue. It made her foam a bit, and then an hour or so later she finally threw up the chocolate, twice. Dogs can also experience dangerous dehydration when they eat chocolate, especially if you induce vomiting, but luckily for us Chihiro drank at least 4 bowls of water over the course of the evening.
I want to point out that if your dog has consumed an unsafe amount of chocolate (which, at its worst–pure cocoa powder–is .01 ounces for every pound of the dog’s weight), you should call your vet. Also, if you want to use the hydrogen peroxide method of getting your dog to throw up, or if you want to use a lot of salt, you should call a vet for direction, as either could hurt your dog if not done correctly.
We didn’t call a vet or give Chihiro very much salt because we weren’t seriously concerned; she hadn’t eaten a dangerous amount of chocolate, and we weren’t giving her enough of anything to make her throw up a lot. If it’s any worse, consultation with a vet is absolutely necessary.
We were lucky; Chihiro mostly just gave herself a bad stomachache, setting everyone up for an unpleasant evening. Due to all of the water she’d drunk, we were up every couple hours taking her out that night. Fortunately, things weren’t made even more unpleasant by us having to take a second, much more serious, trip to the vet.
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