The dog's had half a bar of cadbury's chocolate - problem?

Hootie19

I have heard that human chocolate can be very dangerous to dogs. Is half a bar enough to do her harm, or will she be ok?


I'm not sure - because she's been poorly for about a week and she's been to the vet (costing me £62 ) already this week, due to vomiting and diarrhoea, so if she's sick I won't know if it's the chocolate or the existing problem.


Really don't want to go to the vet again if it's not necessary .

Sagz_2

How big / heavy is your dog?

Waterfalls

please call ur vet for advise so they can work out how much theobromine your dog has eaten.

hitchins

How big was the bar, was it milk chocolate?

We had to take our boxer when he was about 8 month old, he's scoffed a full box of Black Magic.....he had an overnight stay at the emergency vets and some charcoal stuff, we had a huge bill!

Still chocolate mad!:(

Decluttering

I think the best thing would be to phone the vet and find out if it is a problem. Assuming your vet only works regular hours, I can imagine they would only advise you go in if it was stictly necessary (mine gave me some advice about my rabbit that fell ill suddenly to tide me over until the morning).

Hootie19

She's 20kg and yes, it was milk chocolate.

It was a 320g bar, and she's had about half of it. Maybe a bit more.

Think I better ring the vet :mad:

Lobell

How big is the bar of chocolate and how much did she have of it?

This informaton comes from a notice in a vets surgery:


The list is the amounts of the various products a 10kg dog would need to ingest to require treatment. Obviously the quantities would extrapolate up or down for different sized dogs.

White chocolate: 22 kg (!!)
Drinking choc powder: 400g
Milk chocolate: 90-134g
Plain/dark chocolate: 2.5-45g
Cocoa powder: 8-38g
Cocoa beans: 5-18g
Cocoa shell mulch: 7-15g

The treatment threshold is 20mg theobromine per kilogram bodyweight

From my own experience, my dog found a box of chocolates while we were out walking (who on earth chucks M&S Continental Selection in a hedge??). By the time I realised what he was at, the box was empty and I had no way of knowing how many were in it when he found it. By the time I got him back home, into the car and to the vets, almost an hour had passed. Vet said that it was too late to make him vomit as chocolate is digested very quickly and would already have passed out of the stomach....if we'd have got there within half an hour, he would have given the dog something to make him vomit. Theobromine is toxic to the liver so the vet gave him a multi-vitamin injection that would help to boost liver function while it was processing the chocolate. Dog was absolutely fine but always better to be safe than sorry.

Hootie19

Thank you. Rang the vet who said that chances are she'd be fine, but to be on the safe side, to make her vomit. So half a teaspoon of washing soda crystals shoved down her, and bingo! Within a minute, up came the chocolate.

How ironic that I have had to make her vomit, given that I've had to spend £62 this week at the vets to stop her from doing that very thing!

Sigh - good job we love 'em, isn't it!

maisy_daisy

Poor doggy I'm sure she'll be fine now :-)

My teeny tiny yorkie (unbeknown to me) scoffed a big bar (200g) of dark chocolate once - he hid the wrapper in his bed - the next morning my living room looked like the apocalypse had happened. Every bit of furniture/cushion/the rug (obviously he'd avoided the wooden floor that could have been washed!) was covered in what looked just like tar. I couldn't work out which end it'd come from :eek: but it was absolutely disgusting!

The little sod had no lasting effects and has lived to do many naughty things since :rotfl:

Sooz00

maisy_daisy wrote: »

Every bit of furniture/cushion/the rug (obviously he'd avoided the wooden floor that could have been washed!) was covered in what looked just like tar. I couldn't work out which end it'd come from :eek: but it was absolutely disgusting!

I completely identify with that! My previous dog (sadly lost him to kidney failure 3 years ago now) managed to get into and eat a 1kg dairy milk bar whilst I was out. It had been bought as a Christmas present and was shut away in a drawer so no idea to this day as to how!

I returned home to find an empty chocolate wrapper, a rather chocolate coloured living room and as Maisy_Daisy said - no idea from which end of my boy it came from.

Spoke to the vet straight away and rushed him in. He was on a drip for 4 days and I had a lovely bill of over £400! He did pull through but had he had me really worried for a couple of days! From then on for years, every time I was at the vets (whether with the dog or not), they always asked how 'Chocolate Dog' was. It became their nickname for him (apt in more than one way as he was chocolate coloured too!).

sjh1978

We have a 14 month lab / spaniel X called Harry. About four months ago I woke up one morning and realised I had left the wardrobe in the spare bedroom open - he had managed to get in and eat 9 chocolate energy nars and three chocolate protien bars!!! Works out about 2,800 calories!

We called the vet nurse who said he would be 'bunged' up for a day but he would be fine. He might also feel a bit uncomfortable for a few days.

He was fine in the end - still a greedy dog mind!

I certainly don't want to bad mouth vets, they do a wonderful job, but a vet nurse i was talking to on holiday said that vets are basically a business and that if they know you have insurance they will suggest overnight stays / treatments etc that are not neccessarily needed, i.e they can be very overly cautious to get the insurance money.

Again, this is not aimed at all vets, so please do not flame me if you are in this profession; just something I was told by an insider.