Over 75% of Americans made an Easter basket last year, and nearly 90% of them contained chocolates, marshmallows or jellybeans shaped like eggs, bunnies or baby chickens. Easter is the holiday most associated with candy, and Americans are expected to spend 2.6 billion dollars this year alone on Easter candy. According to the National Confectioner’s Association, Americans purchase more candy at Easter than any other holiday, surpassing even Valentine’s Day.
It’s traditional to hide colored eggs and chocolates in preparation for a Sunday morning Easter Egg Hunt. While toddlers wander about in the spring sunshine their older siblings and cousins dash past, seeking out brightly colored eggs lurking under bushes, hidden along hedges, tucked into tufts of grass and nestled behind flower pots.
Although Easter Egg hunts are fun for little ones and entertaining for older adults, buying and sharing chocolate treats is not limited to Easter. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Halloween and the holiday season are additional opportunities for treats to be brought out, and left out for guests.
Chocolate smells wonderful to dogs, causing them to seek it out and eat it with enthusiasm. Cats rarely eat enough chocolate to cause them harm but most dogs will eat any chocolate that they can smell and find, even entire bags of candy. For small dogs this can be enough to cause poisoning and death.
Why is chocolate so dangerous to our pets?
Theobromine is a compound found naturally in cacao beans and their shells, as well as the finished product, chocolate. Literally named “food of the gods”, theobromine is closely related to caffeine and can boost your energy level and mental focus.
The danger to animals wasn’t realized until discarded cacao bean shells were recycled by adding them to animal feed. Suddenly, baby ducks, chicks, baby goats and young calves were becoming ill with nearly identical symptoms: vomiting, diarrhea, confusion, and seizures, followed by collapse and death. The deaths were eventually traced to the feed containing recycled cacao shells.
How much chocolate is dangerous to your pet? The smaller your dog is, the less it takes for them to be poisoned. The darker and concentrated the chocolate, the more theobromine it contains and the more perilous to your pet. A small (6-ounce) bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips contains enough theobromine to kill an 18-pound dog. Baking chocolate squares are particularly potent, as 2 squares is enough to make a 50-lb dog sick or kill a 20-lb dog. Puppies and elderly dogs seem to be more affected by theobromine, so it takes even less for them to be poisoned by eating chocolate.
If chocolate is so toxic to our pets, could toddlers or small children be at risk, too? Thankfully, NO, because our human bodies are very good at detoxifying and removing theobromine. Humans have special proteins called enzymes that can neutralize theobromine twice as fast as a dog or cat can, keeping even very small humans protected from poisoning from eating too much chocolate.
Here are 5 Tips on Protecting Your Pet from Being Poisoned by Chocolate:
- The darker the chocolate is, the more dangerous.
Be especially vigilant about keeping dark chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate chips out of reach. One small 8-ounce bag of Toll-House chocolate chips is a FATAL dose for a 20-lb dog.
- Size matters.
How much chocolate it takes to poison a dog depends on their size, with small dogs especially at risk. What a black lab can get away with ingesting without any adverse effects can be fatal to a Yorkie or Shih Tzu.
- Avoid repeat ingestions.
Multiple incidents of eating chocolate candy within a short period of time is dangerous even to big dogs because they detoxify chocolate slowly compared to a human. A repeat ingestion within 24 hours can make the difference between a harmless incident and a painful death.
- White chocolate is nearly as dangerous as dark chocolate.
Dogs seek out white chocolate baking squares and candy because they also smell like chocolate. Although it has very little theobromine, white chocolate is still dangerous because of its high fat content, with even fairly small amounts able to trigger painful and fatal pancreatitis in your pet.
- Find out more online.
More information about the dangers of chocolate and high fat foods to your pet is available at www.petpoisonhelpline.com.
