77% of Americans made an Easter basket last year, and 89% of those baskets had chocolates, marshmallows, or jellybeans in the shape of eggs, bunnies and baby chickens. Easter is the holiday most associated with candy. According to the National Confectioner’s Association, in 2014, Americans purchased over 2.2 billion pounds of Easter candy.
It’s traditional to hide colored eggs and chocolates in preparation for a Sunday morning Easter Egg Hunt. The toddlers wander about in the spring sunshine while older siblings and cousins dash past, seeking out the brightly colored eggs and candies lurking under bushes, hidden along hedges, tucked into tufts of grass and nestled behind flower pots.
Easter Egg hunts are fun, playful, and exciting to the little ones and entertaining for the older adults, but chocolate bunnies and other sweet treats in Easter baskets and left out for guests can be dangerous to our pets. The smell of chocolate attracts dogs, and they will seek it out and eat it with enthusiasm.
Cats are unlikely to eat enough chocolate to cause them harm, but most dogs will eat any chocolate that they find, even entire bags of candy. For small dogs, this is enough to cause poisoning and death.
Why is chocolate so dangerous to our pets?
One of the compounds found naturally in chocolate is theobromine. Theobromine is closely related to caffeine. A concentrated amount of theobromine can increase your energy level and mental focus nearly as much as caffeine. Theobromine is found in all parts of the cacao bean, both in the hard outer shell removed during processing and the edible seed that transforms into a Hershey® kiss, Dove® bar, or Starbucks® mocha.
The danger to animals wasn’t realized until the cacao beans’ leftover shells were added to animal feed. Suddenly, baby ducks, chicks, baby goats, and young calves started dying, all with similar symptoms: vomiting, diarrhea, confusion, and seizures, followed by collapse and death. These deaths were eventually traced to feeds 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 more concentrated the chocolate, the more theobromine it contains, and the more dangerous it is to your puppy.
In general, the darker the chocolate, the more concentrated and poisonous it is. A small (6-ounce) bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips has enough theobromine to kill an 18-pound dog.
Baking chocolate squares are particularly dark and potent, with 2 squares 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 less for them to be poisoned by ingesting chocolate.
If chocolate is so toxic to our pets, could toddlers or small children be at risk? Thankfully, NO, because our human bodies are very, very good at detoxifying and removing theobromine.
Particular proteins called enzymes are responsible for detoxifying caffeine and theobromine, and the human versions of these are twice as fast as those of dogs or cats. These rapidly acting enzymes are the reason that even tiny humans don’t get poisoned when overeating chocolate.
Unfortunately, dark chocolate is not the only risk for your dog when eating candy. High-fat foods like French fries, hot dogs, sausage, and white chocolate are dangerous to dogs because they can trigger pancreatitis, a painful inflammation of the pancreas that can lead to severe abdominal pain and death.
My father-in-law loved to share his breakfast sausage with his 10-pound Shih Tzu, “Bolly.” Every morning, Bolly would patiently wait by Bob’s chair for his greasy treat. When Bolly was 10 years old, Bob got a Shih Tzu puppy to keep him company.
When Bolly got a sausage patty, Bob would give the puppy some sausage, too. One month later, the puppy got very sick, shaking, crying, and unable to stand up. They rushed him to the emergency veterinary hospital, where he died that night from pancreatitis caused by the daily doses of fatty sausage.
Spring holidays like Easter and Mother’s Day are often filled with candy treats, especially chocolate. Please protect your pets when enjoying your sweet treats. More information about chocolate and high-fat foods in pets are available at the Animal Poison Control Center website at www.petpoisonhelpline.com.
