Chocolate Toxicity Meter - just in time for the holidays

[Deborah Brown]

Do you wonder the Hershey kisses your dog gobbled up (paper and all) are toxic?  Here's  a cool app to help you out.

http://www.petmd.com/dog/chocolate-toxicity?icn=Tools_SubNav&ic...

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

This is a very useful tool, Deb. Thanks for posting it!

[Deborah Brown]

Somebody always asks, don't they?

I always feed activated charcoal just to be safe if I think a dog has ingested something marginally poisonous.

[Amy and Annabelle]

I had a scare a couple of weeks ago with some dark chocolate that fell on the floor. In the end I don't think she actually ate any. But I did use the meter and kept an eye on her. I did find out there was a one time fee to use the Pet Poison Helpline.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Thanks for posting this.

[Judy, Meg & Polly Wolly Doodle]

Great information. Several years ago we, as well as several other people in our area,lost a dog to chocolate toxicity due to a local manufacturer. Our lawyer actually won against them( we should have made it a class action). The man in charge of animal poison control called us after we sent in samples of the food to be tested and explained how chocolate does that. We never give them even a whiff any more. Thanks for sharing this article.

[Judy, Meg & Polly Wolly Doodle]

By the way, we are much better educated at choosing our dogs feed now as well.

[Sara]

There was chocolate IN the pet food? That's so strange?!

[Judy, Meg & Polly Wolly Doodle]

He actually bought leftover baked goods from local bakeries and dumped it in for fillers.  The man that owns it has a PHD in animal nutrition and still did that.  Our lawyer was pretty good at what he does so it never ended in court, it never gave me my dog back but we were glad that he had to acknowledge that he was doing something wrong.  Buck, the man from animal poison control, explained to us that if your dog gets chocolate they can not excrete the toxins in it within 24 hours, so if they get it the next day it becomes cumulative, so now they have 1 1/2 times the amount and so on until it is too much for them. That is on smaller amounts, if they get larger amounts it can get bad very quickly.  It was very sad, not only for us, other people in our area lost dogs as well but we were not aware of that until after the fact.  The man that manufactured the dog food also owns a huge boot store in Indiana and we refuse to purchase anything from him.

[Deborah Brown]

That is just the strangest story!  I guess we all know that dog food manufacturers are not particularly concerned with our dogs' health.  But to make it with old chocolate pastries???

I'm sorry to read about this.  It must have been horrible for you.

[Emily, Bentley, & Maserati]

Thanks for posting this. It is handy to have around.

[DJ & Chance]

Thank you!!!!