Chocolate!

Dogs eating chocolate. I know it's bad for them because of that chemical I can't remember the name of, but has anyone ever had a dog chocolate experience, be it turning out bad or good?
I'm interested because my dog ate half a block of caramel milk chocolate about 5 weeks ago but, whilst reading about symptoms and doses that will harm a dog, he showed no sign of having eaten it, as I stayed up most of the night watching him. I'm 95% sure it was him, but no-one saw it and there was no chocolate residue on his face or on the floor.
I want to know if your dogs have ever eaten it and how they reacted. I know that dark chocolate is the worst, and this was milk chocolate with caramel, so less chocolate anyway, but I'm still puzzled by the no reaction. He is a 25kg (about 50 pounds I think) Samoyed and I was, and still am, puzzled by this mystery.

Middie somehow got ahold of who knows how much dark chocolate the first week he came home with me. I don't know how he got it, as the chocolate had been in the drawer the last I saw it and none was missing from the bar, but I heard him eating something and smelled chocolate on his breath, saw it on his tongue, and caught a thumbnail-sized piece of chocolate on his flews.... He never showed any negative reaction to it, however much of it he got, and was perfectly fine. It's still pretty much a mystery, as no one had touched my last bar of dark chocolate and it was safely stashed in a drawer he couldn't have gotten into and nothing was missing from the bar.

Bakers chocolate is what you should be REALLY on the look out for. It would take a bunch of the milk chocolate to do any serious harm.

Theobromine is the ingredient that is toxic to them. it comes from the cocoa bean. It basically effects their central nervous system. Usually you'll see symptoms of vomiting/loose stool roughly an hour after ingesting it.

It took some finding, but here is what I have seen before;

White chocolate: 200 ounces per pound of body weight. It takes
250 pounds of white chocolate to cause signs of poisoning in a
20-pound dog,125 pounds for a 10-pound dog.

. Milk chocolate: 1 ounce per pound of body weight. Approximately
one pound of milk chocolate is poisonous to a 20-pound dog;
one-half pound for a 10-pound dog. The average chocolate
bar contains 2 to 3 ounces of milk chocolate. It would take
2-3 candy bars to poison a 10 pound dog. Semi-sweet
chocolate has a similar toxic level.

. Sweet cocoa: 0.3 ounces per pound of body weight. One-third
of a pound of sweet cocoa is toxic to a 20-pound dog; 1/6 pound
for a 10-pound dog.

. Baking chocolate: 0.1 ounce per pound body weight. Two
one-ounce squares of bakers' chocolate is toxic to a 20-pound
dog; one ounce for a 10-pound dog.

Very good info Summer


This past Christmas my friend received one of those big boxes of chocolate (5 lbs) you know the kind.........it was milk chocolate, and all assorted fillings.

She opened it and had taken like 2-3 pieces out of it, put it on the buffet table with the box lid closed of course. She didn't even think about it and left the house for the store. She has 2 boxers (probably around 65 lbs each) and when she got home (less than an hour later) the box of chocolates was ripped apart and EMPTY.

She FREAKED out! She was on the phone to the vet and then ME. We were both surprised when the vet said that they would probably be fine......just watch them. If she wanted to bring them in he would induce vomitting.

As it turned out she didn't need to take them in, her female starting puking all on her own........LOL, she must have puked up all 5 lbs of the chocolate because there were piles everywhere before she was finished. She was a miserable little doggie for that night.

Obviously her female was a typical women and pigged down all the chocolate with out sharing with the male, hahahahahahaha, he never showed a sign of getting a single piece

Oh yeah... Kota seems to LOVE chocolate.

First, Kota ate an entire bag of chocolate espresso coffee grounds. Ex-BIL came home to find piles of vomit and diarrhea all over the apartment and poor Kota huddle up on the chair SHAKING (and poor Happy going "Wahhh!!! It's eeeeverywherrrre! Save meeee!") That was probably the worst... it was probably a combination of the chocolate flavouring and the coffee itself.
Then there was almost an entire chocolate cake that he jumped up on the table and helped himself to.
Before they moved in with us, the dogs came first and lived here for about two weeks alone with us... Kota (and, we thought, Happy also) got into a bag full of mini-chocolates - my mom left it on the floor in the laundry room and left the door open while we were gone. We did induce vomiting because we had no way of knowing how much each dog ate, so just to be safe, we gave 'em some hydrogen peroxide and up it came. Poor, poor Happy didn't actually eat any of it, but we made him throw up anyway because we didn't know. x_x That was horrible, because I was freaking out that chocolate isn't good for them and I was going to have been responsible for killing my sister's dogs, but it really wasn't that bad.

And then there was the easter basket of chocolate that we told my sister, DO NOT put this where Kota can get it (and lo and behold, she did, and he did.)
And then a 1 pound piece of chocolate fudge...


Honestly, when Auggie ate a mushroom and I was thinking it might be toxic, I clearly remember sobbing to him "Why can't you just eat chocolate like a normal dog?!" At least THAT I know how to handle. ;P
Most dogs that eat chocolate just get upset bellys from it... but with the rising popularity of dark chocolate, and REALLY REALLY dark chocolate (a friend told me she bought a "candy bar" that was 98%. Yikes.) I think that might be changing in the future...

Thanks for that, I did know the name but couldn't spell it.
I was relieved to read on another site that baking and dark were the worst, and that he was big enough for it not to be a huge problem.
It's relieving (sorry!) to know it's happened to others because the dogs found it. I blamed myself and would have felt so guilty if he had a bad reaction or had got really sick, or worse.
Trouble is now he's got a taste for it, and everytime we have some his tail starts to wag and he comes over to try and beg a piece...

Chocolate isn't instant death for a dog. Most dogs don't have a problem with it at all except in large doses. It's when you get high concentrations of theobromine (which bakers and dark have) that you get a problem.

My parents trained their first couple of dogs on chocolate. Hershey's kisses. They'd go through about 1/4 a bag every time they took her out to really work with her and then however much they gave for treats in between.

The dog died 10 years later. Struck by a car.

Chocolate is bad, but it's not parvo or anything.

Wow!
That's the thing, dog owners say "chocolate is poisonous etc" but it all depends doesn't it.
Though it's better to be safe than sorry I think.