‘You should never feed a dog chocolate’, somebody told me when I was rather young leading to years of being terrified of leaving a chocolate finger behind and accidentally killing my girlfriend’s dog.
But what would actually happen if your dog, your uncle’s dog, or your girlfriend’s dog did actually gobble down a kit kat for instance?
Well with Easter just around the corner, what better time to explain just what would happen – with the assistance of an image of a boxer dog who’d got his paws on some delicious, delicious chocolate.
WARNING: This is genuinely not for the faint hearted.
Yup – that happens.
So while you may feel a little sly on your pup who’s licking his lips with hunger deep in his stomach as he watches you putting away your seventh egg of the day, don’t give in. It will do a lot of damage.
Chocolate contains a stimulant called theobromine, which is a bitter alkaloid of the cacao plant, and although it is completely harmless to humans, for dogs it can be fatal, as it affects the central nervous system and heart.
As you can see up above – this boxer ate a fair bit of chocolate before being rushed to the vets and vomitting a lot; and he got lucky.
And there’s more:
Pretty sure you can still see the chocolate buttons in that one. ^
The image was recently shared by Drumahoe Vetinary Clinic in Derry, Northern Ireland, along with the caption:
Not for the faint hearted but this is reality. Please think twice when you feed your dog chocolate! It is very poisonous. As Easter approaches make sure to keep all chocolate eggs away from your pets.
Take note people.
So even if your dog looks and acts okay, if you think they might have smuggled some chocolate into their stomachs take them straight to the vets or you could soon be cleaning up a mammoth amount of chocolatey vomit – or worse.