Is chocolate bad for your dog?

My name  is Dr. Dean Severidt and I am the CEO of Pet Doctors of America and we’re here today to answer some of your questions about your pets.  The first question I have here is from Michelle and the question is, “Is chocolate bad for your dog?”  I think with the holidays coming up and especially Halloween in the near future, that’s something that we all need to be very aware of, and yes, chocolate can be a very serious problem for your pet.

There are obviously many different types of candy on the market today, such as: hard candy; rock candy; sugar candies; and chocolate candies.  The chocolate candies are the ones that are going to become a real problem with your pets.  What chocolate does is it acts like a caffeine product, so it can make your dog very nervous, very agitated, very hyper and certainly because they’re taking in all of the sugar and chocolate, it can cause a lot of GI problems and a lot of vomiting, a lot of diarrhea and in really severe cases, these dogs can actually go into seizures and some dogs have actually died from chocolate toxicity.

So if your dog gets into chocolate, it’s something you need to take very seriously.  You need to contact your veterinarian and make sure that it’s not an issue where your dog is really sick, you’re probably going to need to take your dog in, have them checked out and just make sure that the dog isn’t going to be seriously ill and it’s something that’s all dependent upon the amount of chocolate they eat, so you really need to be careful, especially this time of year.  It is a good idea to pay attention to where kids are keeping candy to be sure it is out of your dogs reach.

So just be careful especially this time of the year with all the candy and chocolate that is likely around your house.  Thank you for joining me this week and please continue to submit your questions and we will be happy to answer them!  

Dr. Dean Severidt

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.