Q & A Time with Dr. Bailey! How much chocolate can my dog eat before it becomes toxic? Poisoning by chocolate is caused by ingesting too much theobromine in chocolate products. All animals can be affected but dogs seem to be more susceptible. The amount of chocolate that is toxic to your pet depends on 4 keys things: 1) the type of chocolate ingested, 2) your dog’s weight, 3) how much chocolate was consumed, 4) how susceptible your dog is to chocolate. 1) The darker the chocolate, thus the more concentrated the cocoa, the more likely that product will cause toxicity. Therefore, white chocolate has less of a chance to cause toxicity than dark chocolate, with milk chocolate being somewhere in the middle. As an example, a 5 pound dog would have to ingest around 4 oz of milk chocolate to cause the same toxicity as ingesting ½ oz of dark chocolate. (As a side note, the amount of caffeine in chocolate also determines toxicity which makes certain milk chocolates more poisonous than others, and so on. Therefore, these numbers are all estimates.) 2) The bigger the dog, the more chocolate the dog has to consume in order to be affected by its toxic affects. As state above, a 5 pound dog would have to ingest around 4 oz of milk chocolate to cause the same toxicity as ingesting ½ oz of dark chocolate, where a 75 pound dog would have to eat 76 oz of milk chocolate or 8 ½ oz of dark chocolate. 3) Using the example above, if that 75 pound dog only ate the ½ oz of dark chocolate, most likely it wouldn’t be affected. However… 4) Every dog is unique and handles chocolate consumption differently. That 75 pound dog may end up being affected by only eating 4 oz of dark chocolate instead of 8 ½ where the 5 pound dog could get by with eating 2 oz instead of ½ oz. If you have any concerns with your pet and chocolate toxicity, please contact us here at Striegel Animal Hospital or your local veterinarian. If you have a general pet question, message Dr. Bailey on her professional Facebook page, Dr Lindsey J Bailey, DVM. Check back every Monday on Striegel Animal Hospital’s Facebook page to see if your question was answered.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 13:56:24 +0000
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