Why not give chocolate to your dog? This is why sweets are deadly poison

Don't fall for the begging dog's eyes! Your pet is unaware of the dangers of this tempting sweet treat.

If you’ve heard of a dog who ate a bar of chocolate and was fine, or maybe yours did the same, you’re not alone. Like humans, dogs have different metabolisms, so maybe the main character in this story was lucky in that respect. But experimenting is a very bad idea, and we’ll explain why in a moment.

What does chocolate do to your dog’s body?

Cocoa, the main ingredient in delicious sweets, contains high levels of methylxanthine alkaloids, including caffeine and theobromine. It contains the highest dose of the latter, of which even small amounts can be fatal to dogs. These compounds are adenosine receptors on the cell surface because their structure is very similar to that of this otherwise sedative nucleoside.

However, the stimulant effects of theobromine and caffeine work in the opposite way to these receptors, which is why coffee and dark chocolate make people feel alert. It’s true that the stimulating properties of chocolate are somewhat more mild and gentle than the buzz of caffeine, but dogs’ bodies also find this strain difficult to bear. The reason: dogs’ bodies process ingested theobromine much more slowly than ours, so it can stay in their blood for up to 20 hours.

It’s not uncommon for the symptoms of an overdose to appear the day after eating the chocolate

• rapid heartbeat;
• tremor;
• vomiting, diarrhoea;
• muscle cramps;
• frequent urination;
• gasp;
• drooling;
• thirst.

If you experience any of these, take the dog to a doctor immediately, because from a life-saving point of view every minute counts!

How much chocolate could be dangerous to your dog’s health?

100-150 mg theobromine per kilogram of body weight can be fatal for your dog. One gram of the following types of chocolate contains the following amounts.Dark chocolate: 5.5 mg cooking chocolate: 16 mg milk chocolate: 2.4 mg white chocolate: 0.01 mg. So you can easily you can calculate how much your pet is at risk. For example, if a 5 kg dog eats a quarter of a bar of milk chocolate (about 25 g), 60 mg of theobromine will be in his system. The lethal dose for a dog of this size starts at 500 mg, so it is unlikely that this much will cause serious harm, but it is worth keeping an eye out and if you see any suspicious signs, see your vet!

Of course, the most sensible thing to do is to carefully keep chocolate out of your dog’s reach. The good news is that almost all pet food companies now have their own dog chocolate, which contains so little cocoa that it’s safe to say it won’t cause any complaints. You can use this in moderation. But it’s safe to use it as a reward food when training your sweet-toothed four-legged friend, because of its sugar content.