No Chocolate For Your Pets This Halloween

For most of us, chocolate is a welcome treat on Halloween. It’s sometimes hard to resist giving a treat to an eager pet, especially for excited children with a full bag of loot. But for our pets, even small amounts of chocolate can be dangerous and even deadly.

Chocolate contains theobromine, which is toxic to pets. Baking chocolate has the most theobromine, followed by semi-sweet chocolate, dark chocolate, and finally milk chocolate.

If a cat or a dog eats chocolate, it may cause vomiting, diarrhea, hyperactivity, tremors or seizures. In some cases, chocolate ingestion can lead to death. Only a little bit of chocolate can be toxic for a dog: just one fifth of an ounce of milk chocolate could make your pet extremely sick.

Chocolate also ends up in other treats like cakes, cookies, and ice cream. Although the amount of theobromine is less than in a candy bar or stick of baker’s chocolate, pets can still get sick on the chocolate found in these treats. However, the larger problem is the fats found in these sweets. A dog who eats an entire pie cooling on the counter while no one is looking (it happens all the time!) can at best look forward to a upset stomach and possible vomiting; at worst the sudden indigestion of all the fat found in your aunt’s apple pie could lead to pancreatitis, which is a painful and serious inflammatory condition.

Clearly, you should never directly feed your dog or cat chocolate. It is also important to keep chocolate out of reach of your pets. My dog is known to devour anything left on the counter if we leave the room. My husband and I put all our baking chocolate and candy well out of reach in our pantry and keep the counters clean. Any candy that your children and grandchildren have this Halloween should be safely put away. Make sure to teach your children that chocolate and other sweets should never be given to dogs and cats.

If your dog has eaten a sweet, or you suspect it, you can induce vomiting if it just happened and then call your veterinarian. It takes one to two days for chocolate to be metabolized by a dog, so hospitalization may be required if your dog shows signs of sickness.

This Halloween, remember chocolate and pets don’t mix! Christmas is also around the corner, so keeping pets away from chocolates and other holiday treats is a must for a healthy, happy holiday season.