[Sca-cooks] OOP - Fw: Jasper and The Uncooked Yeast Rolls

[Tara Sersen Boroson]

> LOL!  I have lots of sympathy for this lady, I have Tegan, a "chow 
> hound" of a different breed but the same inclination.  This is the 
> critter who craves chocolate, knows about M&M's and got herself 
> awfully sick once by nibbling on ibuprofen.  Chocolate has no apparent 
> negative effect on her, but ibuprofen causes ulcers in dogs.  Poor 
> little thing had to take ulcer medication for weeks.   Then there was 
> the night Tegan got into the chocolate covered espresso beans.  It was 
> the Puppianapolis 500 All Night Long. 


Please, please, please don't let your dog eat chocolate!  I know it 
happens sometimes by accident, but I can't believe how many people 
refuse to believe the danger and feed it to them on purpose.  (And I do 
mean "refuse to believe", not "haven't heard of the danger".  One lady 
told me outright that she doesn't believe it because her dog has been 
ill from eating brownies, so she'll keep giving him brownies and cookies 
as treats and won't be careful about leaving candy around.)  Even 
snopes.com confirms it: http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/cocoa.htm.

The offending chemical is theobromine, and it causes cardiac arrhythmia 
and seizures.  The amount of theobromine in chocolate varies based on 
the percentage of cacao, so it's impossible to say exactly how much of 
any given chocolate will affect a dog unless you know that percentage 
exactly.  But, the rule of thumb is: for milk chocolate, one ounce per 
pound of body weight; for semi-sweet, one ounce per 4 pounds; for 
bittersweet, one ounce per 9 pounds.

For my 70-lb ex-dog, Cooper, (long story, not chocolate related), that 
worked out to danger levels of about 4-1/2 pounds of milk chocolate, 17 
ounces of semi-sweet chocolate, or 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate.  
That means it's highly unlikely he could have eaten enough M&Ms or 
brownies to endanger himself.  But, a one pound bag of chocolate chips 
could have killed him, or an 8 ounce bar of Baker's chocolate.  And he 
definately could have eaten either of those if we'd ever been careless 
with them.  (He did down an entire pound of peanut M&Ms once.  Since it 
was far from the critical level, we were more peeved to lose our candy!)

More references, for those who still refuse to believe:
http://www.dogbreederonline.com/chocolate.htm
http://www.supervet.co.uk/dog/chocolate.html
http://www.talktothevet.com/ARTICLES/DOGS/chocolatetoxic.HTM

To lighten the mood, though, and commisserate about the things dogs will 
eat if given half a chance :)  Cooper's most exciting snacking adventure 
was a half a carton of chocolate-flavored Viactive calcium chews.  You 
know, those little foil wrapped candy-like calcium supplements?  The 
canister had been on the counter for weeks, and one day he decided to 
investigate.  He ate every one - foil wrappers and all.  It was 
approximately half-full.  We worked it out to be about 15,000 mg of 
calcium.  I wasn't worried about the chocolate, since I figured there 
was very little real chocolate in them.  But, the foil wrappers 
concerned me.  The vet said not to worry, though, because dogs are 
natural garbage disposals.  Sure enough, they came out nice and sparkly 
two days later.  Never seemed to bother him a bit, though my husband 
(who was walking him when they finally made their way through,) said the 
excretion process was... explosive.

-Magdalena

-- 
Tara Sersen Boroson

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself. - Galileo Galilei