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Holiday Safety Tips For Your Dog
Here are a couple of holiday safety tips for your
dog.
-
 Don't give your dog table scraps, especially
from rich, fatty meals. These foods can give your dog
gastroenteritis or pancreatitis. Gastroenteritis is
the medical term for vomiting and diarrhea.
Pancreatitis is especially dangerous and occurs when
a dog is trying to digest a very fatty meal. The pancreas
produces enzymes to assist digestition. With pancreatitis,
the pancreas produces far too much, gets inflamed and can
even begin digesting itself. Symptoms are vomiting and
diarrhea, usually bloody. A dog will become dehydrated and
can die.
-
Don't feed your dog chocolate. Dogs are allergic
to the caffeine in chocolate. It takes a certain amount of
chocolate before your dog gets sick. So if your Laborador
Retriever grabs a Hershey's Kiss, that is OK. Here are the
amounts of caffeine that will cause problems:
100 mg
caffeine per
1 kilogram of dog's weight |
Symptoms will occur |
140 mg caffeine
per
1 kilogram of dog's weight |
Toxic level
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| Milk
chocolate has: |
45 mg of caffeine per ounce |
| Unsweetened
chocolate has: |
400
mg of caffeine per ounce
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But to be on the safe side, don't give your dog any
chocolate. And if your dog eats chocolate (particularly if he
or she is a little dog), contact your vet for advice.
Note: 1 (kg) kilogram is
approximately 2.2 pounds. Therefore if your dog
weighs 10 pounds, he or she is about 4.5
kilograms. The toxic amount of caffeine for your
dog is 630 mg (milligrams) (4.5 kg X 140 mg/kg =
630 mg). Therefore, approximately 1.5 ounces of
unsweetened chocolate will be a toxic
amount for your 10 pound dog. It will take 14
ounces of milk chocolate to be a toxic
amount.
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