Every now and again, some know-all gets onto their soap box and preaches the deadly consequences of giving dogs chocolate. Now that’s a laugh when the same smartass, in the same breath, is probably also singing the praises of commercial pet food … of which a whopping 102 major brands in the States are currently being withdrawn from the market due to their lethal contents!

Contaminated pet food

And South Africa isn’t exactly smelling of roses either, because every day contaminated pet food is front page news here too, as it continues to kill an undisclosed number of precious dogs and cats whose owners trustingly administered fatal doses of these highly recommended products!

Chocolate doesn’t contain nasty chemicals

But back to the hazards of chocolate…it doesn’t contain melamine, organophosphates, ethylene glycol, anti-freeze or rat poisoning which are the some of the deadly poisons recently found in the deadly pet foods. Nor does it contain the pesticide ethoxyquin, which is used in large doses as a bona fide preservative of fats in most commercial pet foods.

Theobromine

In fact chocolate has none of these nasty poisonous chemicals. Actually, the cause of all the angst is a natural substance found in the cocoa bean called theobromine which is the feel-good stuff used in the manufacture of chocolate.

The story is, dogs metabolize theobromine very slowly and, as a result, if taken in huge doses, it could have a serious effect on the animal’s heart, kidneys and central nervous system.

But here’s the shock - chocolate actually carries the same risk to your dog as the ingestion of other common household items such as coffee, tea, cola, beverages and certain house plants!
The truth is all poisoning is a matter of dosage per weight.  For example, little Tiddles a 3 Kilo Toy Pom would need to gobble up a whole slab of chocolate all at once to be seriously affected.

Furthermore, scientific studies  on the subject do not seem to exist on the safety of giving your dog chocolate either  …  take my word, millions of healthy dogs, probably with fat butts, all over the world enjoy the odd chocolate with no ill effects.

So I think we can safely stop Chocolate Bashing and focus on keeping our precious pets alive by avoiding the true poisons which are lurking in pet food.  Feed dogs and cats fresh, natural foods appropriate to their species. In Grandma’s day, there was no processed food. A chunk of meat mixed with a dollop of ‘whatever’ did the trick. Funnily enough, in those days   diabetes, cancer or other degenerative diseases were unheard of  …  pets died from old age or they were run over by a bus. Remember?!