Tales of dangerous foods pets shouldn’t eat

I threw a box of choc’s onto the lawn [don’t ask], within a couple of minutes 5 foxes appeared and devoured the lot. After reading this article I am wondering that if choc’s affect them as well as dogs if this is a way of curbing the urban fox.

One of our dogs, whose father was a Cocker Spaniel and mother a Pyrenean shepherd, never found a truffle in his life as he was supposed thanks to his parents pedigree and talent, but he found one of my mother’s apple tarts all right, and milk chocolate eggs in the garden one Easter (only the first year we had him, having learned our lesson), and managed to eat the soft part of two-thirds of a pain de campagne once (with the crust left intact – he was a patient and dedicated dog), and a list of other things, but he always came out unscathed. Maybe it’s his “mongrelness” that saved him, maybe he was lucky. It’s not that we weren’t careful, and we never fed him rubbish, but it’s like with kids, you can’t remember to hide or lock away things all of the time.

It depends on the size of the dog – I’ve known dogs who have eaten a small amount of chocolate daily without massive effects – It appears that the toxic level is about 6 oz of dark chocolate may be toxic for a dog under 50 lbs. according to the 10,000 dogs we’ve adopted out (in agreement with US research) We have never had a dog die from accidental overdose in 50 years – though one dog who had a choc bar every day as a treat for 14 years since the age of 2 years had diabetes (retired at 2 years old) – but most dogs of all DIE before getting to 16 years anyway. Rather like grapes – supposed to be toxic – but never known a dog of ours become any more that “loose” from eating them.

I’ve never had a solid 6 oz lump of dark chocolate at home in my life – though my 3 large dogs share three dark chocolate Hobnobs every week. Our dogs come to us at around 80 to 100 ibs at a minimum of 2.5 years old – so it appears toxic level is not exceeded..

We always give a list of “toxic” food to our adopters – but as I said we have not had a problem.

also bad for dogs is white flour. cant remember why but it is apparently, for us too! dogs, like us, omnivores so can eat veg as well. greedy little buggers, but hey, aint they fine.

my father is a vet and he told me that chocolate is poisonous for dogs but that english chocolate has so little coco in it, as long as they dont get massive amounts theyll be ok, also white flour is, apparently even worse for dogs, i guess its the bleaching process that makes it so posonous to them which means most baked things,bread, biscuits, cake, some sweets, and they love them so much, little do they know, poor little peeps.

One of my cats loves tomato juice! No explanation, she never had any as a kitten, but she has to lick out my glass – or even pinch from it when full. The vet says it’s fine.
As for milk not being good for cats, it all depends on the cat. My other cat loves a treat of a little milk or yoghurt and they have never done her any harm. Tomato-juice loving cat won’t touch the stuff.

My ten-year old labrador has just eaten a red chilli pepper. No ill effects! He is the one who consumed the bag of goodies from my French day trip. He appears to have an iron constitution. The only foodstuff he has refused to eat is radishes!

Have also heard that onions are toxic to dogs, although have had no experience of this.

We fed our childhood beagle grapes. She used to love chasing them across the kitchen floor and never suffered any ill effects. We had no idea they were toxic. Later in life my cocker spaniel ate an entire easter egg hunt laid out in the garden for the children. She had been shut in but my husband didn’t realise and whilst I was briefing the children he let her out the back door. She ate the foil wrappers too. The only adverse effect was two very disappointed and teary little girls. I didn’t know that chocolate was toxic to dogs at the time – she had been shut in just because I knew she would eat the lot. I guess the cocoa content would have been quite low in children’s milk chocolate eggs. Am obviously much wiser now and will bear in mind the avocado story – very sad.

My 7month old dogs (a lab and a collie) just enjoyed their worming tablets smeared in mayonnaise, normally they get them with butter but the mayo was to hand. We have an avocado tree in our garden which, when it was in fruit this year was a nightmare with two young pups. The pulp (which is what we eat) isn’t toxic – just extremely fattening, however the skin and stones are (also the bark). We tried to take as many from them as we could but they still ate loads ( spitting out the stone and leaving the skin) and thankfully were non the worse for it.
Our cat likes avocados even more and when she was younger used to run outside as soon as she heard them fall of the tree!!
Now we have got over the avocado season our next hurdle is Bombax pods with a cotton wool like substance inside and after that Loquats which are full of large seeds both of which dogs apparently like, both of which are in our garden (in abundance) and both of which are not good for them, joy!!
On a side note there are so many things that your dogs can eat and enjoy, it isn’t worth giving them chocolate, they’ll see a piece of chicken as just as much of a treat and you won’t have to eat more chocolate to get over the worry that you’ve given them something bad ;D