Small confession to make - I once ate a chocolate dog treat and it tasted really horrid. This was because, as I now know, the treat was not really chocolate. I think it was actually made of carob, which tastes little like chocolate. So why call it chocolate? Who knows. But I digress.
Back to the dogs. So our canine friends really love chocolate. Unfortunately fairly small amounts of the stuff can sometimes kill them. This is because chocolate contains theobromine, a substance closely related to caffeine that is highly toxic to those of the dog persuasion. The lethal dose is around 300 mg/kg although this differs depending on the dog - those little ones that shake all the time can't take much at all. Different chocolates contain varying amounts of theobromine - dark chocolate is worse than white.
Chocolate in fact works out to be one of the most common causes of doggy poisoning, although lots of owners give their pets small amounts anyway because they are trying to be nice.
Useless fact of the day - Ibuprofen also figures highly on the
dog poisoning tables as for some reason dogs really like the taste.
They'll probably eat anything, actually. Cats rule, dogs drool.
