Chocolate or chocoNOT?
One thing we all adore here at WONDERPETS is the arrival of hot cross buns in supermarkets the day after Christmas. It means that Easter and the chocolate gorge fest is but a few months away.
And now the time has come! Easter is upon us! And everybody loves a chocolate gorge fest, right?
Wrong.
Your four-legged friend will not.
The ecstasy of having a hollow Cadbury Easter egg melting into their mouths for breakfast is not for them. Chocolate as you know, is for dogs, a very bad thing.
And it’s because of a pesky little substance called theobromine which is quite like caffeine. Now while this makes two legged folks such as us gambol about joyfully, it smashes your pup’s nervous system because they can’t metabolise it. It can lead to heart and kidney failure in extreme cases, but even in small doses, it can be harmful.
If you see your dog scoff down some of the stash you’ve been squirreling away for months, the best course of action is to call the vet and give them a rundown of what happened. They can generally make a call about how toxic the intake may be and might invite you down to the office so they can induce vomiting and get the chocolate out of your pet’s system. If you’re not sure if they were the culprits (best to check your partners and children’s mouths for evidence first), signs to watch out for are diarrhoea, vomiting, shaking and excessive panting or thirst.
Like us, dogs get a taste for chocolate and will happily sniff it out. So please make sure you’re keeping your chocolate out of reach and if you’re doing an Easter egg hunt in the backyard, make sure they stay inside while your small people trample your gardens into a giant mud bath in their quest for the magic eggs.
There are some fabulous treats that your dog can have instead of chocolate, so you are still able to surprise them this Easter. Check out the Doggylicious Rainbow Cookies, some Freeze Dried Salmon Bellies or even the three pack of Zippy Paws Easter Miniz Squeaker Toys. We’ve pulled together quite a selection on our website and thrown in a discount to, well, sweeten the deal. (We’ll see ourselves out.)
Have a happy Easter and enjoy the school holidays too.
Love, The WONDERPETS team xxx