Tonks has eaten some things she shouldn’t have, including some vidalia onion brats, which led to the very worried, young dog owner in me to take her to the emergency vet so they could induce vomiting. This service, as you might imagine, costs a pretty penny and is fairly traumatic for everyone, especially the receptionist who had to leave the room because it was “smelling too much like human puke back there.” Therefore, when we came home on Monday to an empty chocolate bar wrapper, I was more inclined to research how bad chocolate really is for dogs than to take a multi-hour, 200+ dollar trip. According to both the vet (whom I called) and the interwebs, dark chocolate is not usually toxic in dogs until they’ve eaten an ounce per 3 lbs of body weight. Since Tonks weighs a svelte 69 pounds and she’d only eaten a 3.2 oz bar, we were not especially worried, but decided to induce vomiting at home just to be safe.
Per the vet’s instructions, we administered two tablespoons 3% hydrogen peroxide (a bit less than one teaspoon for every 10 pounds of body weight*), via syringe that I shoved into her growling mouth, and took a walk (to, um, agitate things). Exactly a block and a half later onto the sidewalk in front of the park by our house, up came what we thought were the entire contents of her stomach. I’d hoped she’d aim for the grass, but sometimes you just can’t control these things, and rain was predicted, so we didn’t worry too much about it. It was dark and somewhat difficult to examine the puke for evidence of chocolate, but, as I already mentioned, we thought she couldn’t have anything else in her stomach, so we made a loop and headed home, passing a few joggers headed in the direction of the puke [bless their hearts] on our way.
Not five minutes after we got back in the house did sweet Tonks throw up twice more, this time on our living room rug, while Hubs and I looked on. Not sure why I didn’t think to hustle her out the front door, but I just sort of watched it happen (maybe something to do with my depleted willpower; it had been a long day). After that ‘episode,’ which obviously contained the chocolate, she was back to her old self and we put the rug in the washing machine because it was “washable.”
I had pretty high hopes for getting a clean rug out of the whole thing, but soon the washer stopped working. When I went up to check on it, the rug had become completely wrapped around the part in the middle of the washer and I couldn’t get it out. Turns out that probably “washable” meant “only in an industrial washer, take this to a laundromat you inadequate housekeeper,” and I blew it. Hubs had to use his considerable upper body strength to pull the soaking wet rug out and into a laundry bag, which we then carried downstairs and out to the trash. All in all, the rug was difficult to vacuum anyway, most likely the chocolate puke stains were there to stay, and I now have some interesting insight into how Hubs reacts to messes of that scale.
*You should never induce vomiting if your dog unless it’s on the express recommendation of the vet, especially if she has eaten something caustic or pointy.
Inviting Joy 