Why cant dogs eat chocolate? What is in it it that you dogs cant eat?

Question

Me and my Mom were just wondering.

Answer 1

Chocolate is a metabolic poison. It will kill most animals, including bacteria and yeast. This is why chocolate never goes bad. Humans are one of the very few animals that can metabolize chocolate without dying from it. Eat too much, and you will feel ill, but you will not die. Dogs, cats, birds, and all other pets can die from eating more than a very tiny bit of chocolate.

Answer 2

Theobromine - it acts as a toxin in dogs, while people have no problem with it. The darker & more pure the chocolate, the more theobromine it contains. Milk chocolate & hot chocolate mix contains less, dark chocolate & baking chocolate bars have more. Most dogs are fine with a little bit of the lesser types - I had a Boxer that ate 2-3 M&M's with me for years & was fine. But if a small dog like a Yorkshire Terrier got a bar of baking chocolate from the cupboard & ate the whole thing, it would be very sick & most likely die if not rushed to the vet. When I worked for the vet, we had a small Beagle rushed in that had eaten a whole Halloween-sized bag of Milky Ways it snatched off the kitchen counter. It spent a couple days with us, hooked up to an I.V. & suffering from vomiting & diarrhea - not fun. So, vets just reccomend you do NOT feed chocolate in general.

Answer 3

Chocolate is like poison to dogs. Although years ago, we had a dog who loved chocolate and we gave it to her all the time. She lived to 17. This was before anything was known about it. I've given my dogs bites of things I am eating and they are fine. They would have to eat a very large amount at one time.

Answer 4

While on the topic of chocolate and dogs, If you are not aware, the way to help a dog who has eaten chocolate is to give 2 tablespoons of peroxide (the kind people use for scrapes and bruises) NOT THE HAIR DYING KIND!!!!
This will get the dog to vomit, and then get it to the vet asap.

Answer 5

I don't know what ingredient is bad for dogs, but I know that I feed my dogs small tastes of chocolate ice cream every once in a while, and they're fine. I think it's the straight, chocolate candy bars that are really bad for them, but ice cream or chocolate flavored things are not the things that will actually kill a dog.
Keep in mind, though, that a taste of a non-dog food is one thing. To actually let your dog make a people food a meal is another thing...a bad thing.

Answer 6

There is an ingredient in chocolate that will kill a dog. I wish I could remember the name of it, but it's irrelevant. Just don't feed your dog chocolate. I lost a little Yorkie that way, so believe me, it's not an 'old wives tale.'

Answer 7

they say that chocolate is toxic to dogs. i have read that some dogs have eaten chocolate all their lives, with no harmful effect. then others have had just a taste and died. i don't know if my dogs could eat it or not,i'm just not willing to take the chance...so they will never know what chocolate tastes like.

Answer 8

dogs can't eat chocolate because there are some ingredients that make it taste good for us but make it poisonus to dogs. there is some doggie chocolate thatdogs can eat because ther are only ingredients that the dog can eat but it would taste really bad to us humans.
I don't know the specific ingredients, sorry

Answer 9

Its the chocolate itself. Chocolate is a drug actually (so when you eat it....you are actually eating a drug hehe) that speeds up the heart or something like that. When a dog eats it, because of their system, it over works and they die. Like with human drugs....not all dogs are allergic but 99.9% are.

Answer 10

People say they will get worms if they eat choclate, but I don't know how true that is. I have given my dogs a small piece of choclate every now and then and they are fine and healthy.