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Christmas Emergency!

2K views 14 replies 13 participants last post by  sandypaws 
#1 ·
Well, we had quite the Christmas evening last night. My husband left his full stocking on the ottoman in the living room. After dinner we were down in the family room and Murphy went upstairs and did not come back. I went up to investigate and there he was happily eating a dark chocolate candy bar with nuts! He ate almost 2 oz worth so we immediately took him to the animal ER hospital which is 10 minutes away. Murphy did not even have time to feel ill. They made him vomit, gave him the charcoal, fluids and medicine. They said he was borderline on whether he needed to stay and get the IV and monitoring. The Dr. said he would probably be fine going home, but had to go through the list of things that could go wrong. This freaked my daughter out even more than she already was. We decided it would be less stressful for Murphy to bring him home. He seems to be doing fine. He just was up about every hour all night long going out to pee and drink water. This is what the vet wanted him to do, so he is showing no signs of toxicity.

I am not sure if Murphy even knows something was wrong. He was his happy self at the vet and at home. I, on the other hand, had a few gray hairs added!

The reason we went straight to the ER (called them first) rather than inducing vomiting ourselves was that Murphy ate 2 oz of dark chocolate which is close to the lethal level for a dog his size. We were close enough to the vet to have them do it and then they could examine what came out to determine how much was left in his system. Luckily his dinner had left his system so they only found chocolate and nuts.

Keep your chocolate up high and out of reach of dogs!!
 
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#2 ·
hope he's alright. Yep , lesson learned, thanks for sharing.
 
#3 ·
When I worked at the animal hospital we almost always had that type of emergency come in around the holidays. Halloween was a big culprit too. I always felt so bad sitting with some poor baby waiting for him or her to heave up all the chocolate. Not the most favorite part of my job.:) Glad Murphy is doing ok.
 
#4 ·
That must have been so scary! I'm glad you found him so quickly and were able to get him to the hospital. I'm always suspicous when they disappear for a while.

Hope Murphy has no ill effects from his little candy adventure.
 
#8 ·
Scary! All the instructors at our training center made a BIG deal out of keeping our dogs safe and out of trouble over the holidays. Glad to hear the little guy is doing well.

We had a similar scare with Kodi when he was at that get-into-everything adolescent stage. He pilfered cold medicine out of a guests purse. We only found the foil wrapper on the floor, so had no idea how much (if anything) he actually swallowed. He didn't have to go to the vet (we talked to them and poison control on the phone) but we had to give him Hydrogen peroxide and wait till he emptied his stomach that way. That was a bad night too!:)
 
#9 ·
Years ago my Gordon Setter ate Christmas chocolate kisses and her poop was decorated with red,green and sliver foil. Too funny! at the time I didn't know how dangerous this could be! Glad your pup is ok,and you found out in time!
 
#11 ·
Back on the 80's, when we had an Afghan Hound, she got into my daughter's Easter basket and ate a large chocolate bunny. At the time, we knew nothing about chocolate being lethal to dogs, so didn't think anything about it. We were very lucky, as she never had any ill effects of any kind. In that case, ignorance was bliss!
About 2 or 3 years ago, Tyler ate almost half a bar of Dove soap which had slipped out of the soap dish onto the floor of the shower. I knew nothing about it, until he started vomiting white foam in the backyard. When I found out what he had gotten into, I called the Poison Control hot line and, thankfully, learned that other than an upset tummy for a while, there were no ingredients in that particular soap which would be harmful to him. Your certainly have to watch them every minute, especially if they are not under your nose and being very quite.
Glad you were on top of this right away and hope everything is okay.
 
#13 ·
So glad you acted promptly, and that Murphy is doing well!!! Back in the early 90's, when my children were little, we had a yorkie, a sheltie, a cocker and a husky. The kids used to push the kitchen chair up to the counter and watch me, help me, and chat while I was cooking.
After one of these days when they had the chair to the counter, we had gone uptown for one reason or another. When we got back, we discovered the cocker, Priscilla, had gotten on the chair, up onto the counter, and had gotten into a bag of chocolate chips that were on the counter and had eaten the whole bag. She threw up and had diarrhia for a couple days, then was back to normal. She was about a month pregnant at the time. She had 4 beautiful pups and all seemed normal for awhile, but as time passed, she got skinnier and skinnier. At first we blamed it on nursing the pups, until it got to the point it wasn't normal skinny anymore. We took her to the vet, and discovered her organs were shutting down.
Apparently the chocolate had done damage to her organs and they just continued to deteriate. We put her to sleep when the pups were 5 weeks old. It was a devastating time for me. I was glad to be able to keep one of her pups and have my Cilla live on in her baby, Haley! My lesson was harsh!
 
#14 ·
ahhh Stacy that's sad. :(
 
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