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The balls are hanging, light chain sparkles, roast sizzles in oven: when it is Christmas Eve in Germany, dozes in almost every tenth living room a dog under fir tree, surrounded by chocolate weihnachtsmännern, pralines and gingerbread. Stupid only when Luna, Kira, Rocky or spike nibbles at Süßigkeitenteller, while everyone is just showering, picking up grandma or quickly wrapping up a gift: Because chocolate is poison for dogs! If y eat it, cramps, restlessness and fierce surrender are result – in worst case, chocolate poisoning ends.
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As British researchers now report, in United Kingdom, where alone 8.5 million dogs come to 65 million inhabitants, on holidays four times as many four-legged animals have to be treated for poisoning by chocolate as in annual average. This worrying figure has been published by researchers according to season in specialist magazine Veterinary record (Noble et al., 2017). The banal cause: in homes in Advent and around holidays, re is simply more sweetness around and some people even feed ir pet from ignorance with a Mozart ball.
In Germany, too, such cases are not unusual, says Barbara Kohn, a small animal doctor at clinic for small Pets at Freie Universität Berlin. “Often owners come to us who have observed that ir dog has eaten chocolate. If ingested amount can be large enough to cause poisoning, we let dog vomit. This is only useful if recording is a few hours behind. If owners were not so attentive, it can become very serious. We also had a death by chocolate in our clinic. “
Doping in dog racing – dangerous at Christmas
The heavy reaction of dogs is due to substance obromine, a component of cocoa bean. Theobromine has a chemically similar structure to caffeine and also has a similar effect: it increases heartbeat, stimulates nervous system, only that dogs show severe poisoning symptoms even with a small amount.
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Because of this invigorating effect, obromine and even caffeine are used as a doping agent in dog racing – in very small doses. How much of it is life-threatening depends on weight of animal: it can be expected that three tablets of dark chocolate (70 percent cocoa) can kill a seven-kilo pug. In animal experiments, poisoning with more than one gram of obromine per kilogram of dog weight ended almost always fatal. Although symptoms do not necessarily occur dose-dependent (Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen: Collica, 2017), but from about 300 milligrams obromine per kilogram, holders can expect that ir animal will become bad, also confirmed veterinarian Andreas Moritz of Uni Pour.
