Don't let your Dane have chocolate!

The chemical in chocolate that is poisonous to dogs is called theobromine. It's the chemical that is related to endorphines in people and the reason it gives you a good feeling when you eat chocolate. It takes between 250 and 500 mg of theobromine per 2.2 pounds of body weight to kill a dog. So for a light 100 pound dane, it would take a little over 11,000 theobromines to be fatal (less for vomiting and diarrhea, or even siezures or heart attack). For a 5 pound chihuahua, it would only take about 500 mg theobromine to kill the dog (less to cause stomach upset or serious problems like siezures).

Relative theobromine content per ounce for various products is:
Milk chocolate: 44 - 60 mgs/ounce
Unsweetened baking chocolate: 450 mg/oz
Cacao meal: 300 - 900 mg/oz
Cacao beans: 300 - 1200 mg/oz
Hot chocolate: 13 mg/oz

So a chihuahua that got into even just one ounce of baking chocolate could die. It would take significantly more to kill a dane (probably more than you have in your home), but even a little could cause vomiting or diarrhea. Medium-weight dogs would be in the middle. It's always a good idea not to let any dog have any chocolate, and to keep the chocolate away from the dogs. But it's the amount of chocolate that it would take to hurt a giant dog like a dane that made me not freak out too much about the chocolate that Justus and Jenny got. A few chocolate chips in a few cookies should not be terribly harmful beyond vomiting and diarrhea, even to a young dane. But if this were a MinPin site, it could be a lot more serious!

For more info, visit this website. It's from vet Dr. Fitzgerald from Animal Planet's "Emergency Vets" show.
http://www.apogeecomgrp.com/drkevin/chocolate.html
For more about the amount of theobromines in chocolate products, visit Hershey's at: http://www.hersheys.com/nutrition_consumer/theobromine.shtmlBRBRfredalinaBRBRP.S. At first i worried about the fairly large quantities of cocoa butter that i have around the house for my soapmaking, even though it's kept in a room where the dogs are not allowed (with all my chemicals), and the door is kept shut. But cocoa butter itself doesn't have theobromine in it. Theobromine is in the "dark part" of the cocoa plant (chocolate), not in the light part. So the darker the chocolate, the more theobromines. Too bad i LOVE Special Dark!