Chocolate Dog

My dog ate some chocolate chips. Quite a few, actually. I know she ate a lot, because I saw the snarfed, empty bag on the floor in the pantry. I asked the kids if they'd eaten the chips, but they reminded me they wouldn't have left evidence just lying around on the floor like that.

I know how much the dog ate, because she finally threw it up all over my daughter's floor. I had no idea her stomach could hold that much. I'm guessing it was close to a gallon. Not just chips, but mostly.

Having a dog throw up a gallon of chocolate on the rug is good and bad, of course.

Bad: Dogs shouldn't eat chocolate. I was scared she might die. I had to stop watching the super bowl and Google "dog ate choclate" to find some info on toxicity levels. My husband was busy writing code on his labtop while watching the game. He didn't want to help me convert milligrams of chocolate toxins to our dog's body weight to see if we should take her to the vet to get her stomach pumped.

I finally convinced him by saying "if I can't figure this out, I'll take her in. Google says it's better to be safe than sorry. How much does an emergency vet charge on Super Bowl Sunday for this kind of thing?" He did the math and we figured she would be sick, but wouldn't die.

She was sick. I knew she didn't feel well, she kept coming in to find me, and her stomach made bad gurggly noises. She trembled (a potential sign of toxic overdose, although she trembles whenever she's upset...still!) She had her tail between her legs, her universal sign for "something is not right!" She followed me from room to room. More than usual.

Good: when you're dog throws up chocolate, it really doesn't smell that bad. I mean, as the mother of three children, I've cleaned up all kinds of disgusting things in the past 14 years. This chocolate mess was gross because of the volume, and the idea that it had been in her stomach, along with a bit of kibble we got her to eat and some water, so she'd have something to balance out the mystery amount of chocolate. But, well, it smelled like chocolate. Chocolate kibble, actually. There are worse things.

So, she's alive, and feeling much better. And we'll make sure to store the chocolate chips up on a higher shelf. And I think I'm done eating chocolate for a while. It's just not so appealing now.