The other night, when the local watch dogs forgot to check their watches and decided to sound the alarm at 3:30 in the morning, I thought to myself, “I wish the local cat burglar had some dog cookies!” It might of saved all of us an hour or so of unneeded aggravation. (By the way, that was a joke. The perp was probably a possum. I don’t support criminal enterprises, except on election day, and, even then, I tell everybody that it wasn’t my vote that put that crook into office.)
Election day is coming up. The other thing that’s coming up is Halloween. That means kids getting crazy on candy. Adults doing it, too, if they had any leftovers after treating the neighborhood tricksters, or if they stealthily set aside their own secret stashes of gooey goodies. There will be lots of chocolate, I’m sure. It’ll melt in your hands, even though some of it is not supposed to. It’ll substitute for face paint on some youngsters. Chocolate will be everywhere. But, there’s one place that it should never be, and that’s where your dog can get at it.
If your dog gets at it, he’s going to eat it, and chocolate is bad for dogs. The smaller the dog, the worse chocolate is for it. Likewise, the darker the chocolate, the worse it is. The concentration of theobromine, the chemical culprit that causes seizures and can even kill a canine (and a cat, but, generally speaking, cats won’t eat chocolate voluntarily), is about ten times greater in unsweetened baker’s chocolate than in milk chocolate. White chocolate has the lowest concentration, but still, seizures are seizures and dead is dead, so why take the risk?
Hoard the Halloween treats for the humans, and pass out the healthy My Doggy treats for the canine tricksters.
