Cocoa Bean Mulch

This e-mail is making the rounds again, so I wanted to make a point about it. The e-mail states that this poor unsuspecting owner purchased a bag of mulch that said on the bag it was only toxic to cats (first flag - why would mulch say only toxic to cats that eat it?) from Target. Their dog then ate a bunch of the mulch and the next day went for her walk and died on the spot. Although the e-mail is bunk, the general facts are semi-accurate.

Yes, cocoa bean hulls are toxic to dogs and cats. No, Target is not the root of all evil (Wal-Mart is). The e-mail talks about how dangerous this stuff is.

Like all parts of the cocoa bean, the hull contains theobromine. Theobromine is a cousin of caffeine. Dogs and cats don't handle caffeine well. They can tolerate small doses, but not much. Humans, on the other hand, can tolerate quite a bit of it.

Cocoa bean mulch is fantastic. It smells great, degrades into a wonderful humus. Just don't let your dog eat it. Don't use it in the yard where they will be unattended because it does taste good to them.

Chocolate intoxication in a dog looks like a non-coffee drinking person that just shotgunned an entire pot of espresso. Some people could survive it, but chances are that they'll land in the hospital with a heart rate that's through the roof and seizures. The symptoms don't take a day to show up. They show up within an hour and only get worse. These guys get REALLY sick in a hurry and will start to act completely wired out of their gourd pretty quickly.

It's the cocoa itself that's toxic. Milk chocolate is therefore less toxic than dark. Dark is less toxic than baker's. Bakers is less toxic than the whole beans. Hulls probably fall into the baker's chocolate range. It takes several large bars of Hershey's milk chocolate to poison a labrador. By comparison, only one Baker's square will cause big problems.

If your dog eats chocolate you can call the poison control number I have on the front page or call your veterinarian. Have the type and quantity of chocolate ingested ready so we can do the math. We can do calculations to see how much actual caffeine and theobromine they ingested.

Funny story: I once had an owner call me on emergency and say that her dog had just eaten an entire pound of dark chocolate covered espresso beans. Bad, BAD dog. I told her we had to get him to vomit ASAP. She replied, "Oh, he already vomited them up." "Fantastic," I replied. "But then he just ate them all back up again." DOH! BAD, BAD, BAD OWNER! Dogs will never fail to disgust you with their gastronomical tastes. Luckily the dog did well after we had him vomit the beans a SECOND time and kept him away from them. We had to watch him closely, he did have problems, but he survived.

AMH