Joey’s Pet of the Week – Indie’s Chocolate Binge

By Scott Lackenby | Dated October 27, 2016

Hey everyone!! How has your week been? My week has been great. It was the lovely Dr Sam’s birthday so we had cake! Nothing makes me happier than food!! For those of you that regularly read my posts, and let’s face it, that’s all of you, you will know that I like to spend some time catching up with my friends next door at Snap Printing. Cheryl from next door sent through a picture of me helping them with their work the other day. I was accused of being lazy by the GVH humans after they saw it. I’ll let you be the judge….

My star this week is the cheeky Miss Indie, an almost 3 year old German Short Hair Pointer from Pymble, who came in to see Dr Helen Burns after a small craving for something sweet saw her eat roughly 4 family sized bars of chocolate, three of which were dark cooking chocolate. Now, as you know, chocolate is bad for dogs. It’s bad for cats for that matter. And the darker the chocolate the worse it is. Indie weighs 29kg and the amount of chocolate she ate was a potentially lethal dose. Indie had had a single vomit at home, and when Dr Helen examined her, the only other sign that the something was wrong was she had a very fast heart beat. Indie was admitted so we could make her vomit. And vomit she did! Copious amount of chocolatey vomit! Once the vomiting had stopped, Dr Helen started Indie on some IV fluids and gave her some activated charcoal to help mop up the theobromine, the toxic component in the chocolate, that didn’t make it’s way out in the vomit. Because Indie’s heart rate was so high, 240 beats per minute on admission and then 180 beats per minute after a few hours, the normal range for a dog is between 60-140 beats per minute, Dr Helen organised for Indie to be transported to our good friends at Northside Emergency Veterinary Services for 24hour overnight monitoring.

Indie came back to us the following morning and was as bright as a button! Her heart rate was down to 120 beats per minute, and after a final dose of activated charcoal, she was good to go home. Indie’s poo’s would be a little black for a while after the charcoal, and she needed to take it easy for a while to let her heart have a rest, but she seemed pretty happy to go home and even promised Dr Helen she would leave the chocolate alone in the future!

Well, I’m off to enjoy some sunshine. Meows for now, love Joey xoxo