In one dog show, there was a guest vet who said that dogs should not be given 1) chocolates 2) bones 3) grapes.
With the chocolate, the reason is the caffein in the chocolate that causes the dog to be hyperactive. It might result in cardiac arrest or heart attack. The bone, particularly chicken bone, can harm the throat of the dog when it fails to crush and chew the bone. There are so many cases, according to that vet, that dogs were brought to his clinic with a bone lodged in the throat. But the grapes? I wonder why it affects the kidneys of the dog. There is no further explanation but what can we do but to follow just to be on the safe side.
Until today, it is still unknown why both grapes and raisins are deemed fatal to dogs. I've made a research on what kinds of foods that won't do any good for dogs and when grapes fell into that category, I thought it was because of the seeds. Further research explained in turn that it doesn't matter if the grapes ingested by dogs were with or without any seeds. I know that practically anything processed is bad for them because their kidneys cannot filter salt the way humans do. Perhaps it's the same with grapes because of the possible sugar content? I'm not sure about this so until a new study has come up with regards to renal failure in dogs, all we pet owners need to do is to steer them clear away from grapes and raisins.
Chocolate I think seems to be the food that most people are aware of when it comes to feeding their dogs, and even if a dog might like chocolate then it's a good that's a definite no no, and is practically poisonous to a dog's digestive system. The chicken bones though I think a lot of dog owners won't be aware of, and they'll just think that any bone is ok for a dog to chew on, but that's not the case at all. Chicken bones, when bitten into, tend to splinter and that can then either get stuck, or even cut the dogs mouth or throat.
That's also one of the main reasons it's important to make sure you train your dog's not to go through the household trash, as just because you might not give your dog a food, doesn't necessarily mean that they're not going to be able to sniff it out and help themselves, and I'd suggest that in most cases then that's what's happened. The dogs have found the food rather than been actually given it.
A small amount of chocolate is not apt to hurt a dog, even a small breed of dog, as long as it is not overdone and is not fed to them on a regular basis.
When my Chipper was a puppy, I would sometimes feed him M&M's as a treat, and he dearly loved those little chocolatee candies. Later, i read that chocolate was bad for dogs, so I stopped feeding them to Chipper; but it didn't appear that the ssmall amount of chocolate that he was getting from the M&M treats was harmful to him at all.
Chicken bones can definitely be dangerous, and especially for small dogs or puppies. Dogs can have bones, but they should be given the bones raw, just the way that wild dogs and wolves eat bones. When the meat and bones are cooked, it changes the structure of the bones, and that is when they are dangerous for the dog to eat them.
When I was able to buy bones from the butcher shop, we would get bones for our dogs all of the time, and they loved to gnaw on a big old bone, and it was never a problem ince the bones were raw, and they did not eat the whole bone, just chewed on it.
