Did you know that chocolate can be fatal to your pets?

Many owners feed chocolates to their dogs, and have never noticed any adverse affects, but chocolate does poison dogs. Why? Because chocolate contains Theobromine and caffeine. These cause all the nasty affects that can kill your pet. How? It affects the central nervous system, increases blood pressure, and causes nausea and vomiting. The signs to look for that indicate toxicity are: 1 Muscle spasms

2        Coma (Rare)

3        Excessive thirst and urination (at a higher level of Theobromine toxicity)

4        Death (Rare) due to heart arrhythmia.

If you have been giving your pet chocolates, my advice to you is leave the chocolate alone and make sure that your best friend can’t get it.

One of our regular patients was bitten this week, and I thought it was a good opportunity to review some of the importants aspects around bite wounds. The most important thing to remember about canine bite wounds is that the majority of the damage is often done in the deeper tissue layers, and the visible damage on the skin is often deceptively little. A dogs jaw can deliver up to 180kg of pressure. This crushes all the tissue it comes into contact with, causing severe damage and cell death. Furthermore, as the teeth puncture the skin, a host of bacteria are delivered directly into the deep tissue layers, where it can cause a severe infection. The puncture wounds can appear relatively minor, and start to heal quickly, but under the skin the badly damaged tissue is now trying to fight the bacteria.

Bite wounds

WHAT TO DO IF YOUR DOG GETS BITTEN
Flush the wound with clean running water – a hosepipe is great – try to direct the stream into the wound(s).
Keep the dog warm, and transport to the nearest vet IMMEDIATELY. The sooner the wounds are thoroughly cleaned, and antibiotic treatment started, the less secondary tissue damage will occurr.