Easter Eggs Can Kill Your Dogs: Keep Chocolate Away!

Every year, the Monday after Easter Sunday, Vets are overworked trying to save Dogs that are victims of Chocolate Poisoning.  So please keep your chocolate eggs away from  your chocolate-loving canine friends.  After your Egg Hunts are over, make sure you pick up any unclaimed eggs! Indeed, keep your dogs away from chocolate on any occasion!

     

             

Dog Owners Simply Don't Know the Dangers finds UK Survey
A shocking survey for Dogs Trust in the UK has revealed that over 57 per cent of pet dogs have eaten chocolate intended for humans and more than 1 in 10 have become ill from it. Of these, 8 per cent died and nearly a quarter required urgent veterinary treatment.
    Many dog owners are simply unaware of the dangers – 39 per cent of the dogs who’d eaten human chocolate were given it by their owners, while the remainder ate it because it had been just left lying around in the home.
    Chocolate contains theobromine, which is extremely toxic to dogs. Toxic doses vary according to the size of dog and cocoa solid content of the chocolate; the darker the chocolate, the greater the amount of theobromine. As a rough guide, Dogs Trust estimates that 50g of plain chocolate could be enough to kill a small dog, such as a Yorkshire Terrier.
                 

  
To keep your dog safe, follow these simple rules from Dogs Trust 
● Keep your ‘Chocolate Away’ – hidden out of sight where your dog can’t reach them.
● Never feed your dog chocolate intended for humans.
● If an Easter egg goes missing and you suspect your dog is the culprit, contact your vet straight away.
● Look out for any of the following symptoms: vomiting containing blood, a sore tummy, excessive thirst, excitability, drooling, rapid heart rate and, in severe cases, epileptic-type fits.
● If your dog is displaying any of these signs take him to your vet immediately – there is no antidote for theobromine poisoning so the sooner treatment is implemented, the greater the chance of recovery.
● If you want to give your dog an Easter treat stick to natural doggy snacks.

Yellow Lab ALLEGEDLY Drives 18 Wheeler into Tree

I still don't know whether to classify this story out of Minnesota under Criminal or Funny!

"Labrador retrievers are wonderful, loving, intelligent dogs. They can do lots of people stuff, like fetch bats for a baseball team. One people skill that they are apparently pretty bad at: driving.

A yellow lab (name currently unknown) up in Mankato, Minnesota apparently took a semi truck for a joyride across North River Drive yesterday afternoon and crashed it into the Kwik Trip gas station. As you can see from the above picture, he didn’t quite park it within the allotted lines.

The Mankato Free Press was on the scene and interviewed David Stegora, who saw the whole thing go down:

“I heard the tree snap and I thought somebody decided to turn around, but then it just kept going forward,” he said.

Stegora didn’t understand how the truck was moving by itself, as he couldn’t see the driver. That changed once the dog climbed up near the driver’s side window.

It seems like the doggy hopped into the truck while it was in neutral and somehow threw it into drive. Our friend here was not, however, adept enough a driver to use his newfound powers responsibly, so he crashed it. Mankato police confirmed that, yeah, a dog really did drive a truck:

Police Cmdr. Dan Schisel said the State Patrol took an accident report and the truck was taken off the road. It’s unclear whether the truck’s owner, or the dog, will be in the doghouse over the incident.

“All I know is it was a Labrador,” Schisel said.

This dog probably just saw some videos online of other dogs driving and wanted to be as cool as they are. Can’t fault his ambition."    (Source Mankato Free Press)

According to WTHR in Indiana, Police say the adventurous pup apparently put the idling semi into gear, which sent it on its way. Police filed an accident report and took the semi off the road. No injuries were reported.

Study confirms Dogs More Loving than Cats and ...Humans

Another "D'OH" moment for dog lovers as we're astonished to find good money being invested in studies for which every dog owner already knew the answer. 

Check out those adorable eyes!

A new study done by researchers for a BBC documentary, "Cats vs. Dogs," have concluded there's five times more love generated in a dog when it sees its owner than a cat.

Our love is chemical, say scientists, so that's how they measured it. As we learned last year, when dogs see their owners, they feel oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates pleasure in our brain and helps us bond with our offspring.

This time, researchers tested pets for the "love hormone" before and after they saw their owners. Ten cats and 10 dogs were swabbed for saliva, then played with their owners for 10 minutes. After, the saliva was tested again. While the oxytocin levels were elevated in both animals, dogs showed an increase of 57.2 percent of the hormone compared to 12 percent in the cats. (One dog's hormone actually went up 500 percent!)

This isn't the first study on this subject. Last April, Science magazine revealed staring into a dog's eyes released oxytocin in people, too. Humans "use eye gaze for affiliative communications and [are] very much sensitive to eye contact," says Takefumi Kikusui, from Azabu University in Japan, told TODAY.com in an email. "Gaze, in particular, (over touch, for example) led to the release of oxytocin."

Love is in those droopy eyes

"I was really surprised to discover that dogs produced such high levels of oxytocin," neuroscientist Dr. Paul Zak, who worked with the documentary's results, said. "It was also a nice surprise to discover that cats produce any at all. At least some of the time, cats seem to bond with their owners."

What might come as a surprise, however, is that dogs are also apparently more loving than humans. On average, Zak added, a person's oxytocin levels only rise between 40-60 percent after interacting with a spouse or child.

Source Today.com

Maternal Maggie Breaks Out to Comfort Frightened Foster Pups

At a Canadian pet motel and foster care center, Maggie the kindly dog broke out of his kennel to comfort and cuddle with two new, frightened, foster puppies on their first night

Maggie, the maternal dog, actually had a litter of her own who were all adopted out of the humane society a little while before she found a loving home. "We think that's why she got so attached to the puppies," Alex Aldred, who works at Barker's Pet Motel and Grooming, in Alberta Canada where the heartwarming events unfolded, told ABC News.

"We've never really seen it before, where a dog sneaks out to some puppies and is so excited to see them."...

"We left work and then we were watching the surveillance cameras while we were out and we saw Maggie was sitting in front of the puppies' kennels," Aldred told ABC. Aldred said his mother, Sandy, went back to check on Maggie after seeing through the video that she had gotten out of her kennel.

"She kind of directed Sandy to the puppies' kennel so Sandy let her in and she was being really affectionate," Aldred explains, "Sandy stayed in their for about 15 minutes and then said, 'Well it looks like they need each other,' and then let Maggie stay the night in their kennel."

Maggie stayed beside the puppies the whole evening long, and Aldred added that it seemed that the mother dog needed the puppy love as much as the frightened puppies needed her.

"When we came back in the morning they were all still cuddled up together."

Deanna Thompson, who works at the Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society (AARCS), the organization that rescued the puppies, told ABC News, of the pets, "They're between nine and ten weeks old," and, "A little bit playful but shy."

Thompson said she was not surprised by this act of maternal love that took place. "It's innate in a lot of female dogs, especially if they've had a litter in the past. It's just in their nature. We've seen it in a lot of dogs even with male dogs, when they hear other puppies crying they want to console them and make sure they're feeling safe."

AARCS organizes over 2,000 adoptions per year, and Thompson added that the young pups have yet to find a loving home.

Source ABC News