A lot of people are tempted to include their little furry dog buddy in all the things that they do including eating and for the most part I think this is nice. There are some dangers though and while a lot of people (I would say most) are aware of things like chocolate are bad for dogs and never give it to them, there are a bunch of other things that maybe people are not aware of and while some nuts are ok and others are not, it is just a good rule of thumb to make things easier to not feed your dog nuts at all.
A person in Krabi recently found this out the hard way.
Don't worry, the dog didn't die. but there were some rather serious health complications that really scared us along the way.
While it is very unlikely that your dog is going to eat enough of Macadamia nuts to actually harm them badly, it can happen. This is especially true if you dog east like a vacuum cleaner, which was the case with this friend of ours that has a poodle mix that eats all things like it is going to get taken away from her. Ironically in this situation, this food should have been taken away from her and it could have killed her.
Macadamia nuts contain something, that is all the medical world actually knows, that causes potentially great harm in dogs upon ingestion. Normally, a dog's stomach can handle much more punishment than a human's can, but in this case there is just something about Macadamia nuts that are a particularly bad danger.
Most dogs upon eating this will start to feel ill right away and vomiting will result in the mostly undigested nuts being thrown up but this is not a good enough defense mechanism as dogs that have eaten a great deal of these nuts may throw it up after it is already too late and whatever it is that is in macadamia nuts has already entered its bloodstream.
While science has not determined exactly what it is that affects dogs this way, do we really need to know? If something was constantly hurting you, do you really care exactly what it is, or are you just going to stop doing that thing?
In our specific case we were able to induce additional vomiting, using a mix of hydrogen peroxide and water mixed, but the dog was suffering from hypothermia (low body temperature) and was having body spasms that were very scary for all of us. We have methods of shocking a dog's body into keeping itself alive to weather the storm, so to speak, but thankfully we didn't need to use them.
The dog vomited a lot, spasmed a lot, and was very very tired for a day or two, then bounced back. Everything seems normal now but it was very scary for us for a couple of days and we kept the dog under observation for a few days.
Macadamia nuts are so expensive that it seems unlikely that a dog would ever get a hold of a lot of them at once but in this particular case the owner received a large bag of these nuts as a gift and figured, why not give them to the dog?
I don't suppose there is a very good reason that anyone would know that these nuts are toxic to dogs, but they are and you need to be aware of this.
Macadamia nuts are the most dangerous, but there are others. Pecans and Walnuts contain a chemical compound that can cause similar effects in dogs and sometimes this can be attributed to mold because these two nuts are often kept unrefrigerated for long periods of times in households.
There are reports of other nuts giving dogs similar ill effects, but they are so rare that there is no reason to muddy the waters with fear-mongering.
Just know that macadamia nuts need to be kept far away from dogs. Treat it as if it were chocolate. You would never give chocolate to a dog right? well just imagine that macadamia nuts are the same. In fact, maybe just steer clear of nuts altogether, there are plenty of other treats that you can five your dog companion.
Strangely, this doesn't affect any other known animal, including cats. Cats generally are not all that interested in eating nuts though, so who really knows?
If you would like to see how you can help out or simply spread the word, please visit our website at
http://krabianimalwelfare.org
Krabi Animal Welfare is a charity run entirely by volunteers and are a registered non-profit organization in Thailand and the U.K.. We aim to relieve the pain and suffering of dogs and cats within Krabi Province.
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