WARNING - Garden Bark

Hi,

Just thought I'd share our story. Louis had started being very sick and loosing weight fast, went from 15kg to 13kg in less than 2 days. We initially thought he'd eaten something that didn't agree with him but after 2 days of not even keeping water down we took him to the vet. Vet gave him anti biotics but it didn't seem to be doing anything. I think another few days and it could've been very serious.

After 5 days and through the process of elimination we discovered (through Google) that garden bark and dogs don't mix well and cocoa bark is highly toxic. We lifted all the bark we had laid on our garden beds and it almost stopped over night. Most bags of bark in the UK seem to be a mixture of different trees so there is a high chance cocoa bark is in there. He seemed to be attracted to the taste too...

Beware

Thanks for the heads up, very dissappointed the vet didn't pick this up   

Hey! I read about this the other day, apparently it notes that it's toxic to cats but not dogs? Glad he's okay and you figured it out early! Thanks for bringing attention to it!

I didn't know that, thanks for sharing x

I would have never thought! Thanks for sharing and I hope he is well on his way to recovering

Wow well spotted.. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing. We're moving into our new home later in the summer where we do have a new large garden (hubby can't recall if there is garden bark or not) so a tip like this is very useful. We're going to have to go right around to check the plants, etc to make sure there is nothing toxic but would've never thought to check for the bark.

Thats new info to me as well, thanks for sharing.

So glad you managed to find out in good time and that your boy
is ok.

You would think that there would at least be some sort of warning on the pack! Anyway he is back to his normal self now, took about a week to completely get out of his system though.

Another symptom was really bad itching, just so you know