Yarn Bandit Steals Treats from Dirtbunny

Let us begin with some important background facts before we get into our story.

1. Tiki is a ho.


2. He is especially a ho when it comes to food.


3. Bunny sometimes has a bedtime snack.


4. If Bunny has a bedtime snack, it frequently is chocolate.


5. Chocolate is bad for dogs.


6. A little bit of chocolate is not a problem for dogs.


7. A lot of chocolate is fatal to dogs.


8. In between "so what?" and "OMG I killed my dog" is a spectrum of various degrees of illness that can include vomiting, diarrhea, panting, hyperness, and cardiac-type symptoms that one would associate with being hyped up on uppers. Hyped up on uppers? That doesn't sound right. Forgive me if I'm not up on the most current drug slang.


9. At what point the amount of chocolate becomes enough to make your dog sick or kill him depends on the size of your dog, the amount of chocolate consumed, the nature of the chocolate itself, particularly the concentration of cocoa (milk chocolate being pretty tame-which you chocolate lovers already knew--and unsweetened chocolate being at the top of the list), and who knows what idiosyncratic characteristics of your dog.


10. Because of #9, it is very difficult to determine exactly where the lines between sick/well and live/die are, no matter how much time you spend googling it. (Ask me how I know.)
    
11. Did you know that the key chemical component of chocolate that is bad for dogs (I forget what it is, but it isn't the caffeine) has a half-life of 17.5 hours?

And so one night last week, Dirtbunny makes herself a leetle bedtime snack. She pours herself a glass of milk. She gets out a small bowl. In the bowl she puts four Hershey's kisses, a brownie with hazelnuts, and a few squares of G&B 70%. (For reasons which will soon become clear, if you haven't figured it out already, Bunny spent a lot of time trying to remember exactly how many squares of G&B 70% she put in that bowl. Maybe 6. Probably 4. No more than an ounce, cuz the whole bar is 4 oz and it was way less than a bar. As for the brownie, the whole batch had 4 oz. of Ghirardelli unsweetened, and this was probably about 1/16th of the batch, probably, so that's a quarter ounce. And how many kisses exactly? Are you sure it was four? What if it was five? How much do five kisses weigh? Wait a minute! Are hazelnuts the nuts that are bad for dogs or was it macadamia nuts? Gaaaaaaah!) Bunny carried her bowl of chocolate and her glass of milk to her room.

Oops! Still have to go. Don't wanna take my snack in there with me. (Pretty much all of us have fetishes about taking food into the bathroom, right? It's not just me, right?) Gotta put it down somewhere. I intend to eat it in bed, but I don't wanna put it down on the night table because Yarn Bandit has a proven ability to get at things left on the night table.

So I put it across the room on a tall table with nothing adjacent to it that can be used for climbing, and, importantly, no known past security breaches. And my snack is safe, and I go have some alone time, the details of which I will not mention. I will, say, however, that while I was having my alone time, I heard some chomping, slurping noises, but I assumed that was our resident paw-licker, the Baron von Kirbenstein, because that's what he does every night.

You have already guessed what happened next.

Somehow, and don't ask me how because I've been mulling this over for a long time and haven't figured it out, the bowl of treats is no longer on the table where I left it. It is face-up, in the dog bed. It is nearly empty, but not entirely. The tiny little hoser has eaten the brownie and the kisses and some of the 70%, but he has left three squares of the 70% behind. I don't know if he hated it (remember, he eats his own barf with gusto, so that doesn't seem likely) or just didn't have time to finish it before he got busted.

The Man is consulted. We decide that we are not going to go to the Emergency Vet because we know that a little chocolate is no big deal and because Dirtbunny thinks she remembers reading somewhere that a 50-75 pound dog ate a two-pound bag of M&Ms and just got sick but didn't die and we did a little quick and dirty math and calculated (Ha! as if it was that scientific) that he might get sick but probably, probably, wouldn't die. He'll barf a little, we said. Maybe he'll get the poops, we said. It'll be OK.

The Man was confident about this, but Bunny is a hypochondriac and Could. Not. Let. It. Go. We went to work the next day, where Bunny proceeded to spend a lot of time, and (don't tell her boss) I mean a lot of time, on the Interweb trying to determine whether she had killed her dog by negligently, or maybe with reckless disregard, giving him access to chocolate. Or maybe it was knowingly. She knows he's a ho and a thief. She knows chocolate is bad for dogs. Oh Boy. Jack McCoy is going to get her but good.

I am happy to say that, with the exception of a few hours of acting hyper and obnoxious (which earned him some crate time), our little sun worshipper was fine. No barfing or pooping, nothing scary, just a little bit wound up for a little while. Scared the crap out of Dirtbunny, though. She is relieved that she is not going down on felony dog-abuse charges, and she is relieved that Tiki is not dead. Or sick. But especially not dead.

Whew.

If worry-wort was an Olympic sport, Dirtbunny would be a serious medal contender.

Now here's an advanced-level math problem. Given what is described above about the estimated amounts and nature of chocolate consumed, a half-life of 17.5 hours, and assuming a canine weight of 26 pounds, did the Yarn Bandit eat enough chocolate to (a) get sick or (b) die and (c) how long before we know and (d) if he did get sick, how long before he's better? It's an open-book quiz, so feel free to use the full power of the Interweb in arriving at your answer.

Sure, you know the answer now, but what if you had to figure it out before you knew for certain how it ended? What if you had to second-guess your decision not to seek immediate medical attention? How confident would you be about your answer under those circumstances?