04-04-2003, 09:32 PM
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mulch fertilizer may pose hazard to dogs
In article ,
wrote:
my mother been using the cocoa bean husk mulch for years. we got 7
dogs. none of
them were attracted to the mulch. after a while I find the smell
obnoxious, not
terribly effective in holding down weeds, gets blown around until it
gets wet and
fungusy.
I would keep my stupid "everything-belongs-in-my-mouth" puppy away from
it of course.
But the "chocolate is deadly" is a dosage thing. They gotta eat lots of real
chocolate (relative to their size) to get toxed. I find this kind of
warning to
edge on hysteria. The whole list of plants that are toxic is not
scientific. They
have now included grapes on the list of foods toxic for dogs based on
somebody
saying their dog ate a bunch, suddenly got sick and died.
Ingrid
Very sensible. Inducing that "edge of hysteria" was in fact the entire
goal of the Animal Rights & PETA activists who were first to spread this
information -- not to assist animals but specifically to target Foremans &
Home Depot for political power over corporations, & while they were
exaggerating the degree of threat to dogs, they decided to toss in the
much more fatuous claim that it would also kill cats. All the original
flyers & articles on this mentioned Foremans & Home Depot explicitely
because the animal rights press releases focused on them. The press
releases focused on new organizations, dog clubs, & garden societies --
NOT poison control experts, who were intentionally forced to respond to
clubsters of sundry kinds, just as was Home Depot. It was a very
successful propoganda compaign, assisted by the germ of truth under the
exaggerations.
Note that when the propoganda reached the ASPCA Animal Poison Control
Center, they released a document that said cocoa mulch MIGHT harm dogs, &
based on known amounts of theobromine in cocoa mulch, speculated that 5
ounces of cocoa mulch would be sufficient to kill a fifty pound dog, but
alas they're repeating lies concocted by John Frazier, long-time PETA
activist & advocate of "secular morality of animal rights". Elsewhere,
without an agenda, University of Illinois professors Wiesbrook &
Gwaltney-Brant said it would take 12 ounces to kill that dog, & even that
is an estimate that sought to err on the side of caution. A lethal dose of
theobromine from milk chocolate would require a dog in the 50 to 65 pound
range to eat FOUR POUNDS to reach a toxic level. This is why no child ever
killed its dog sharing one little piece of chocolate, unwise though that
sharing may be. Cocoa mulch has four times the theobromine, therefore it
is easy to speculate that one pound of mulch would be just as toxic to the
dog -- if only you can convince the dog to eat a pound of shells with so
great an ease.
If a large dog could manage to stomach between twelve ounces & a pound of
cocoa mulch, it probably would die. That much is true. Pile up that much
of the stuff & then try to imagine any dog finishing it off! What are the
serious odds of a dog eating three-quarters of a pound to a pound of such
lightweight stuff at a go? We're talking about a threat to dogs that are
already psychologically damaged, not your mum's dogs if they're
well-adjusted to start with.
In all, it's a caution, not the extravagant danger animal rights radicals
trumpeted & have considered so many garden club & dog club volunteers to
repeat verbatim right down to the animal rights peoples' indictment of
Foremans & Home Depot. Whadda success!
-paghat the ratgirl
--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/
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