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Dogs and Hops

jakers722

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Some of you may already be aware of the dangers of dogs and hops, but some may not be as I was not.  Two nights ago I had just finished brewing a honey ale extract recipe and threw my spent hops and grain into the garbage can. Later that night our chocolate lab woke us up panting extremely heavily and jumping on the bed. He is generally a vet calm dog so we knew something was wrong. When taking him out I noticed that the trash can had been tipped over and being a Labrador he scarfed down the hops and some spent grain. Doing a little bit of research I found that hops were extremely toxic to dogs and can result in death.  I'm writing this as a heads up to anyone needing info if this happens to you, and to say take any precautions necessary to avoid it.  My dog was fuc*** up after ingesting the hops, rapid heart rate and high body temperature. For unknown reasons hops can cause a dog to go into hyperthermia and reach body temps up to 108 degrees.. and thing over 105 seconds starts breaking down the organs. By a stroke of good luck we have cold weather and our dog love Les to eat ice cubes which we gave him and put him outside to cool off trying to comfort him unknowingly resulting in a drop of dangerous body temperatures and probably stabilizing him a bit. After a couple hours he was not showing much improvement and we decided to call an emergency vet and take him in. Unsurprisingly the vets didn't know much about hop toxicity and had to rely on external research for any info. He was released later that afternoon but was not much better.  Later that night he still wasn't any better so we took him to another vet who did blood work on him in case the high temperature did any damage to his internal organs. Luckily no damage was done but we still needed to get his heart rate and temperature down so the doctor gave him vallium which helped dramatically over the next couple of hours.  In any case this happens to you I want to share some thoughts that could save your dogs life that I wished I knew beforehand. Number 1 if you know the our dog ate hops and you catch it early, induce vomiting as quickly as possible, this can be done by orally administering 5-6 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide. More is fine too , it'll all come back out. Keep your dog cool if he starts getting over 103 degrees douse him in cold water feed him ice ... whatever it takes to get the temperature down because that's what does the damage. Luckily our boy is alright , but the hops affected him for well over 40 hrs and us just now getting back to normal again. Just wanted to share this with people to hopefully save you the trouble and 1000 dollars in vet bills!  That beer I brewed better be damn good !
 
Thanks for sharing your cautionary story.  Hopefully it will be widely read and heeded among our fellow brew buds. 

Glad to hear that in the end your four legged family member is OK even though your wallet may have been lightened in the process.
 
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