Alert on FB from a local animal hospital: "Cocoa Mulch"

[DirkGently]

11. That's glurge from 2006.

It's inbox sludge, not a real story.

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/cocoa-mulch-warning.html

While the claim that coca mulch can cause canine illness is factual, the particular incident described in the message is unsubstantiated. It seems that the authors of these types of warning messages often have an unfortunate tendency to embellish the core information with anecdotal stories of questionable veracity, perhaps in a misguided attempt to add a human element to their claims. The message does not provide any method of verifying if Calypso did actually die as a result of consuming cocoa mulch or even if she was a real dog. The previously mentioned AVMA article questions the truth of the claims in the message:
The story being circulated about a young dog named Calypso ingesting cocoa bean shell mulch may be true, Dr. Hansen said, but the cause of the dog's death is "highly suspect." The statement that she vomited a few times is consistent with such poisoning, but not the absence of other clinical signs until the next day, when the dog is said to have had a single seizure during her morning walk and died instantly.

"A big problem from the perspective of a toxicologist and a veterinary clinician is that if you have poisoning from methylxanthines, you get a progression of signs — vomiting, diarrhea, more vomiting, trembling, the heart rate kicks up, then it may progress to seizures if the dose is exceptionally high, with death being uncommon," Dr. Hansen said. "A necropsy would have likely shown that Calypso had an underlying condition that caused her death."