an artificial sweetener that is DEADLY to dogs

Fully Vetted has a post about the deadly poison for dogs that is such a useful and ubiquitous ingredient in human food - and medication!

It's xylitol, an artificial sweetener extracted from birch trees. Here's a frightening quote:

A few sugar-free breath fresheners, a pack of gum, a spilled tin of mints, a sugar-free dessert cup. It takes only a little of this toxin to send a dog into hypoglycemia-induced seizures, and just a little bit more to bring on liver failure.

It's in so many of our foods.

And it's in many medications!!

I think everyone should read what Dr. Patty Khuly says.

My personal rule is, beware of giving human foods to Penny! Check the label on anything, no matter how innocent it seems.
I shudder when I think of the advice I was given when she had a cough last year, to give her a children's cough elixir. I think it is very likely that it would have had xylitol in it.

dogs are in danger if they eat Xylitol sugar substitute

Reading Dolittler's blog today I was surprised to learn the extent of the danger the sugar-substitute Xylitol presents to dogs.

Since I read her previous posts on the danger of this product I've been been warning my friends not to feed anything with artificial sweeteners - but I didn't realise that Xylitol is used now in Rescue Remedy and in some multivitamins.

Dolittler (a practising vet in the US) says that more dogs are poisoned by TicTacs than by any other product, partly because they have such a high level of Xylitol and partly because they are so ubiquitous.

An online article by Sherrill Sellman says that the Finns rediscovered Xylitol during a sugar shortage in World War Two, making it from birch bark. It had been first manufactured in 1891 by a German chemist.

Snopes.com has an account of a nearly fatal accidnet where a dog ate a couple of pieces of chewing gum.

I guess the message is, don't feed your dog anything produced for humans, unless you research the ingredients first.