What is the right way to induce vomiting in the dog?

Key Information: The best way to induce vomiting in the dog is with 3% hydrogen peroxide { Not hair colouring peroxide }. A usual oral dose is one teaspoon { 5 ml } per 10 pounds of your dog’s body weight. Vomiting should occur within 15 minutes but if no vomiting occurs, you can safely repeat the process a second time.

What is the wrong way to induce vomiting in the dog?

Putting your finger down your dog’s throat is not a good idea. A. It does not work and B. Understandably your dog might bite your finger.
Making your dog swallow mustard is not a good idea, and salt can make thing worse due to causing an elevated sodium level.
Syrup of ipecac is to be avoided as it can cause quite desperate side effects.

Lastly please make sure you do not give too much hydrogen peroxide as this can cause extreme and uncontrollable vomiting. This can make things much worse.

Why would I want to induce vomiting in the dog?

Well, it is well known these days that some common household items can be toxic to dogs such as grapes, raisins, chocolate just to name three examples. Also, dogs often get access to their owner’s prescription meds as well as recreational drugs of various sorts. In many such cases inducing vomiting in this sort of situation is the right thing to do.

Why would I not want to induce vomiting?

You would not want to induce vomiting in a number of situations. Mainly this would be where your dog has swallowed something corrosive or irritant. Things like where a dog has swallowed oven cleaners, drain cleaners, batteries, for example. These things can cause serious damage to the esophagus on the way back up.

Also oily substances which are easily inhaled into the lungs can cause problems, gasoline, motor oil and kerosene are examples.

Are there dangers in inducing vomiting in the dog?

Well yes, other than the dangers listed above there is in fact a small danger each time you induce vomiting, this is because very rarely some dogs can inhale their own vomit and this can result in inhalational pneumonia, which can be a very serious situation. So you always have to balance the benefits against this small risk.

Short-nosed breeds such as pugs and bulldogs may be more prone to this danger. As are very young puppies.

So should you induce vomiting in your dog?

Well, there may be situations where your dog has swallowed something very toxic and time is of the essence and no vet is available nearby. In this situation inducing vomiting at home may be your best and only option.

But if you have time it would always be a good idea to call your local vet or an animal poison helpline before going ahead, just to check whether you are going make things worse.

Inducing vomiting in the cat.

There’s nothing you can safely give to cats if they’ve eaten something poisonous. Products like salt, mustard, syrup of ipecac, and hydrogen peroxide aren’t safe to give in cats, and you need to seek immediate veterinary attention if your cat ate something poisonous. Your veterinarian has more effective drugs called alpha-adrenergic agonist drugs to help induce vomiting.

However, if no vets are on hand and it is a matter of life or death then please follow this link for precise instructions if you want to attempt to induce vomiting in the cat in any case: LINK