How to Make Your Dog Throw Up (or Why My Morning Sucked)

With all the talk of my morning/noon/night sickness and the associated vomiting (Read Things That Suck and Should Pregnant Women Get a Behavioral Pass), you would not think I'd want to discuss dog vomit as well. But, since this morning I had the lovely chore of making my Doberman throw up to retrieve the candy he ate (wrapper and all), I thought I'd share with you the secrets of making your dog throw up.

First of all, don't induce vomiting without thinking about what is being vomited up. Certain products, like sharp objects or acidic cleaners, can do more damage when coming back up. When in doubt, call your vet or an emergency clinic and ask. Emergency vet clinics will often give out basic info like that over the phone when they are able to safely do so.

Vet's offices and dog health care books may tell you to administer 3% hydrogen peroxide at the rate of one to three teaspoonfuls every ten minutes, repeated up to three times. This is the information found in the Dog Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook by Delbert G. Carlson, D.V.M. and James M. Giffin, M.D., which I keep for reference at home. However, in my own personal experience, hydrogen peroxide takes a long time to work, and sometimes it never does. I've heard that there may be issues with the freshness of peroxide relating to how it works. There is nothing worse than standing around, worrying about your dog who has eaten chocolate, or chunks of a toy, or whatever, and then worrying about whether you've just given him a lethal dose of peroxide if he never vomits it up.

I've had much more success with another method listed in this book: one half to one teaspoon of salt placed on the back of the dog's tongue. I'm never that precise. I open the mouth and dump salt in and I'm telling you, whatever is in the stomach comes up fast. And unlike peroxide, if you have to pick through the vomit to make sure all the pieces of an item are there (yes, I've done that. No, not with my bare hands), with the salt method you aren't stuck with piles of foam to deal with.

Today's vomit incident worked out just fine, which was very fortunate. Since I did it out in the back yard, I only had to shovel up the refuse - and the bag of candy that started it all - and life was back to normal. Except for the part where my two-and-a-half-year-old son kept hollering across the yard, "Hogan! Come here! Get more salt in your mouth!"

As an aside, I suggest you learn from a vomit mistake I made years ago when I thought that having a dog vomit in the tub would make for easy clean up. Dogs don't chew their food, so that means that what comes up is NOT likely to just rinse down your drain as I envisioned. That was not a happy day.

In an interesting twist of fate, I threw up while writing this. Nice.

****I've posted an addendum to this message, but I've been asked by a reader to edit this post to say that using salt to cause vomiting can cause serious health problems. Please discuss methods of vomit induction with your vet in advance of a problem, and/or call your vet or an emergency clinic before you induce vomiting. I'm not a vet, nor do I play one on TV. Carry on!