Texas Gardening: Cocoa Mulch Warning to Pet owners, particularly dogs, 0 by grrrlgeek

grrrlgeek wrote:
Sorry to barge in, I'm not from TX, I found this thread while researching cocoa mulch. The original post is from an email circulated in 2003. The exact same story was emailed and posted all over, by different people, with different beginnings (a dear friend...,someone in our dog agility class..., etc), so it is generally taken as not a genuine occurrence (see http://www.themediadesk.com/files/cocoamulch.htm) and is now considered spam. There's a good but technical page at http://www2.aspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pro_apcc_publ... , and they list one fatality as documented in 1984 with a large ingestion, but the retrospective studies the ASPCA looked at showed that most dogs didn't even get sick, or just threw up, and 2/3 of cases were in California. So, I definitely wouldn't use in an big open area where dogs roam free a lot or put down fresh in warm weather (probably makes it smell stronger?); i still haven't decided if I want to use it in the small area I want it for that will be mostly under plants (and turned under as it breaks down). But I wouldn't keep forwarding that old story. Better to share a link to the ASPCA site.

They do recommend that "Pet owners should avoid use of cocoa bean mulch in landscaping around dogs with indiscriminate eating habits." That's every dog I've ever known :D And who wants them yaking cocoa hulls all over the place anyway. :~P

Sandy (computer geek and Spam buster)