So hops are fatal for dogs, what about other household pets?

This is good information to know as i had no idea until browsing this forum the other day. I have been doing some searches but apparently dogs are the main concern as far as i can tell.

What about cats or other family pets? Any other brewing ingredients that need to be kept away from animals?

wow is this really true? where did you find this information? so if hops are bad for dogs why do some dogs drink beer? wouldnt the hops still sort of be in there? or is it just raw hops and a larger amount of it? whatever the case its good to know. i have to dogs that will try and eat anything.

Actually, other household pets are not fatal for dogs. Dogs can eat cats, hamsters, etc with no problems...

This is news to me.. I just planted some in my backyard where my dogs could get access to them. I guess I have to come up with some kind of barrier now?

volcom579 said:

so if hops are bad for dogs why do some dogs drink beer?

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I wasn't aware that some dogs drink beer! How do they open the bottles?

volcom579 said:

wow is this really true? where did you find this information? so if hops are bad for dogs why do some dogs drink beer? wouldnt the hops still sort of be in there? or is it just raw hops and a larger amount of it? whatever the case its good to know. i have to dogs that will try and eat anything.

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Yes, it's true. In some dogs (greyhounds appear to be particularly susceptible, but I beleive all dogs are at risk), ingestion of hops can cause malignant hyperthermia -- the metabolism skyrockets, and the dog can't control it's body temp. No one knows what substance in hops triggers the reaction, or why some dogs are more susceptible than others. Google 'hops poison dogs' or something similar, and you'll get a bunch of info.

As far as dogs drinking beer, I'd guess (and it's just a guess) that the toxin is too dilute or maybe nonexistent in the finished beer to have an effect. Also guessing that most people who give their dogs beer are BMC drinkers, where concentration of anything hop-related probably isn't a danger

I wouldn't let Fido at the IIPA, just to be safe...

A recent member of either this forum or one of the multitude of other forums I visit recently lost his dog because he ingested an ounce of hops.

Sir Humpsalot said:

Actually, other household pets are not fatal for dogs. Dogs can eat cats, hamsters, etc with no problems...

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LMAO.
Mine once ate a 1/2lb of chocolate malt. She was fine once it went though her system.

Let's put it this way, there is exactly ONE report out there about hops & dogs, from 1997. If this really was a problem, you'd think there would be more cases as homebrewing AND greyhound retirement programs have become more common.

As a homebrewer and a greyhound owner, I've investigated this and communicated with some of the top greyhound vet programs in the country.

Go to http://www.vet.ohio-state.edu/1872.htm, search for hops. Nada. Even the national poison control center has zero documented cases.

i realize it may not be an everyday occurrence, but information such as this is good to know in order to show some caution against loosing a "family member."

i believe the correct expression is something like, better safe than sorry.

We drive back and forth between eugene and seattle routinely, and the cat's not so good in the car. The vet gave us a natural tranquilizer, main ingredient: humulus lupus.

Chello said:

i realize it may not be an everyday occurrence, but information such as this is good to know in order to show some caution against loosing a "family member."

i believe the correct expression is something like, better safe than sorry.

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This exact same rationale that is why I wear my aluminum foil deflector beanie at all times!

http://zapatopi.net/afdb/

Being safe involves knowing what the real hazards and odds are. Worrying about things that aren't a problem sets you up to miss actual problems. Posting something that is flat out wrong doesn't help anyone.

Here is the thread I remembered....

http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?t=56642&highlight=hops+dog

Unless this guy was lying (and I can't see why he would), it seems like it is a real hazard.

Malignant hyperthermia (MH) is a hypermetabolic syndrome involving skeletal muscle characterized by hyperthermia, tachycardia, tachypnea, increased oxygen consumption, cyanosis, cardiac dysrhythmias, metabolic acidosis, respiratory acidosis, muscle rigidity, unstable arterial blood pressure, and death. There also may be electrolyte abnormalities, myoglobinuria, CK elevation, impaired blood coagulation, renal failure, and pulmonary edema. Although MH was initially recognized as a fatal syndrome in humans, the term describing its occurrence in swine is porcine stress syndrome. MH is most prevalent in swine, but this syndrome has also been reported in dogs (especially Greyhounds), cats, and horses.

MH is a heritable disease

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Ref: http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/81000.htm

It can only be evaluated by doing a biopsy.

You Searched for: Humulus lupulus
0 results were found.
Search Tips click here.

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I found this page (http://www.drugs.com/npp/hops.html) which says:

As an historical food constituent, hops has “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) status by the FDA, however; use of medicinal quantities of hops may pose more risk than common levels of exposure in food use. Dogs appear to be somewhat sensitive to hops compounds. A malignant hyperthermic reaction was observed in 5 dogs who consumed boiled hops residues used in home brewing. 42 A subchronic toxicity study of the hops alpha-acids was conducted in dogs; while high doses induced vomiting, the animals generally tolerated lower doses without ill effects. A wide safety margin for humans was extrapolated from this experiment. 43

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And so I looked up the referenced paper abstract (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9771552):

Hops and hop extracts are approved and widely used bittering agents in the brewing of beer. During recent years, preisomerized alpha hop acids and reduced preisomerized alpha hop acids have been introduced as effective and economical bittering agents that may be added late in the brewing process. Although hops have been used for centuries, there are few studies in the literature on the safety of this ingredient. The study herein was conducted to determine the effects associated with subchronic oral administration of the reduced preisomerized hop acids, hexahydroisohumulone and tetrahydroisohumulone, in the dog. The results show that these materials are generally well tolerated in the dog. At high dose levels they induce vomiting, and much of the material administered was excreted in the faeces. The no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) of the compounds were 50 and 100 mg/kg body weight, respectively. Consumption of these ingredients by adult humans drinking 1 litre of beer daily is less than 0.25 mg/kg body weight; their use is thus associated with wide safety margins.

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Seems like it is mostly harmless in small quantities but different breeds may react very differently to it.

Here's the "Original" warning that has started the whole thing, from 2002...

http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~ericwan/DOG/hops.html

But like David42 said it is really hard to say whether or not is is true or just overblown hysteria....I first heard about it as a warning on the instruction for Brewer's Best kits...

When I googled it back then, all the websites were quoting the exact same text as I linked to above, even mentioning the same doggy pasquale or something like that....which kinda makes it unverifiable if everyone's just regurgitating the exact same info....

Like a lot of stuff on the internets it's really hard to verify if it is true or an urban legend...Even Snopes.com doesn't have any info on whether or not it is real...

Somebody last week called it another "beer legend that will never die...."

So wait a minute. You're saying that even though I read it on the internet, it may not be true??

This could cause me to question my need for the aluminum foil beanies!!

The malignant hyperthermia from hops is possible in dogs, esp. greyhounds and other sight hounds, but it is less likely than the risks of anesthesia induced MH during elective surgeries like spays and neuters.

As far as other ingredients, spent grains would not be too healthy for your hind gut fermenting small pets like rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, etc. due to the risk of a severe gastroenteritis from rapid proliferation of bacteria that are normally under control.

Also, for all you ruminant lovers out there, I wouldn't feed LARGE amounts of spent grains, (no more than you would feed normal grains) due to a risk of ruminal acidosis.


My (semi) professional $0.02
-deathweed DVM c/o 2010

Oh, btw, great posts David_42 and good references. If I had a little more time with my response I would have posted the same.

SteveM said:

So wait a minute. You're saying that even though I read it on the internet, it may not be true??

This could cause me to question my need for the aluminum foil beanies!!

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Well I just won the Guiness Lottery, cause I got an email that say so....

SO it must be true, right????????

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=61826

David 42:
As i do some of my own research on this issue I have come across your posts in several threads. Here is my story:

My 65 lb, mixed breed dog is currently spending the night at the emergency vet after ingesting spent hop pellets that i was using as compost in my garden.

Last night I brewed a batch, and when i was done spread the spent hops and grains in my garden. This morning my wife got up before me and let the dog out around 9am. She left home to run errands before I got up. When I did get up I noticed the dog was lying around being a bit lethargic and panting excessively. We hadn't made it out for our walk the day before, so I figured he might need some exercise. We went for a walk and he had a BM that was a bit loose and slightly greenish. We came home and he laid back down and continued the panting. This was around 1pm.

My wife came home around 2pm and took notice of the fact that he was panting and not acting like himself. At this point she told me that he had gotten into something in the garden. I started to make the connection between his symptoms and him getting into the garden where I had just dumped the spent hops, but since he has eaten many odd things in the two years we've had him I figured it would run through his system eventually just like everything else had before.

At about 4:30-5 the panting had gotten heavier and his ears were hot. He couldn't seem to cool off, and was unable to relax. If you've had a dog you can look in their face and tell that something is wrong. I looked online and got concerned after reading about hops causing hyperthermia: the symptoms seemed to fit so we took him to the emergency vet. They called animal poison control who CONFIRMED THAT HOPS ARE TOXIC TO DOGS. It was too late to induce vomiting they told me so they would try to flush out what they could and keep him overnight.

I just got off the phone at 10pm with the vet and my dog is not out of the woods yet. They have administered an IV and catheter and are monitoring him. Temperature is still high, and heart rate is fast.

Not that its about money, but I've already spent $1200, and expect to spend more to get him through this.

Apparently some breeds are more susceptible to suffering adverse effects from ingesting hops. REGARDLESS, YOU SHOULD ASSUME HOPS ARE TOXIC FOR YOUR DOG.

Andybc555 said:

REGARDLESS, YOU SHOULD ASSUME HOPS ARE TOXIC FOR YOUR DOG.

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This is the takeaway message here. It is too easy to keep hops away from dogs to not do it.

Andybc555, hope your dog pulls through.

Andy, thoughts and prayers for your pooch..

thanks for the well wishes. after a night and a day spent at the vet, (where we learned he had put on 20lbs and is now at 85lbs (this probably helped him pull through)) he is home and OK.

Beerrific summed it up pretty well: Keep hops away from your dog

p.s. this batch will have to be named "poisoned pooch ipa"

really glad ur friend is doing better and back home. I don't know what I would do if that happend to my buddy Guinness.

So good to hear he pulled through!

Out of curiosity, is there any greyhound in his mix of breeds?

glad your pooch pulled through man.. my cockapoo had a ruptured disc a few years ago and I ended up shelling out over 5k for the damn dog. He's my boy though, and I'd do it again in a minute. No children yet, so it was a no brainer. I couldn't stand the thought of being financially capable (although it hurt quite a bit) and not saving my dog..

Windowleaf philidendron are also toxic to dogs, although I have never witnessed dogs grazing on them.

my ***** Kahlua doesn't like beer but I'll keep the hops away from here after brew day for sure after reading this thread.

-=Jason=-

SumnerH - He was a rescue. We know his mom was mostly beagle, but his father must have run off and skipped town so we're not sure about his paternal lineage. He doesn't have the look of a greyhound, but who knows.

Yes, losing him would have been tough on me, and probably even more so on my pregnant wife. It probably would have dealt a death blow to my homebrewing.

Sir Humpsalot, Actually dogs can choke on hamsters, if they're trying to eat them too quickly...

I had no idea....glad I don't have a dog!

My dog has been known to happily scarf down rotten birds, colored nylon rope as well as other animals' vomit and feces, but now I find out that chocolate, grapes AND hops are potentially lethal.

Funny creatures.

Just be careful with beer and dogs...one of mine drank half a DFH 90 min IPA off a coffee table one NYE & was visibly drunk. Said dog also ate an entire pair of pantyhose, which was $1200 to surgically remove later.

I have plenty of friends that give their dogs beer....I think it has something to do with the hops that have already been boiled that makes them deadly...I doubt that a dog would eat a fresh raw hop....but maybe i'm wrong...

David-42 - actually telling someone they have nothing to worry about can also lead to problems. Simply quoting online text about a condition doesn't prove that it is or is not harmless. I will pipe in on this discussion, being a vet tech I can give an actual account of the problems. As stated before it is not known why the reaction occurs, but dogs that ingest hops, whether they have been boiled or not, is possibly harmful to the pet. Obviously, it depends on the matter of the occurance, size, type of dog, amount of hops ingested, all sorts of variables. I can personally tell that hops have been the reason for 5 canine deaths and 4 more pumped stomachs in 7 years at my ER clinic. To cover the talk about after boiled or not, I have seen both cases, either as said before spread around after boil, or simply the dog got the hops while the owner wasn't paying attention during prep for boil.

But to cover someone elses, question, I have not seen a cat yet with the problem. I would chalk it up to the fact that dogs will eat just about anything, where a cat is usually a little more picky.

I know I brought this back from the depths...but even thought I don't have a dog...I just kinda wanted to do my part....

I had a Cocker Spaniel that had epilepsy and when it drank beer its seizures were less frequent and shorter, where as when he took the medicines the vet gave him they didnt work as well...Hmmm always wondered about that