Sponsored Guest Post:
Here at Northern Brewer we love dogs just about as much as we love brewing (maybe more). For many years, dogs accompanied their owners to work at Northern Brewer and freely roamed our offices. And for many of us, brew day is a wonderful opportunity to spend time with our canine friends. So when we heard about a customer’s scary experience after their dog consumed hops we were shaken and wanted to help. For wider education on the issue, we would like echo a very serious warning about dogs and hops.
Though research is not extensive, ingesting hops can be highly toxic to some breeds of dogs (Golden Retrievers and especially Greyhounds have been documented). There are many scary stories on homebrewing forums about dogs eating hops after unsuspecting brewers left unused hops out in a place accessible to their dog, or dumped their kettle trub and hop sediment into the yard, or had a hop plant in their yard that dropped cones on the ground. Some dogs that ingest hops rapidly develop a condition called Malignant Hyperthermia, in which the body temperature rises uncontrollably. This can be very harmful or fatal to the dog. Some symptoms are restlessness, panting, vomiting, abdominal pain, seizures, rapid heart rate, and high temperature. If a dog has possibly ingested hops and exhibits symptoms, they should be taken to an emergency pet hospital immediately for treatment.
This abstract from the National Institute for Biotechnology Information represents one of the few scientific confirmations of the issue, and this page has a record of one homebrewer’s experience (their dog was fortunately saved).
Keep your dogs safe!
Yessir. I was all set to begin growing my own hops… Then I read about this. I own two dogs (one of them a Golden) who will ingest everything in sight so I figured it wasn’t worth it.
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I’ve grown hops in my garden for a couple of years and my beagle won’t touch them, which is funny because she’ll eat every berry, bud and fruit off of any other plant she can get at. She’ll eat any maggoty thing she can dig out of the compost, too, but the hops get barely a disinterested sniff. All of the cones are way up high on my plants and out of reach and I think with some careful pruning, it shouldn’t a problem for anybody who has dogs and wants to grow hops. The cones don’t really drop off the plants, so if they are up high, you should be okay.
I have four dogs at the house, and their smart enough not to eat the hops…..Just in case, but some chicken wire or something close to the vicinity of the hop growth, so they can’t get to it- Or completely sequester off a “growing” area.
I think I’ve become allergic to hops as well, at least in big doses. At 61 years old, I find I’m not the hophead I was 20-25 years ago! ;~)
Thank you for printing this warning from Northern Brewer. As a loyal companion, us dogs do want to be into everything our 2-legged companions are into. So many dangers in our yards but so hard to know what is a serious concern. Bravo!