Easter Dog Safety: Chocolate Eggs, Basket Grass, and Lilies

The big four

• Chocolate eggs and bunnies: often dark chocolate, often hidden at exactly dog height, often in quantity. The egg hunt your dog conducts afterward is the classic case.
• Easter grass: the plastic basket filler is a linear foreign body; it anchors in the gut and requires surgery. Cats are worse about it, but dogs eat it too.
• Easter lilies: mild GI upset for dogs, but genuinely lethal to cats; mixed households should skip them entirely.
• Xylitol candy: sugar-free jelly beans and gum in baskets.

Run the egg hunt like a pro

• Count the eggs you hide, and count them back in: the missing ones are the dog's.
• Keep the dog out of the hunt zone until the count reconciles.
• Use paper or crinkle-cut filler instead of plastic grass.
• Hard-boiled real eggs left hidden for days become their own (smellier) problem.

If the basket gets raided

Wrapper forensics again: estimate the chocolate type and amount, check any candy for xylitol, note whether basket grass is missing, and call with your dog's weight. Grass ingestion plus vomiting or a hunched posture in the following days is a vet visit, not a wait.