Some Weight Loss Gimmicks are Dangerous for Dogs.
There are things to help dogs lose weight and there are things to help humans lose weight. Don't get them mixed up. A sugar substitute called "xylitol" is poisonous to dogs, and a new pill that is supposed to safely decrease appetite and prevent fat absorption in dogs is not safe in humans.
Xylitol is based on a natural wood sugar and is found in the body naturally as an intermediate of normal metabolism. Compared to sugar it has a very sweet taste with fewer calories and has been used as an artificial sweetener for many years. Recent improvements in production have made it more economical and its popularity is rising. Most xylitol now is made from corncobs and wood chips.
It can cause low blood sugar and acute fatal liver failure in dogs, and it doesn't take all that much. A study from the ASPCA's Animal Poison Control Center quoted in the journal "Veterinary Medicine" listed 8 dogs that had gotten sick after eating xylitol powder, or cookies, cupcakes, or gum sweetened with xylitol. Five of the dogs died or were euthanized.
A human can eat about 4 ounces of pure xylitol and may only develop a little diarrhea. A big St.Bernard eating only a fourth of an ounce could develop seriously low blood sugar.
Xylitol, like other sugars, is very rapidly absorbed into the blood stream. If you catch your dog in the act of eating it, you may prevent or reduce absorption by immediately giving him hydrogen peroxide to make him vomit. The kind you get at the drug store over the counter is 3%. The dose is one teaspoon for every 10 lb. of body weight, up to a maximum of 6 teaspoons. If he doesn't vomit within 15 minutes, dose him again with half as much.
Call your veterinarian immediately. If a significant amount of xylitol was absorbed into the blood stream, supportive care is all that can be done but it may be life saving. It would include monitoring and control of blood sugar using oral or injectable glucose and monitoring of liver enzymes. Supportive care for liver failure is more complicated and not as likely to be successful.
You can buy a jar of 100 pieces of xylitol-sweetened gum for about $8.00. It wouldn't take a twenty-pound dachshund very long to eat 20 pieces of the gum and that could be enough to cause fatal liver failure. The large dogs in the study typically ate a half dozen or more cupcakes, cookies or muffins, or got into the xylitol powder. Small dogs ate gum.
On another note, a drug company, Pfizer, recently announced that they would soon be marketing Slentrol(r), a weight-loss drug for dogs. It is NOT recommended for humans because it can cause abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, flatulence, and headaches.
In dogs the side effects include vomiting and diarrhea. Nausea, abdominal pain, and especially headaches, could be harder to ascertain in a dog. The clinical trials to verify that the drug works and check for side effects involved 88 control dogs and 170 taking the drug, and only lasted a year. In addition to some vomiting and diarrhea, one dog developed seizures, one developed a liver condition, and one was found dead 7 days after stopping the drug. The cause of these things was not clearly determined.
I don't think this drug has been tested on enough dogs for a long enough time to be considered safe. And furthermore, dogs can't talk to us so, who knows? It may suppress the dog's appetite by causing nausea and headaches.