Some TikTok trends are fun and carefree, like participating in dances or Millennial music challenges. And then there are others that, well… take us back to the Tide Pod days.
This recent TikTok challenge is more of the Tide Pod persuasion, except instead of hurting themselves, people are hurting animals.
Yeah, it’s not cool.
A new TikTok trend is putting hot sauce on a piece of chicken, feeding it to your dog, and filming the dog’s reaction.
As you can guess, it’s not a pleasant experience for the dog.
Users have been posting these videos, showing their dogs’ reactions, which are often distressing.
A vet tech saw the trend going around and decided to step in.
Peter and Jaycee run the @vet_techs_pj TikTok account, which gives users information on veterinary care and answers questions about animals. In a post that went viral, Peter addressed the trend by using a patient as an example.
In the video, he showed a dog that was in his care. The reason the dog was there? Hot sauce.
“They just kept giving him more and more because I guess his reaction was just so funny but now he’s in the hospital with pancreatitis,” Peter said in the video, showing the dog resting.
One TikTok commenter confirmed how dangerous pancreatitis is to dogs by giving a personal example.
So this is a friendly reminder that when you see a trend on social media, do your research! It literally takes less than a minute to type “Does hot sauce hurt dogs?” into Google. In fact, we’ve already done the work for you. Here’s a link to a site that has a whole list of foods that are safe/not safe for dogs, starting with hot sauce.