The TikTok hot sauce challenge is not for dogs, you monsters

A two-part collage of a dog and the TikTok hot sauce
Andrea Polo / DustyPixel / Getty Images
Life
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What would you do if a friend handed you a delicious-looking piece of chicken, and then when you ravenously bit into it, you tasted spicy, fiery doom? You would find a new friend, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately for dogs they don’t have that option, which is what makes this unfortunate remix of the TikTok hot sauce challenge — where people feed their dogs hot sauce — particularly cruel.

If you want to cringe, you can find all of the videos under the hashtag #hotsaucechallenge. Most of them involve people, but a concerning evolution has emerged: Some users have film them selves drowning a piece of delicious chicken and hot sauce and then trying to feed it to their dogs who are none the wiser. “They said to try hot sauce on chicken and see how your dog reacts,” one of the videos says and thankfully the dog in this case was smarter than its human and didn’t go for the full bite.

Look: Dogs do not seem to enjoy hot sauce. And considering that dogs are one of the few good things left in the world, why would you idiots punish them like this? And it goes beyond the experience or tasteL Veterinarians and vet techs, including this one with over one million followers, say that feeding your dog hot sauce is extremely bad for a dog's system. It could apparently cause pancreatitis (a dangerous inflammation of the pancreas) in dogs. Dogs' digestive systems are significantly smaller than ours — you’re dealing with a poor little mixed breed dog like the one in the video above — so you can imagine how challenging it might be for them to handle the intense juice of a hot pepper.

Again, this trend was originally intended for humans, who have the ability to read, and post on TikTok and therefore have the freedom to choose to participate. But for some reason, This trend has evolved to include dogs — my guess is a combination of quarantine boredom, terrible upbringing, and the air inability to process common sense. Note that I’m talking about the people giving this to their dogs, not the dogs themselves who will trust anything, even their owners’ cruelty disguised as a treat.