Allowable & Non-Allowable Foods

[ToBScholarly]

Can anyone post a trusted comprehensive list of foods dogs are not supposed to eat? I know grapes, onions and garlic (proportional to your dog's size of course) are on the list, but not sure of what else. ANd the internet has a bunch of different sites but they include/exclude different items.

Reggie, by the way, has taken to eating the tomatoes we leave on our plant rack to ripen. I am kinda hoping he doesn't die from it...

[Swissy Mom]

I would love to see a comprehensive list as well. My mom used to give the Cocker Spaniel tomatoes all the time. She LOVED them. The vet said it was okay. I believe the leaves are not okay though.

[RockyMountainDobies]

I believe avocado skin and pit are also a no-no. Tomatoes are fine as long as its only the fruit.

[Delynnr]

My dogs steal tomatoes off the vine all the time - luckily just the small ones - and they are fine, the vet called them 'in perfect health' so tomatoes will not do them any immediate harm (Caza eats a ton)

About onions, I avoid directly feeding them onions, but as a treat in summer I freeze left over broth from cooking for them into ice cubes. How much of a problem do you think it is if onions had been cooked in the broth w everything else? I know not great, but do you think REALLY harmful???

[ShilohsGirlJen]

This is a list I um found somewhere else

Avacados: Produce cardiac tissue damage, respiratory distressm and mammary glad damage.

Bread Dough: Can cause alcohol poisioning or extreme discomfort from dough expansion.

Caffeine: Containes Theobromine, can induce irregular heartbeat, irrate gastrointestinal tract, and trigger epileptic seizures.

Chocolate, Cocoa, Cocoa Powder, and Baking Chocolate: Same as above, the latter three are more intense than chocolate

Cocoa Bean Mulch: Vomiting, diarrhea, tremors, seizures, and death.

Cooked Bones: Can splinter and cause intestinal damage. Raw bones are normally safe.

Grapes, Raisins, Prunes: can cause kidney damage

Onions / Onion Powder / Onion Flavoring: Thiosulfate in the onions can cause hemolytic anemia

Potatoes (Raw, Irish) and Tomatoes (Green) or any part of the tomato plant: Members of the Nightshade family of plants, toxic to dogs.

Sugar-Free Sweetners: Contains Xylitol, can cause sudden drop in blood pressure resulting in depression, loss of coordination, seizures, and death
Green tomatoes are bad, as are the plants. Red tomatoes are ok I believe.
I don't see Green Peppers on this list... They too are a member of the Nightshade family...

Garlic will do the same thing as Onions...

Mushrooms: Can contain toxins, which may affect multiple systems in the body, cause shock, and result in death.

Macadamia nuts: Contain an unknown toxin, which can affect the digestive and nervous systems and muscle.

[Baroooo]

Chem geek adding a note here... Caffeine does not contain theobromine per se. Caffeine is caffeine. However, when it is metabolized by the liver, it is broken down in to paraxanthine (84%), theobromine (12%) and theophylline (4%). Either way, not so good for your puppers, because we KNOW theobromine is bad news.

Guess I did get something from those years at college! lol

[Yeti_Girl]

Karen, that hurt my brain. Can you put it into a spreadsheet so Bren and I can understand? LOL!

[bren]

Ha!!

That would help.

[ToBScholarly]

Mushrooms?
Crap.

After looking at that list I am pretty sure Reggie should thank his lucky stars he is still alive. Gauging the snacks I sneak him, the casual observer would probably think I am trying to kill him.

[Dan Simon]

I'd say you look over the list _if_ you are noticing that your dog is having problems that you can't identify. If, on the other hand, your dog is eating (say) mushrooms with no ill effects...then good on him.

It's a lot like people -- some will react to some foods, some won't. There's a huge number of people with allergies to wheat. If you were to look at a similar write-up on wheat it would go something like the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_sensitivity

For wheat, alpha-gliadins are seed-storage proteins, but also an inhibitor the alpha-amylase activities of other animals, particularly insects.... [snip] ....One interesting consequence of these studies is that there may be a general gluten sensitivity that underlies various pathological manifestations, such as coeliac disease, urticaria, idiopathic sensitivity.

Nice and dire. Makes you never want to touch the stuff. Must be teh debbil.

But there's billions of folks out there eating wheat all the time. Some _absolutely_ have problems with it and need to watch the amount they take in (if any). But most are just fine eating whatever they want.

Personally, I'd look for a list of foods that are known-toxic in dogs. As in: foods that will kill or harm your dog if ingested in sufficient quantities.

[ToBScholarly]

So where does one find a reliable such list oh wise (ish) one?

[Dan Simon]

Offhand? No clue....I've always stuck to the tried and true method of avoiding giving the dog chocolate and generally steering towards proteins (tossing meat, etc. to them). When Alex used to get at...well....anything and everything that she could possibly fit into the Maw Of Doom (tm), we'd hit her with the hydrogen peroxide, let her empty herself out and keep on being a ravening hell-hound. Worked well enough for close to 16 years ;-)

Looking down the list and thinking back on Alex (the most ravenous dog I've ever seen):

Avocados: Ate several...including one that had been moldering in the back of the fridge for the better part of 6 months (it was fuzzy). That one (and others) had the pit...which she chewed up.

Bread Dough: Don't get me started....two one-pound loaves of _unrisen_ bread dough. It got on the ceiling.

Caffeine: Yup. Multiple forms. Mostly coffee grounds.

Chocolate (etc.): One of her favorites. Two pounds (I think) of Frango mints once...Mez was PISSED. Various quantities at fairly regular intervals throughout her life.

Cocoa Bean Mulch: Sorta like chocolate, so yeah, she was all over that. Didn't go for straight mulch much...

Cooked Bones: While I certainly understand the dangers here...that dog had an iron stomach and an intestinal tract to match (evidently). Cooked chicken, beef, ribs, etc. Once it hit her mouth, good luck getting it back.

Grapes, raisins, prunes: Yes, yes, and yes...though they generally completely fooled the beagle digestive tract. Grape goes in, grape comes out.

Onions (all forms): Yup...particularly if it was on, near, might one day be meant for, or had a recipe nearby which featured it in meat.

Potatoes: Just about any form you can think of (queue the Forest Gump shrimp variety scene....)

Tomatoes: in a pinch, she'd go for these raw, though she preferred a good marinara

Artificial sweetener: has "sweetener" in the name. She was all over it.

Green peppers: yup....she'd hit these before working on the tomatoes when a salad was dropped.

Hot peppers (I added this one): Yes. She was a lover of all things spicy. And all things alcohol, though that's another list....

Garlic: see onions.

Mushrooms: The ONLY thing I ever saw her spit out (willingly). They became a running joke -- dangling a mushroom for her as a treat....she'd jump up and snap at it and then spit it out (with an audible "bleh" sound) by the time she hit the floor.

Macadamia nuts: An odd one for the list....and one that she would fight me for. I normally won, but she had her share back in the day...

I _really_ don't like reading through the lists of things that you shouldn't feed your dog. Most of them are extremely poorly thought out and include things like raw meat (edited to remove the statement that dogs _can't_ get salmonella, since they technically _can_...though it requires an already compromised animal to make it even a possibility).

[Yeti_Girl]

Copper ate a 4 layer dinner plate sized chocolate cake and had the best poops of his life. What I learned it is really how much pure bakers chocolate that they eat and really, there's not that much of that in milk chocolate or say, a cake. Not saying give your dog a piece of cake, but ...I wont hijack too much but, the ER vet told me to watch for excitability and seizures. LOL! Helllllloooo, I'd be super stoked if I ate that much cake (and he was) and I did laugh at the seizure comment and told the lady how much meds he was already on.

[Lora]

I'd stay clear of the grapes and raisins... From what I have been told they dont know exactly how much each individual dog can tolerate. Some its only one grape others bunches and bunches but its cumulative in the liver/kidneys.

[SapheraGirl]

After reading this thread, poor Saphera is deprived. She gets no people food (mostly because she has a bad tummy and gets unbearable stinky gas.) I tried giving her carrots once but she turned her nose up at them. After that, we just decided to stick to what works.

If you don't mind, I won't share this thread with her. What she doesn't know what hurt her.

[mezmerelda]

Poor Saphera.

The other thing I saw Alex spit out was lettuce. Keep in mind, we didn't attempt to make these readily available for her or the other dogs. She was sneaky, wiley, evil, etc. Maybe she would have lived to 20 instead of 15 if we could have kept her away from bad things.

[Delynnr]

Our old Sheltie once ate an entire easter basket full of chocolate. Pooped gloriously for two days - but nothing worse. My mom's side of the family all laughs at us because we are so protective of our pets. Their dogs get ANYTHING thrown out the back door (farm scraps) that is not put aside for the chickens. They get ALL the no-nos. Cooked bones of all sorts ALL the time, onions, fat, literally a random assortment of stuff. The one thing they likely did not get a ton of was grapes, those would have been in the chicken's bucket.

When their dogs have not been run over by a pickup truck they have lived long lives. My Grandfather's German Shorthair lived 16 years. He got her the year I was born and that dog kept going and going. I go with the safe, but not paranoid approach. I don't intentionally give them bad things, but if they do get bad things I just keep a close watch on them for any adverse symptoms.

[ShilohsGirlJen]

the things with grapes in the fungas that can be on some of them and washing them does not always get it off. My firls loved grapes but my vet carefully explained their is no fixing the particular toxin on the grapes. Shiloh ate dark choc too and no obvious issues but we still do not leave it out for them to get into.

[Swissy Mom]

Cash would like to eat any and all people food, but nothing gets him as excited as the smell of tequila! I mean, he goes ballistic and will try to get at a tequila drink for all he's worth. I'm just waiting to catch him running around the house with a lime and the salt shaker.

[sam.i.am]

OMG, Cash is hilarious! Tequila!! He sounds like he'd be a good party host. LOL