Thursday, June 4, 2009

Toxic Foods for Dogs

My children were concerned - as I went to give the scrambled egg scraps to Pippin this morning - that I was poisoning the dog. Although we always gave our egg scraps to Little, suddenly they have become convinced that eggs are toxic to dogs and shouldn't be given to them. A little Internet research later, I have discovered that only raw eggs are dangerous to dogs.

(Go figure... I assume that raw is the only way they would get them "in the wild," if there ever was such a thing for most domestic breeds of dogs. But I digress...)

SO, just to set the record straight (assuming the dozen or so websites I checked are correct), cooked eggs are a safe and tasty treat for your canine friend. Just don't give them to him raw.

By the way, I did learn some new things that my dog shouldn't eat. I had already known that he shouldn't eat chocolate or have bones from chicken (unless they've been boiled into a hearty stock for 24 hours and can be easily crushed - see here for directions), but I hadn't realized that the following are also bad for dogs to eat: macademia nuts, fat or bones from beef, grapes or raisins, processed baby food, onions or garlic, alcoholic beverages, avacados, tomatoes, and mushrooms.

Milk and dairy products, it says, will cause diarrhea in the 50% of dogs who are lactose-intolerant. (Oh, please! So no more cheese?)

Anyway, the list above is far from exhaustive, and you may click on any of those links to see more thorough lists. One thing's for sure: it is enough to convince you that you should probably stick to dog food and dog treats, for the most part, and skip giving him the leftover eggs even if they're not toxic when cooked.

That and the fact that he might throw them up anyway. (Just ask PT, who cleaned up Pippin's pile of puke even as I typed this.)

1 comment:

Laurie said...

Pork and pork fat are also terribly difficult for dogs to digest. I gave Winston the fat from our ham, and he had runny, bloody diarrhea for three days. Yuck! A vet friend told me to give him nothing but rice and boiled chicken for a few days,then to add in a little dry dog food, increasingly, each day, until he was eating only dry food. Everything is cleared up now, and he's back to eating some of these yummy "treats" for dogs. But NO meat fat ever again!!