To ask all dog owners to read this?

[toomuch2young]

Especially in light of the awful morrisons advert (showing dog being given xmas pud) that is currently being shown can I please ask all do owners to be aware that the following festive food stuffs are highly poisonous / dangerous to dogs:

• raisins (Christmas cake, pudding, mince pies etc) very large dogs have died from v small amount of raisins.
• grapes
• Macedemia nuts
• onions
• turkey is to rich for a lot of doggy tums
• cooked bones
• chocolate - please don't put wrapped selection boxes under the tree! Dark choc, cocoa powder and cooking choc are the worst.
• caffeine
• alcohol
• sweets and mints - xylitol is very dangerous to dogs
• potato peelings
• garlic
• corn on the cob

This is not an exhaustive list of course and am sure many dog owners are already aware but if this saves one doggy life or even an expensive vet bill then it's more than worth a 2 minute read.

Cooked spuds are ok, though, aren't they? I often give my dog left over mash/veg from a roast. He also eats turkey, but only a little. It's quite rich and too much gives him the runs.

I'm amazed my labrador is still alive given the stuff she's raided from our bin over the years.

In fact I'm wondering what she's eaten tonight as she's been mincing around farting noisily and looking a bit troubled.

Many dogs are fine eating turkey - quite a few commercial dog foods contain it, and there's no reason at all why they shouldn't eat it. I regularly do a dog treat for ours which includes turkey mince and they love it. Garlic is also fine in very small quantities.

Add ibuprofen to the list.

My BIL left some anti-inflamatory tablets on a chest of drawers and when they came home one of the pills had been snaffled. They called the vet who wanted them to make sure the pills had no traces of ibuprofen - they weren't worried about paracetamol just the ibuprofen which is apparently highly toxic.
I didn't know. Not that i'd ever try to give my dog any but I am now extra careful about not dropping one (or making damn sure I find it if I do).

My hound also snaffled almost an entire roast chicken from our kitchen work top last year - I'd taken it out of the fridge (we had the roast the night before) to cut a slice of meat off for me and dd for lunch. We ate, I went back to the kitchen to tidy up and was bemused by the complete lack of chicken. No bones, nothing. No traces in the garden - I reckon the dog had had about 45 minutes alone with it either in the kitchen or wherever she'd taken it. I asked the vet who said that if undisturbed it was likely she'd taken her time and properly crunched all the bones and so they wouldn't have posed much of a problem. The issue lies when the dog thinks it's going to have the yummy meal removed and tries to hurry in swallowing it. I have no idea if she said that to make me feel better (as the bones were already in the dog by then) but we had no ill effects at all, except that i had to plan a different meal for that evening that did not use up the left-over roast chicken).

My dog has eaten turkey all his life, there is turkey in many dog food products too.

He also has garlic and loves it.

Oh interesting about turkey. I feed my dog raw meat and had noticed that turkey wasn't great (he's much better with lamb/beef/tripe), I didn't realise it was common.

Tripe affects my dog badly.. it gives him bloating and the worst wind imaginable... he never gets that anymore.

I think my dog is okay with chocolate though. He stole most of a birthday cake and was fine (not that I'd feed him chocolate on purpose)

Mine's like that with turkey and chicken squeaky!

My pooches are fine with turkey - it's pork that flies straight through!

My idiot dog has, in her time, eaten:

an entire packet of Basset's Children's Multivitamins (blackcurrant flavour) cue a trip to the vet.

an entire tub of margerine (thankfully not butter as that is VERY dangerous for dogs)

at 6.5 years old, has eaten her 8th advent calendar (just yesterday) even though DD assured me she had moved it high up, away from dog

Oh and, yesterday she got under the tree at a wrapped present that contained chocolates (I had no idea what was contained in the gift) Luckily we caught her before she could eat any.

BLOODY ANIMALS!!!

My Aunt's staffie once ate a large box of Thornton's chocolates that Uncle had left under the tree (not thinking) - one sick, but thankfully not seriously, dog.

My mum's Standard Poodle once ate 12 frozen chicken breasts....as you do

Oh we're okay with pork....

Raisins? Really? Three years ago our two labradors (then about 4 months old) got into a bag of homemade mince pies (raisins, brandy, veg suet etc) and ate them all. There must have been at least 12 mince pies in there, probably more.

Other than sleeping beautifully for six hours straight (must have been the brandy ) they were right as rain!

Oh, and not forgetting the occasion when, dogwalking with a friend after Easter, they got hold of friend's youngest's Quality Street easter egg and ate the lot. Foil and all we bought her DD a new egg. But, sparkly poo aside, they were fine!

I remember reading that giving a dog half a can of tomatoes a day stops their wee scorching the grass. Is it raw tomatoes that are the problem?

They are bloody nightmare aren't they!! One of mine stole a couple of proplus from a friends handbag once wrapper and all! Cue lots of heart rate monitoring!!

fyrefly they were very lucky. I have personally seen a 20 kg dog for from eating a much smaller amount of raisins. Also on the Facebook page "morrisons Christmas pud ad could kill' their are several stories of large, fit healthy dogs dying from eating raisins.
Their is no safe amount and a toxic level can vary from dog to dog you just don't know the risk to the individual dog until its to late.

As for turkey as previously said its not poisonous just can be to rich resulting in some dogs with upset tums.

Our old border collie lived to 19. He scoffed anything he could get his chops around. One easter he managed to get into the living room and ate all the easter eggs, wrappers and all. He also sneaked a couple of hot toddies once and got so drunk he couldn't walk straight.

Our old dog was so good - we could leave the mince pie and carrot in the fire place on Christmas Eve overnight and she wouldn't touch them.

I suspect new dog would tuck in, although on the whole he's very good about not trying to get food.

Any form of scat though - can't stop him from eating it.

All these stories of dogs living to a ripe old age are lovely, but not really very helpful in trying to get a message accross about things that can and do kill dogs!!

Dogs are very individual and what they can/can't have also tends to change with age, so it's good to have a list like that because you can check it for ideas if your dog suddenly becomes intolerant to something.

On another note, with dogs being such dustbins and eating all the Xmas dinner scraps...it's worth remembering not to do what my DH does...and that's pour the leftover gravy onto the dog's dinner.

He's 10yrs old now (the dog...not my DH) and I think the high salt content makes him ill, whereas in the past we didn't give it a second thought.

I thought it was turkey skin that caused a problem and could lead to Something like pancreatitis. Is it the meat as well? Not that we're having turkey this year but useful to know .

I have labs, and a few rotties. The best advice that was given to me: 'if they stop eating, then you have a problem' That was from a vet when my then 6 month old lab/rot ate a bag of dog food un-be known to us.

Sorry toomuch

I suspect many of these canine hoovers are labradors or goldies - they seem to have stomachs of iron and be able to eat pretty much anything.

I think smaller dogs (and in particular some of the more delicate breeds) would have been killed by our goldies diet of whatever he could find, steal, dig up, kill or scavenge.

I have to be on constant food alert with my basset hound, who has the unfortunate combination of a sensitive gut and a voracious appetite for things he's never allowed, like chocolate.

He has one of those big red Kong weebles that you fill with kibble so the dog can chase it round the house, punching it tip it over to get the kibble out. At the weekend, I heard furious thudding coming from upstairs and found him surrounded by shredded cellophane, nudging a big red Giant Lindor ball from the present box against a wall, trying to make the chocolates come out. He looked so sad when I took it off him, all, 'But you showed me how to do this...'

Another poisoning danger to be aware of at Christmas is flower bulbs, if you have daffodils indoors, or leave the bulbs lying around. Both my dogs have had one or two things off that list with no ill effects but I'd rather be safe than sorry - after one Bank Holiday vet panic that cost more than a minibreak to Paris, we go into total vigilance mode until normal rates resume...