It may be the season of giving, but funneling your holiday meal scraps under the table for Fido may leave your pet under the weather
Your pooch’s Christmas list doesn’t include diarrhea. Or pancreatitis. Really, anything that comes with a trip to the vet is a lousier gift for the pooch than that pair of reindeer socks was for you.
So even if Fido is as much a member of your family as anyone else, pump the brakes before you pull up a doggy seat at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.
That may seem like obvious advice for a great many pet owners, but it isn’t so clear to some. Every holiday season, area vets see a spike in furry patients who dined on some seasonal feast that didn’t agree with them. Sometimes it’s a hound that tore through a gift under the tree and ate something they shouldn’t have. Other times, it’s a cat that feasted on tinsel and got blocked up. And decorative dishes filled with holiday candy have sent more than a few pets to the vet.
But often, the holiday season ailment is the product of an owner just wanting to be nice. Being surrounded by loved ones at the Thanksgiving or Christmas or Hannukah or Kwanzaa table leaves many homeowners feeling pangs of guilt that one of their dearest loved ones is missing the fun. So they toss a greasy hunk of Christmas ham on top of the hound’s kibble. Or toss some fresh lox in the kitty’s dish. Those prime rib bones after Christmas dinner? Sure, toss them to the dogs.
Sadly, that nice gesture won’t be so nice when it rips through the dog’s digestive tract faster than your grandkids ripped through their gifts.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t serve your pets something special this holiday season. You just have to be careful when you do it.
Dr. Ryan Hanson, an associate veterinarian at Mission Viejo Veterinary Hospital in Aurora, says he sees a few pets every holiday season who dined on something that may have been seasonally appropriate for their owners, but not so much for them.
Generally, the best bet is a treat from a pet shop that’s designed especially for a pet.
“The safest thing would be to give them a dog- or cat-approved treat,” he says.
Anytime you give table scraps to a pet, you run some risks, Hanson says.
Chiefly, the food we cook for ourselves tends to have a much higher fat content than the food your dog or cat is used to. That hefty fat content in your Christmas dinner could leave your pooch stricken with pancreatitis, a nasty stomach ailment that while treatable, often comes back to bite a pooch a few times after they catch it once.
Another problem, Hanson says, is that the seasonings we slather on our food — in particular, onion and mustard seed — don’t sit well with dogs. They can cause a condition that leaves dogs severely anemic.
The best bet if you insist on some people food in the pet’s dish for that special holiday feast is lean meat that hasn’t been seasoned. Hanson recommends very lean, unseasoned chicken or turkey.
And whatever you give, be sure you give it in small doses.