Christmas Dinner for Dogs: What They Can and Cannot Have

Most people ask this the wrong way round. The question is rarely "can my dog eat Christmas dinner" — it is "the plate is going down and everyone is slipping him something, so what actually matters?" The honest answer is that two or three things on a Christmas table are genuinely dangerous, a handful are fine plain, and the biggest risk of the day is not a poison at all.

The one that sends most dogs to the vet is fat, not poison

The commonest Christmas emergency is pancreatitis — inflammation of the pancreas triggered by a sudden load of fatty food in a dog whose diet is normally consistent. It does not require anything toxic. Turkey skin, sausage meat, buttery potatoes, a bowl of gravy and the trimmings off everyone's plate will do it.

Signs usually appear within a day or two: repeated vomiting, a hunched or "praying" posture with the front end down and the back end up, a hard or painful belly, refusing food, and obvious lethargy. It is painful, it can be serious, and it is far more likely than chocolate poisoning simply because fat is everywhere on Christmas Day and chocolate is usually in a box.

The practical defence is boring and it works: decide in advance what your dog is having, put it in their own bowl, and tell the room that the dog has already been done.

Never — these are the genuine hazards

- Onions, garlic, leeks, shallots and chives, raw, cooked, dried or in powder. They damage red blood cells and can cause anaemia. This is why sage and onion stuffing and most gravy are off the list rather than merely rich, and why "just a bit of gravy on his biscuits" is the single most common well-meant mistake of the day. - Raisins, sultanas and currants — so Christmas pudding, mince pies, stollen, panettone and fruit cake. The toxic dose is unpredictable rather than proportional to size, which is what makes it different from chocolate. We cover this in dog ate a mince pie and are raisins poisonous to dogs. - Chocolate, including the tin of Quality Street left within reach. Dark and cooking chocolate are the worst. See how much chocolate is toxic to dogs. - Cooked bones of any kind. Cooking makes them brittle, so they splinter rather than crush. The turkey carcass left on the side overnight is a classic. - Macadamia nuts, and nuts generally — high fat, a choking risk, and often salted. - Alcohol, including the trifle, the brandy butter and an unattended glass at dog height. - Anything sweetened with xylitol (sometimes labelled birch sugar), which turns up in sugar-free desserts and mints and is dangerous to dogs in small amounts.

Fine in small amounts, plain

Cook or set these aside before the butter, oil, salt and seasoning go on:

- Turkey breast, no skin, no bones. The full picture is in can dogs eat turkey. - Carrots, parsnips and swede, plain boiled or raw. - Peas and green beans, plain. - Brussels sprouts, plain and in small numbers. They are not harmful; they do cause wind, and you will be sharing a room with the result. - Plain boiled or mashed potato with nothing added. Not roast potatoes, which are cooked in fat, and never raw or green potato. - Plain cooked white fish or a little unseasoned gammon-free ham — though see below on salt.

The ones people are surprised by

Pigs in blankets are the worst single item on the table for a dog: processed sausage wrapped in cured bacon, so both very fatty and very salty. One will not poison a dog. They are still the thing most likely to start the pancreatitis story above.

Gammon and ham are cured, which means salt levels far above anything a dog should eat. Salt in quantity causes excessive thirst, vomiting and, at the extreme, sodium poisoning.

Cheese is high fat and many dogs are lactose intolerant. A cube is not a crisis; the cheeseboard grazed all evening is.

Cranberry sauce is mostly sugar. Plain cranberries are harmless, but the jar is not the same thing, and some versions contain raisins or port.

Yorkshire puddings, stuffing balls and bread sauce are not toxic in themselves but are made with milk, egg, fat and usually onion. They are filler that displaces your dog's actual food.

How much is reasonable

Treats and extras should stay under about 10% of daily calories, and Christmas is the day that rule quietly collapses because five people each give "just a little bit". A useful trick: take your dog's normal daily food, put a portion of it aside in the morning, and let that be what gets handed out through the day. The dog gets the ritual of being included, and nothing is added on top.

Small dogs need far more care than big ones here. A stone-and-a-half terrier eating three pigs in blankets has eaten proportionally what a labrador would need a whole plate to match.

If something has gone wrong

Do not wait to see whether symptoms develop, and do not try to work out whether it was "enough to matter" — with raisins in particular, that calculation does not exist. Ring your vet or the out-of-hours service. Treatment in the first few hours is far more effective than treatment once a dog is visibly unwell, and every practice has emergency cover over Christmas even when the building is shut.

Know before the day where your out-of-hours provider is and how long it takes to get there. That is a five-minute job on the 23rd and an awful one at 9pm on Christmas Day. Our Christmas safety checklist covers the rest of the house — decorations, plants, cables and presents under the tree.

Give them something of their own instead

The easiest way to stop a dog working the table is to give them a job at the same moment everyone sits down: a stuffed and frozen toy, a long-lasting chew, or a festive dog treat recipe you have made yourself and know the ingredients of. It takes the dog out of the room mentally for twenty minutes, which is usually the whole problem solved.