I share my home with a couple of dogs, I have all my life, and I thought I was pretty knowed up on the various hazards that can befall my canine companions. I know better than to feed my doggies chocolate, which can be very toxic to dogs, and I keep a tight watch on stray batteries, twist ties, and other objects that might be swallowed and cause bad, bad tummy problems necessitating surgery. So when a local vet appeared on a "keep your dog safe during the Christmas season" segment on the local television news, I was prepared to experience the usual contempt I feel for such things. They never tell you anything you didn't already know right? Right? Well, it turns out that grapes and raisins are highly toxic to dogs, and like chocolate, can poison them so badly they can die! You know, the vet's always telling me to give my dog low-calorie, healthy, natural snacks like raw carrots and green beans. How easy would it be to unthinkingly feed the dog grapes as a snack? Since Sesshomaru and InuYasha aren't the only canines Dokugans love, I thought I'd pass along the warning...

I, too, was shocked to hear this when my daughter found it on the internet this past summer. Of course, since our dog has a nasty tendency to swallow anything he finds (including the whole chipmunk head that needed $2,000 in surgery to remove), we watch him pretty carefully. Since then, we Google anything we even THINK about feeding the 'duppy!'

And, no, we didn't LET him eat the chipmunk, we don't even know how he got his mouth on one (except my hubby wasn't watching him when he took him outside)!

Dogs can be REALLY silly, so, as r0o would say "WATCHEM!"

~~me~~

How did we not know this? Is it new info? I wonder what it is in the grapes that cause the problem. It is so inconvenient to anlways want to know what, but NEED to know why... And, while I'm rambling, what the heck happened to dogs over the last few decades to make them so vulnerable to harm? The dogs I grew up around were durable, often feral creatures. If you acutally got your dog a rabies shot back then, you were considered a diligent dog owner. They could (and did) eat anything they found, such as snakes and dead, rotting fish on the beach with no apparent ill-effects. Sometimes they would get into a conflict with a porcupine or skumk, which resulted in a session with the needle-nose pliers or a bath in canned tomatoes, but no undue alarm on the humans' part. One childhood dog-friend of mine, Charley, belonged to a neighbor, who really did love that dog. But Charley would hie off on grand adventures for months at a time, and only stop home once in a while, to touch base with the folks, you know. Now, in spite of (or maybe because of) all the mollycoddling and worrying I do, my dogs seem to be in constant peril... And, of course, I go to amazing (and expensive!) lengths to keep them out of trouble...

In my opinion, dogs are not any less durable today than they were when I was growing up, unless we're talking about overly-inbred dogs with not-so-great genetics to begin with. I always had mutts, and their constitutions tended to be tougher. I think it is more a problem with humans thinking that they are fragile and treating them as such.

From what I have read, grapes are not toxic to all dogs, and it is unclear what is in them that can cause renal failure in some dogs. This is a relatively new discovery for us, but it is likely that it is not a new problem for the dogs themselves. Some dogs probably didn't eat them because they knew grapes were bad for them. Years ago before we knew about this issue, my mom tried to feed one of our dogs a grape. Our dog politely took the grape from her hand, but then spit it out onto the floor without so much as breaking the skin. On the other hand, she would always do her best to steal a piece of chocolate candy, which never had any ill effects on her. I also have a friend who has fed her dog some homegrown Scuppernong grapes, and the dog didn't get sick from them. Unless you have a dog that clearly has no sense of self-preservation (I have owned a couple like that, myself) you should not underestimate a dog's understanding of what foods are bad for them. Most animals do have some kind of instinct about these things.

CritterWhisperer wrote:
Unless you have a dog that clearly has no sense of self-preservation (I have owned a couple like that, myself) you should not underestimate a dog's understanding of what foods are bad for them. Most animals do have some kind of instinct about these things.

LOL!! I own one of "those dogs." The idiot will eat anything he sees even without sniffing it. Fuzz, cat fur, small pebbles... you name it, "Hoover" sucks it up. As you can imagine, it leads to an ungodly amount of supervision necessary. Who thought a lab mix could be such a dork??

~~Wiccan~~

WiccanMethuselah wrote:
CritterWhisperer wrote:
Unless you have a dog that clearly has no sense of self-preservation (I have owned a couple like that, myself) you should not underestimate a dog's understanding of what foods are bad for them. Most animals do have some kind of instinct about these things.

LOL!! I own one of "those dogs." The idiot will eat anything he sees even without sniffing it. Fuzz, cat fur, small pebbles... you name it, "Hoover" sucks it up. As you can imagine, it leads to an ungodly amount of supervision necessary. Who thought a lab mix could be such a dork??

~~Wiccan~~

All of the labs and lab mixes my family has owned have been the goofiest, sweetest dogs, but they were definitely lacking in the brains department. Still, we couldn't help but love them.

CritterWhisperer wrote:


All of the labs and lab mixes my family has owned have been the goofiest, sweetest dogs, but they were definitely lacking in the brains department. Still, we couldn't help but love them.

I know! I had a Lab x Staff mix growing up and he was the sweetest, kindest natured dog. He'd sooner lick you to death or whiplash his crazy tail along your legs when he was happy than to bite you. Also had a tendency not to bring the ball back when you'd play catch, ya he'd fetch it than wander off so you had to chase him to get it back.

Hilarious fun.

I miss him terribly.

The irony is that he was crazy brainy for a dog that was less than two feet tall. Seriously he had a Staffy's lithe and short build but a Labrador's braininess. Yah he'd eat just about anything, including grass, to make himself up-chuck, and then eat the up-chuck too EW! But he'd catch birds in his mouth mid-flight, jump over fences taller than a horse, and climb up a concrete wall like a cat just to chase said cat.

Yah I felt sorry for the cat but you try catching a jumping black barking blur. It's seriously impossible!

Dogs are just awesome! *points to Sesshy-sama* Why else do we adore the patron youkai of Dokuga? More for just his looks. Nods. His brains too.

~ Pyre

CritterWhisperer wrote:
All of the labs and lab mixes my family has owned have been the goofiest, sweetest dogs, but they were definitely lacking in the brains department. Still, we couldn't help but love them.

YES!!!



How can you say "no" to that FACE, right??

~~Wiccan~~

I feel like crying!!!
I'm so glad I know this now!
I fed my dog grapes before. He threw up a lot, and now I know the reason why. I never pieced it together until now!!!
I'm so happy I know this...