Thanksgiving brings family, feasting, and football.
This holiday also brings some of the year's most common pet emergencies.
Between the rich foods, holiday chaos, and well-meaning guests slipping table scraps, even the most careful pet families can find themselves racing to the emergency vet.
A little awareness now can save your holiday — and your pet — from disaster.
Thanksgiving Cooking Dangers and Trash Risks
You can't have a Thanksgiving meal without the countless hours spent in the kitchen! It might surprise you to realize that much of what you're using during those countless hours to prepare and serve the meal can be enticing to your pets and wreak havoc on them.
Common Thanksgiving Culprits
Aluminum foil and plastic wrap: When covered in food scraps and drippings, these items become a hard-to-resist treat. If ingested, these can cause choking, inflammation, and/or obstruction of your pet’s digestive tract.
A scary thing is that plastic wrap, depending on how much is consumed, may not show up on an X-ray. This means your pet may be unknowingly suffering from a life-threatening obstruction.
Cooking twine: Often used to close the body cavity of the turkey to keep the stuffing in during cooking, cooking twine poses a very significant danger to pets, particularly cats.
When twine becomes lodged in a dog's or cat's digestive tract (under the tongue, in the stomach, or in the intestines), the free end continues down the intestines. When the intestines attempt to remove the twine, they tend to ‘bunch up’ on it, creating an accordion effect, which can cut off blood supply to those areas of the intestines. As the intestines continue to bunch, the blood supply to the area is diminished, and the twine (or any type of string) acts like a saw on the intestinal wall, causing it to perforate. This allows intestinal contents to leak into the abdomen — a life-threatening emergency requiring immediate surgery and extended hospitalization. Read more about linear foreign bodies.
Trash cans and compost bins: Kitchen trash cans and compost bins are irresistible to curious pets — and dangerously toxic. Turkey bones, giblets, coffee grounds, and spoiled food can all cause serious health problems, from choking and intestinal blockages to pancreatitis and poisoning.
Secure these hazards by making sure that they are closed tightly and kept safely behind closed closet or cabinet doors. And it's not too late to teach an old (or young) dog new tricks! Check out our six important behavior training tips for dogs (including "Leave It" and "Drop It").
Dangerous Foods on the Thanksgiving Table
Many of the foods we eat safely throughout the year can cause digestive upset, obstruction, or toxicity to our pets.
Thanksgiving, however, creates the perfect storm: multiple toxic foods on one table, excited guests eager to share, and pets underfoot looking for handouts. From the turkey itself to common side dishes, your holiday spread is filled with potential emergencies.
Turkey
A tablespoon of plain, white turkey meat can be a safe treat for most pets. But overdo it, and you'll spend the holiday weekend cleaning up vomit and diarrhea — or worse, rushing to the emergency vet.
What causes problems:
- Turkey skin, drippings, gravy, and dark meat (too fatty)
- Any seasonings (often contain toxic ingredients, like onions, garlic)
- Bones (splinter and puncture the mouth, throat, stomach, and/or intestines)
The consequences: Even a modest amount of fatty turkey or seasoned meat can trigger gastroenteritis or pancreatitis — painful conditions requiring hospitalization that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to treat. In severe cases, they can be fatal.
Turkey bones are especially dangerous. They splinter into sharp fragments that can puncture your pet's digestive tract, requiring emergency surgery.
Bottom line: A small piece of plain white meat? Fine. Everything else? Not worth the risk.
The same warnings above also go for any other type of bird you might enjoy — be it chicken, duck, or all of the above ... turducken is yummy! And if it's ham you’re serving, you still need to be careful — because of the bone and the (often high) salt and fat content.
Stuffing
What causes problems:
- Onions and garlic (cause anemia, especially dangerous in large amounts or for pets with existing blood issues)
- Raisins, currants, and grapes (toxic to kidneys, even in small quantities)
- Xylitol in keto stuffings (highly toxic to dogs)
The consequences: Onions and garlic damage red blood cells, leading to anemia that leaves pets weak, lethargic, and requiring expensive treatment. In small quantities, these vegetables aren’t likely to cause too big a problem for your cats and dogs, but in larger quantities, or if your pet already has a low red blood cell count (anemia) or dysfunctional red blood cells, ingestion of onions or garlic can be both debilitating and expensive.
Grapes, raisins, and currants can cause acute kidney failure in dogs — even small amounts can be fatal. Not every dog is affected (though a case report finding suggests it may be related to tartaric acid and its salts). We can't predict which dogs are vulnerable, and treatment often costs thousands of dollars and isn't always successful.
Xylitol causes a life-threatening drop in blood sugar and liver failure in dogs within minutes to hours of ingestion. If you're following a keto or diabetic diet, some stuffings contain xylitol. Be sure to read labels carefully if using pre-made, store-bought stuffings.
Bottom line: Skip the stuffing entirely for pets. With onions, garlic, currants, raisins, and potentially xylitol all hiding in various recipes, there's no safe way to share this dish. The risk far outweighs any holiday joy.
Mashed Potatoes and Candied Yams
Both of these traditional holiday sides often contain significant quantities of butter and other fats, making them irresistible to both people and pets. While an overindulgence on your part will likely lead to a post-meal unbuttoning of the pants and a nap, such an indiscretion by your pet can lead to a post-meal bout of pancreatitis.
Pancreatitis can range in severity from mild and uncomfortable to severe and fatal. Certain dogs have an increased risk of developing pancreatitis, and some of these risk factors also increase the chances that their bout of pancreatic inflammation will be more severe, too (also being more painful, causing a longer hospital stay, and increasing the risk of death).
Generally speaking, Miniature Schnauzers and Silky and Yorkshire Terriers are at increased risk of pancreatitis. As is any dog that is obese or has certain endocrine disorders (namely diabetes, Cushing’s disease, or hypothyroidism).
In addition to the risks associated with the fats in these side dishes, it is also important to be aware that some people use garlic in their mashed potatoes, and some add raisins to their candied yams. Both of these, as previously mentioned, can prove dangerous to your pets.
Gravy
You may feel a Thanksgiving meal isn’t complete without a dollop of gravy. But that gravy is ‘running’ with dangers for your pets. Besides being high in fat, it may also contain toxic ingredients like onions and garlic.
This high-fat food can lead to gastrointestinal upset and potentially fatal pancreatitis. Compound that with the toxic effects of onions and garlic, and your holiday will not leave you and your pet with happy memories.
Corn on the Cob
What causes problems:
- Many dogs will swallow large chunks of the cob, which will wind up lodging in and obstructing their intestines.
Bottom line: Never give your dog corn on the cob, and secure your trash. Even cobs licked clean are dangerous. Strip the cooked, pre-seasoned kernels off if you want to share corn, but keep those cobs far from curious mouths — and paws that can tip over trash cans.
Unbaked Bread and Rolls
What causes problems:
- Unbaked yeast dough continues rising in a dog's stomach
The consequences: When dogs eat raw dough, the yeast doesn't stop working — it ferments in their warm stomach, creating two life-threatening problems:
1. Alcohol poisoning: Fermentation produces alcohol that enters the bloodstream, causing severe neurological symptoms and metabolic crisis2. Gastric bloat: Carbon dioxide gas expands the stomach, causing pain, cutting off blood flow to the heart (shock), and potentially twisting the stomach
The expanding dough can also create an intestinal blockage. All of these complications require emergency veterinary care, often hospitalization, and sometimes surgery, costing thousands of dollars. Without treatment, this is fatal.
Bottom line: Never leave rising dough on the counter, especially unsupervised. Let the dough rise in a turned-off oven, microwave, or high shelf where dogs absolutely cannot reach it.
If your dog does eat raw dough: Immediately give them ice water to drink (slows fermentation), then rush to the emergency vet — every minute counts. Read more about this dog hazard.
Desserts
A Thanksgiving meal just isn't complete until the pies, cakes, and cookies are all gone. Right!
Well, while you and your houseguests are likely aware of the dangers that chocolate poses to cats and dogs, I would venture to guess that many of the people around your holiday table likely aren't aware of what xylitol is, let alone the fact that xylitol is VERY dangerous to dogs
With more and more people eating "all-natural" and trying to decrease their sugar intake, xylitol is becoming increasingly common in both store-bought and home-baked goodies.
Xylitol is a natural sweetener that is a common sugar replacer. It can quickly plummet a dog's blood sugar and even destroy their liver. Learn more about the very real danger that xylitol poses to dogs and possibly cats.
Pet-safer Treats During the Holidays
Treating pets safely can be as simple as some extra snuggle time, an extra-long walk, a freshly cleaned-out litter box, or a nice new bed to sleep in. But if you’d like to give them a little extra snack on this day, here are some pet-safer treats to do so with.
- Pumpkin puree: not the pie filling, just the plain canned pumpkin
- Green beans: raw or cooked (preferably steamed or boiled)
- Carrots: raw or cooked (preferably steamed or boiled)
- Peas: cooked without seasoning
- Apple slices: not the ones from the middle of the pie, and never whole
- Boiled and plain cooked potato or sweet potato: either mashed or in small chunks, with no seasonings, butter, or sugars, and never serve whole
- Turkey: cooked white meat in small quantities and without the skin, seasonings, bones, or gravy
- Their own kibble: put some in a new interactive toy to satisfy both their belly and their boredom
Thanksgiving should be a wonderful day spent with friends and family reflecting on all that we have to be thankful for in this world, not one spent in the waiting room of a pet emergency hospital.
With prior awareness and simple precautions, you’re more likely to have the former and avoid the latter. For more pet safety tips, check out this article about pet hazards because of houseguests.
From all of us at Preventive Vet — wishing you and yours a happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving. Gobble gobble!
