Carrot

Carrots sit on the American Kennel Club list of vegetables dogs can eat, raw or cooked. They are low in calories and high in fibre and beta-carotene, which makes them one of the most practical treats to keep in the fridge. You can hand out a lot of carrot during a long training session without wrecking the day's calorie budget, which is exactly what a dog on a weight-management plan needs. Chewing a raw carrot also drags some mechanical scraping across the teeth, which is why they show up as a low-tech dental chew. The hazard with carrots is size, not chemistry. Dogs crunch two or three times and swallow, so a whole baby carrot or a thick coin-shaped chunk can lodge in the throat of a small dog or a determined gulper. Cut them lengthwise into thin sticks, or into pieces small enough to pass if they go down whole. Frozen whole carrots deserve their own warning: they get hard enough to fracture a tooth, which is a real outcome in a strong-jawed adult dog, not a theoretical one. Watch the preparation, not just the vegetable. Glazed carrots, carrot cake and holiday roasted-vegetable trays are not carrots. They carry butter, brown sugar, salt and often nutmeg, and any carrot cooked into a mirepoix has been simmered with onion. Onion and garlic are toxic to dogs, so picking the carrot out of a family dish is not a safe workaround. Plain raw or plain steamed, with nothing added. Keep carrots and every other treat inside 10% of daily calories. Overdoing it produces gas and loose stool, and orange flecks in the stool afterwards are undigested fibre rather than a sign of illness. If your dog chokes on a piece, or later vomits repeatedly, guards the belly or stops passing stool, treat it as a possible obstruction and call your veterinarian or an emergency clinic right away. If the carrot came out of a seasoned dish containing onion or garlic, call your vet or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at (888) 426-4435. Do not induce vomiting or try to fish anything out at home.