Cucumber

Cucumber is one of the few human foods where the honest answer is simply yes. The American Kennel Club lists it among the raw vegetables dogs can safely eat, and the numbers are the reason it comes up so often in weight-loss plans: roughly 8 calories per half-cup of slices. Compare that to a single medium dog biscuit and you can see why trainers reach for cucumber when a dog needs a lot of rewards in a short session. It is mostly water, so it delivers crunch and volume without meaningful calories. The risk with cucumber is mechanical, not chemical. A whole cucumber, or a thick chunk cut for a human plate, is a choking hazard — especially for small breeds and for the dogs who inhale food rather than chew it. Slice it into thin half-moons smaller than the width of your dog's mouth. Peel or don't peel, it makes little difference nutritionally, though dogs with sensitive stomachs sometimes do better with the skin off. Too much at once means loose stool and gas from the water and fiber load, so keep cucumber, like every other treat, inside the 10 percent of daily calories rule. What you should not share is anything from the pickle jar. Dill pickles, bread-and-butter pickles, garlic dills, cucumber salads and tzatziki all carry salt, vinegar, sugar, and frequently garlic or onion — and alliums are directly toxic to dogs, so a garlic dill spear is a different food from a cucumber. The same goes for cucumber that has been sitting in a dressed salad. If your dog gags, retches, drools heavily or cannot swallow after eating a large piece, treat it as a possible airway obstruction and call your veterinarian immediately. If your dog ate a serious quantity of pickles or a garlic-heavy cucumber salad, call your vet or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at (888) 426-4435 rather than waiting to see what happens.