Sweet Potato

Sweet potato is a safe vegetable for dogs and a good one: fibre, beta-carotene, vitamin B6 and vitamin C. It also avoids the issue that makes raw white potato risky, since sweet potatoes carry no solanine. Three conditions apply, though: cooked, peeled and plain. Cooked is not optional. Raw or undercooked sweet potato is hard for a dog to chew through and hard to digest, and a large piece swallowed mostly whole is a choking and intestinal-obstruction risk. Peel it too, because the skin is tougher to digest and is the part most likely to come back up or cause an upset stomach. Steam or bake it soft, peel it, and cut it into pieces small enough to pass if swallowed. Plain is where American kitchens go wrong. Sweet potato casserole is not sweet potato. It is butter, brown sugar and a marshmallow topping, and none of that belongs in a dog. Candied yams, sweet potato fries with salt, and anything finished with cinnamon or nutmeg are all out. Set aside a portion before the seasoning goes on. Portion matters because sweet potato is calorie- and carbohydrate-dense. It is easy to keep going because dogs love it, and weight goes on quickly. Keep it to a spoonful on top of the regular food, with all treats together inside 10% of daily calories. Dehydrated sweet potato chews are popular and perfectly reasonable, but drying concentrates the calories, so a chew is not the same as an equal weight of the fresh vegetable. If your dog is diabetic, talk to your veterinarian before adding sweet potato at all, because of the blood-glucose load. Too much shows up as GI upset and weight gain. But if your dog swallowed a chunk of raw or barely cooked sweet potato and then vomits repeatedly, goes flat, guards the abdomen or stops passing stool, treat that as a possible obstruction and call your veterinarian or an emergency clinic right away. Do not induce vomiting at home; note the time and the amount instead.