Not All Fruits & Veggies Are Safe for Dogs!!!

I am totally stupid.

When we got Houdini, I already knew we’d give baby carrots as treats. A friend did that with her dog in college and I was impressed by how white her dog’s chompers were. We have other friends and families who do this so we followed suit. Houdini loved them at first, then got bored with carrots and so I quit buying them.

But since I’m a pescetarian – and Steinvic thankfully eats anything I prepare – there are lots of vegetables in our house at all times. In fact, I probably really only eat fish once a week, then the rest of the time it’s Veggie City.

So, whenever I labor at the cutting board, if Houdini begged for a bite of whatever I was chopping, I’d toss it down to him. We don’t really give him lots of table food…he gets a plain piece of pasta or a few bits of cooked bacon here and there, but veggies and fruits we felt good about, because they’re natural and unprocessed and Houdini could encounter these items in nature and eat them.

Boy, was I wrong.

Two of the cute, compact foods that we give Houdini regularly are toxic to dogs: grapes and tomatoes.

Who knew? We sure didn’t! And if the chatty bagger at the grocery hadn’t informed me of this yesterday, oh so casually (because she and the cashier were marveling at the grapes I bought, and I mentioned that our dog would be thrilled,) I’d have never googled it and we’d still continue to give Houdini all the grapes and tomatoes he wanted.

And he would probably have died.

And then what would we have done? Life without Houdini? And life without Houdini because we fed him something that harmed him?

THANK GOODNESS for the bagger at the grocery store! I feel so dumb…