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No. Here is why, and what to do if yours already has.
De Pet Valley · · 4 min read
Phone your vet, or an after-hours practice, the moment you know grapes, raisins or sultanas have been eaten — whatever the amount, and before any symptoms appear.
No. Grapes, raisins, sultanas and currants can cause sudden kidney injury in dogs, and there is no amount that is known to be safe. If yours has eaten any, phone your vet now rather than waiting to see what happens.
Phone your vet, or the nearest after-hours practice if the rooms are closed. Tell them what was eaten, roughly how much, and how long ago. If you still have the packet or the punnet, keep it — the weight on the label beats a guess.
Do not try to make your dog vomit at home unless your vet tells you to and talks you through it. Whether that is even the right move depends on how long ago it happened, and home methods go wrong often enough to turn one problem into two.
If your dog already seems unwell — vomiting, unsteady, off water — say so at the start of the call so the practice can decide how fast they want to see you.
With chocolate you can do rough arithmetic, because the type of chocolate and the size of the dog tell you something. Grapes do not work like that. The likeliest culprit is now thought to be tartaric acid, but it has not been settled, and sensitivity varies so widely between individual dogs that no safe threshold has held up.
So one dog raids a whole bunch off the counter and appears fine, while another dog of the same size and breed gets into real trouble on a few. Neither outcome predicts the next one.
This is also why a dog that ate grapes last Christmas and was fine tells you nothing about today. It is not a food to test, and there is no version of the test that is worth running.
Dried grapes are the same problem in a smaller package, and they turn up in food nobody thinks of as fruit. Fruitcake, hot cross buns, fruit loaf, muesli, granola bars, trail mix and the small boxes that go into a school lunchbox all count.
A dog that pulls half a fruit loaf off the counter has eaten grapes, even though nobody put grapes on the counter. Say that to the vet plainly rather than describing it as a bit of bread.
Grape-flavoured sweets and cooldrink are a different matter, since flavouring is not fruit — though sugar-free ones may contain xylitol, which is a separate danger and still a phone call. Read the ingredients rather than assume, and phone anyway if you cannot work out what was in it.
The early signs are vague. Vomiting, loose stools, going off food, unusual tiredness. Later there can be a change in how much your dog drinks or urinates, or a tucked-up, sore-looking belly.
The timing is the part that matters. Kidney damage can be under way while a dog still looks perfectly normal, so a dog bouncing around an hour after eating raisins is not reassurance. Do not use this list to decide whether the call is worth making — make the call, and let the vet decide.
Expect them to want the dog in. What follows is their decision, but it generally means clearing what can still be cleared if the timing allows, then blood tests to see how the kidneys are holding up.
Dogs are often kept in on a drip while those bloods are repeated. It can feel like a great deal of fuss over a handful of raisins. It is a much smaller thing than treating kidney failure that has already set in.
Dogs mostly get grapes through ordinary household traffic: a fruit bowl on a low table, a lunchbox left in a school bag, a bin with no lid, a guest being kind. None of that is carelessness. It is just how a house with people in it works.
Tell everyone who feeds, walks or looks after your dog that grapes and raisins are off the list, and give it as a rule rather than a preference. Gift hampers and December leftovers are worth a second look for the same reason.
If you want something to hand out instead, stay with treats made for dogs, or a plain vegetable you have checked first. And save your vet's after-hours number on your phone now, while nothing is wrong — that is the number you will not want to be searching for at nine on a Sunday night.