Can Dogs Eat Strawberries?

Among the wide variety of fruits dogs can eat for their beneficial nutritional properties are strawberries. If you're wondering whether your dog can eat strawberries, the answer is yes, though with some care.

Let's look at the benefits of strawberries for dogs, how we should give them, how much they can eat, and what precautions we should take to prevent them from upsetting your dog.

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Nutritional Benefits of Strawberries

Besides being tasty and refreshing, strawberries provide a large amount of high biological value nutrients for our dogs. They're also a good fiber source for keeping bowel movements steady.

Let's look at their main benefits:

• They're rich in minerals such as iodine, potassium, and magnesium.
• Strawberries contain many vitamins, such as C, B2, B3, and folic acid
• They help keep our dog hydrated, since they're 90% water
• They contain a large amount of antioxidants
• They help fight bad cholesterol

How Should I Give Strawberries to a Dog?

Ideally, they should already be ripe, since slightly green strawberries are more acidic and your dog won't like them as much. Also, you need to have washed them beforehand to remove any dirt/bacteria/pesticide residue.

Although we love eating cold strawberries, cold fruit doesn't sit as well with dogs, so we should let them warm up a bit. It's best to give them fresh, but not cold.

Size matters — try to cut them into pieces to prevent choking by accident. Especially if your dog is a small/mini breed. Remember to only give the strawberry itself; the leaves should be discarded.

How Many Strawberries Can a Dog Eat Per Day?

Keeping in mind that fruit shouldn't make up more than 10% of a dog's total daily food intake, we should estimate by eye the number of strawberries we can give, depending on our dog's size.

A small dog shouldn't eat more than one or two strawberries a day, while a large dog can comfortably eat five or six pieces daily.

What Happens If a Dog Eats Too Many Strawberries?

Strawberries are good for dogs, but in the right amount. If we overdo it and give more strawberries than recommended, our dog can suffer stomach pain, diarrhea, and/or vomiting.

Exceeding the recommended number isn't advisable, since we'd be turning something tasty and nutritious into something negative.

And now that you know strawberries' virtues, why not give your dog a nice surprise with a strawberry as a treat?