Dogs are naughty for nuts. The thing is, walnuts are good for you, and it can be quite interesting to see your mutt stuff its face in healthy edible nuts. We understand that as pet parents, you want your pooch to have the best. But nuts, especially raw walnuts, can make your dog down with some of the most life-threatening dog diseases.
So, in a nutshell, keep your dog away from nuts. Although, one thing about dogs is their curiosity. So, dogs might raid your pantry for nuts or snag one or two when you aren’t looking.
Doctors have said walnuts are good for you. For your dog, it’s a different thing entirely. Honestly, please get dog treats. So, can dogs eat walnuts? Let’s find out.
Can Dogs Have Walnuts?
If we are on the extreme end of safety, we will say get those walnuts, including macadamia nuts, far away from your pet. If we want to be on the mild side, we will start distinguishing the different types of walnut. For instance, we start asking where you got the walnut from, if you have had the nuts for a while, or the kind of nuts you have.
Store-bought walnuts are safer than fresh walnuts, but the best thing you can do is stay away. Numerous diseases could arise from your canine companion consuming walnuts. Even if you can take precautions from getting your dog from burying their faces in nuts, you have to be extra. Pooches can be snoopy, and you need extra care to outsmart them.
Are Walnuts Bad for Dogs?
Look at the below to see why fresh, raw, cooked, or moldy walnuts are more than harmful to your dog.
Mycotoxins
If you bought the nuts from the store where they have become processed, your dog is relatively safer. They are safer in the sense that they would not be subject to fungi or the black mold which could cause your dog’s death. Walnuts you get from a walnut tree that grows outside contain moisture. Their moisture content promotes the growth of black mold that contains mycotoxins.
Moldy walnuts produce tremorgenic mycotoxins, making walnuts toxic, and they trigger deadly seizures when dogs eat them. Seeing your pet in that kind of pain is something you don’t want, trust us. We know people who have made such mistakes with their puppies and fell into depression when they saw their pooch’s in severe discomfort. And the thing is, mycotoxins are not the only things that could affect dogs.
Essentially, a moldy walnut could kill your canine.
Gastroenteritis
This healthy snack contains nutrients such as fats, minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants that are superb for you. The nutrients help you lower your cholesterol levels and clear toxins. But for your dog, the results won’t be the same as human digestive systems are different from pups. The nutrients could destroy your dog’s digestive system with gastroenteritis, and that’s not all.
Pancreatitis.
Apart from gastroenteritis, there’s pancreatitis, which is another disease you don’t want your pet to have. Pancreatitis is a disease that targets the pancreas and arises when your mutt’s pancreas has excessive fat. Excess pancreatic fats can cause your pet’s pancreas to inflate and malfunction.
When pancreatitis occurs, the best thing is to involve your vet immediately, as it could lead to even more extreme situations. A quick intervention from the vet could reduce the damage, and your puppy will become better after a while.
Obesity.
Due to the high-fat content in this snack, your puppy can become obese from continual consumption.
Juglone
For a nut full of nutrients, there are several dangers attached to this nut. The dangers hold less prominence because they don’t affect humans that badly. But for our furry friends, these dangers can be life-threatening.
Juglone is a toxin that the walnut tree roots secrete to prevent the growth of other plants around them. This toxin sticks to this nut’s shell when it drops from trees, and if dogs consume such a nut, shell, and all, they could develop seizures.
This toxin alone should let you know that eating walnuts is potentially dangerous for your pet, whether an English or black walnut. Black walnut is particularly dangerous.
Choking.
When you want to eat this nut, you crack it and eat it once. You can even split a piece in half if you want. Your pooch doesn’t have the motor skills to do what you do. So, they don’t know what their instincts tell them to do.
They dive into your stash and eat walnut shells if you haven’t cracked the nuts. This could result in choking as one more nut gets stuck in their throats. Not only that, there could be intestinal blockages. For smaller dogs, this is more than a possibility.
As you can see, there are dangers connected to feeding your dog walnuts. Although, you don’t need to be worried if your dogs eat one or two pieces. However, you can’t afford to let eating nuts become a habit. It may cost you your dog’s life and a lot of money you could have invested elsewhere.
We recommend that you take extreme safety measures when it comes to this delicious snack. If your dog eats walnuts, it will haunt you as walnuts are not safe for dogs. Take extreme precautions that will save you emotional and financial stress.
What Happens When Your Dog Eats Walnuts
There are risks attached to your dog eating this nutty snack, but this depends on the number of walnuts it eats. However, number or not, it can be harmful if your puppy eats a nut that has mold all over it, it could be in immediate danger. As we have mentioned earlier, this shelled snack contains great moisture, making it easy for mold to grow on it.
When a mutt eats a moldy nut, irrespective of whether it is an English or black walnut, they could experience the following symptoms;
- Upset stomach.
- Vomiting
- Heavy breathing
- Discomfort resulting in restlessness
- Increased temperature
- Fatigue
- Thirst
- Fatigue
- Seizures
- Tremors
- Irregular heart rate
- Damaged pancreas
- Loss of life.
- Swollen face.
Apart from the loss of life, when you see the other symptoms, you should contact your vet immediately. Your vet will diagnose your dog and take the appropriate steps. As you can see, the above toxins and nutrients make walnuts bad for dogs. However, it can serve as the occasional treat.
What to Do When Your Pet Eats Walnuts?
So what, your dog ate walnuts? What do you do? True, one or two nuts may not hurt your pet, but it could become problematic if they ate moldy walnuts.
You’ll know if your mutt has eaten such an infected snack when they display any symptoms above. If you spot even one of those symptoms, immediately call your veterinarian.
Your veterinarian comes and diagnoses your dog and carries out further tests. The veterinarian may conduct bloodwork and urinalysis to observe internal organs, especially the kidney. Also, the veterinarian may conduct a test on your dog’s vomit.
The test results would determine if this nutritious snack has poisoned your dog. Sometimes, the poisoning is severe enough the veterinarian will hospitalize your puppy. The vet will administer IV fluids to the puppy to clear the toxic substances to protect key organs. The fluids will help reduce body temperature and keep your pup hydrated.
Also, the doc could pass an orogastric tube through your canine’s mouth and introduce fluids that will cleanse their stomach and remove stomach upset. This decontamination method cleanses the stomach and reduces stomach upset by evacuating harmful substances from your puppy’s system.
Can Dogs Recover From Walnut Poisoning?
As a pet parent whose pet is currently under treatment for poisoning from eating fresh, boiled, cooked, or moldy walnuts, you wonder if they’ll recover. First off, you have learned the hard way that these nut species are toxic to dogs. We stress this again when your dog eats this snack, it can be deadly; walnuts are not safe for dogs.
Yes, your hound will recover from this poisoning, but they need you if they are going to make a full recovery. Recovering takes a few days, sometimes 5 days, but the recovery process is a tasking one. Most dogs get tired and depressed during this time.
Although your pup is in recovery, you still have to pay attention to them more frequently. Apart from the possibility of a relapse, there is also recovery speed. You have to contact your vet immediately to provide medical attention for your dog. The vet will help you safeguard the crucial organs in your hound.
We emphasize that these nutty snacks are toxic to dogs. We repeat, they are not safe for dogs.
Can Small Quantity Walnuts Be Good For Your Dog?
Whether small quantities or not, keep those nuts away from your dogs. Sure, nuts have immense health benefits for you. You get to access vitamins, minerals, fibers, omega oils, and other good stuff. The puppy’s digestive system cannot fully appreciate these healthy nutrients, which makes them extremely toxic for dogs.
Even if your hound could take advantage of these high-fat foods, they will become fat as the nut has high-fat content. The average pup that weighs around 30 pounds needs about 14 grams of fat per day to be healthy. Eating about 2 and a half walnuts means your pup has eaten more than the required fat content. Essentially, feeding or letting them have access to this snack means obesity in the long run.
This species of nuts is great for you but not your pet. Be warned. Don’t harm your lovely pooch.
Are There Nuts Safe for Your Dogs?
Generally speaking, we would say no, but we admit that not all nuts threaten your hound more than others.
Peanut.
Hands down, peanuts are quite yummy to the taste buds, and you think your dog should have some. Your dog, like most dogs, loves peanuts and can’t have enough of them. Yes, they can have them but with caution. You have to be careful of the amount your puppy eats, as peanuts can cause obesity for your pet.
Apart from obesity, there could be more issues if you season those nuts when you boil or roast them. While peanuts are tinier, this doesn’t mean they present less of a choking hazard for your puppy. As mentioned earlier, dogs don’t calmly eat as you do. They gulp their food, taking several mouthfuls at a go.
So, when your pets do this, it could cause an intestinal blockage. Smaller puppy species are prone to this. Essentially, be careful when you want to feed your dog peanuts.
Pine Nuts
Pine nuts are friendlier to your puppies, but you have to look out for things. Chief of those things is the fat content in pine nuts. If you allow your dog to feast on these nuts in obscene amounts, you are signing up for obesity. Apart from obesity, there is the issue of pancreatitis.
There’s gastroenteritis, and trust us, these diseases are not cheap to diagnose and treat. Apart from that, the diagnosis process could be one of the most painful experiences for dogs.
Roasted Cashew Nuts
Roasted cashew can be orgasmic to your taste bud. You will enjoy it so much that you think, ‘heck, why not give it to Roger.’ Roger could enjoy unseasoned roasted cashew, but don’t let Roger eat a raw one. The raw one could hurt your puppy and cause immense damage to its intestines. Like their other species, cashews have large amounts of fat, which means obesity, pancreatitis, and gastroenteritis.
Cashews contain potassium in large quantities, which could cause urinary problems for your dogs. It could also block your pet’s throat or digestive tract. You have to be careful with the amount you let your pup eat. They must only eat it in small quantities.
Brazil Nuts
As large nuts, you already know a potential choking hazard due to their size and how puppies eat. The nut could block their throat and also digestive tract. In addition, there is the issue of fat, as these nut species are notable for having greater fat content than all of their kinds. So, there could be a pancreatitis issue if your dogs eat more than one.
Other Harmful Nuts.
Almonds.
Like walnut shells, almond shells are choking hazards. We mean intestinal blockage and choking in your puppy’s throat when we talk about choking. If you think the choking is the worst, there’s the gastrointestinal challenge. And as if that isn’t enough, there is pancreatitis.
Due to the salt content and other ingredients could lead to an increase in your canine blood sugar levels or toxicity.
Pecans
People love pecans in pies and on their cookies, but it is bad news for your canine as toxic to dogs as walnuts. Pecans also contain mycotoxins which are deadly to dogs since it causes liver failure. Also, there’s the juglone which causes seizures. Like walnuts, pecans are not safe for dogs. They are deadly toxic to dogs like walnuts and most nuts.
Pistachios
Pistachios like macadamia nuts and most nuts are great for your well-being but could kill your pet. Pistachios have mold, which is toxic to dogs. These toxins could harm your dog’s health. Apart from this, there’s also the issue of obesity.
Hazelnuts
Hazelnuts, like macadamia nuts, are so yummy, but they are also deadly for your pet’s health as they contain juglone and mycotoxins.
FAQ
Can Dogs Eat Cooked Walnuts?
Eating walnuts, even if cooked, could hurt your dog in every terrible way you can imagine. If eaten in small quantities, no problem, but if eaten In excess, it could cause.
- Upset stomach.
- Vomiting
- Heavy breathing
- Discomfort resulting in restlessness
- Increased temperature
- Fatigue
The nuts from walnut trees could be deadlier due to the toxins.
Is It Expensive Treating Walnut Poisoning?
Yes, it costs about $500 to treat this condition if your dogs eat nuts. If you don’t have insurance for your dog, you should consider getting one in case of an accident. With that much money to spend on treating this poisoning, you should make sure your dog doesn’t eat moldy walnuts. Call your local pet store pet poison helpline when you need an emergency veterinarian.
It will help if you have pet insurance plans.
Are Fresh Walnuts Safe?
Not really. They may contain toxins harmful to your pets, and you would do well to keep the nut away from them. Moldy walnuts pose even a larger threat. English walnuts could be safer but don’t take that risk.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, walnuts and other nuts contain healthy fats which are beneficial to you, but for not your dog’s diet, they are dangerous. So as much as the health benefits walnuts give you to make you healthy, help your dog be healthy by hiding your walnut stash.
So, we ask you this familiar question with what you’ve read. Can dogs eat walnuts? Are walnuts safe for your furry companion?
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*photo by Wirestock – depositphotos