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Most famous for being man’s best and utterly loyal companion, dogs are known to almost, if not all the time, share meals with their owners when they are home or at the park. Certain dog owners are even of the opinion that homemade snacks and human foods are ideal for their dogs as opposed to specially formulated dog’s diet that come as wet meals or kibble dog food.
Among the many questions dog owners get to ask, one that stands out most frequently has fallen along the lines; can my dog eat pretzels? Are pretzels good for my dogs? How many pretzels can my dogs eat? Can dogs eat pretzels that are unsalted?
Pretzels, albeit safe for us as human food or snacks, eating pretzels are unsafe for dogs health for a couple of reasons. The reasons include minor complications such as stomach upset, excessive peeing, and increased water intake; to complex health conditions such as salt poisoning, obesity, high blood sugar, and kidney failure as disease, among others.
Hence, allowing your dog to snack on few bites pretzels is not only bad for dogs, but quite unhealthy for our dog’s health.
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Table of Contents Show
Why Are Pretzels Unsafe for Dogs?
Pretzels are known to come in various forms, shapes, flavors, and types. From peanut butter pretzels to yogurt-covered pretzels, pretzel nuggets and sticks, pretzel chips, and even goldfish pretzels. This can be welcoming to dogs and can whet their appetite, making them want to share these pretzels with us.
Can My Dog Safely Eat Pretzels?
Can dogs eat pretzels or are pooch pretzels truly safe?
Despite their irresistible taste and aromas, pretzels contain a high amount of calories, additives, salt content, and even flavors that can be unsafe for our dogs’ health. Aside from the unhealthy calories with no nutritional value, soft baked pretzels can cause choking in the dog’s airways sometimes, especially for puppies.
Taking a step further, we would explore why pretzels are unsafe for dogs, what happens when dogs eat hard pretzels, or when dogs eat unsalted pretzels and why soft pretzels should not be shared with them irrespective of how much they crave them.
What Makes Pretzels Unsafe for Dogs?
Pretzels are composed of certain food components and ingredients that make them unsafe for consumption in dogs. This is because the dog’s stomach and digestive system as a whole, process food components differently from how it is processed in humans.
The following components of pretzels are found to be among the many reasons why our dogs should not snack on pretzels.
Additives and Flavors
Pretzels are known to be preserved with additives, which help improve their shelf lives and also come with a couple of varying flavors, artificial sweeteners, that give them their scintillating aromas and tastes. Among the common additives are onion powder and garlic. These two components of most hard pretzels are toxic for dogs and should be completely avoided.
Despite safe in human food, Onions are known to contain a toxic substance that affects dogs (N-propyl disulfide). What this toxic substance does is break down and destroy the dogs’ red blood cells which causes a medical condition known as anemia, as well as other heart-related symptoms.
Garlic on the other hand, when consumed by dogs, also affects the red blood cells. That’s not all, they also irritate the stomach and intestines of dogs, which could cause vomiting, diarrhea, and loss of appetite.
Hence giving dogs pretzels, which have been shown to contain these additives, would cause more harm than good to our dogs.
Salts
A medium-sized pretzel is known to contain a high amount of salts way beyond the daily needs of dogs. While we as humans have a recommended salt consumption of about 1,500mg – 2,300mg sodium daily, dogs with an average weight of 15 kilograms should not consume more than 200 mg of sodium daily, anything above this amount would predispose them to sodium poisoning.
It is obvious dogs that dogs cannot take too much salt compared to humans. Salty foods, especially as part of dog’s main diet, can lead to salt poisoning due to low salt tolerance levels.
When our dogs take excess salt, either in hard and soft pretzels, the salt causes increased absorption of water from the dog’s system, leading to dehydration. This causes excessive thirst, and increased water intake, as well as may predispose the dog to frequent urination.
This is not all, a cascade of events happens following the dehydration which in turn affects the dog’s kidneys and the heart, causing renal failure, seizures, and heart diseases in the long run.
These are situations we should completely avoid as humans, let alone allowing our pets to go through them. This is one of the reasons pretzels are highly unsafe for consumption in canines, most importantly dogs.
Carbohydrates
Another component contained in pretzel snacks that makes them quite unsafe for dogs is the high contents of carbohydrates and sugars. You may begin to wonder why carbohydrates are unsafe in dogs, after all, they provide them with energy. For instance why is it unsafe when dogs eat pretzel bread?
The answers are not far-fetched.
Carbs are converted to sugar by the dog’s digestive system. Consuming a high amount of carbohydrates, would in turn mean too much sugar in the body system of our dogs. Especially if the dog’s digestive system isn’t breaking the sugar down efficiently.
The catch here is that most pretzels are made from refined wheat flour with artificial sweeteners, which is known to elevate blood sugar. increase weight gain and predispose to heart disease.
When this is not adequately countered by our dog’s body system, it can further lead to unhealthy conditions such as increased blood sugar levels and as well as increased weight gain. Obesity in pets can additionally cause heart diseases in dogs.
Hard pretzels are known to contain too much sugar compared to soft one. However when puppies eat soft pretzels, they can easily occlude the airways of puppies, causing them to choke.
This is a reason why including pretzels as a regular snacks or rare treat is quite harmful and counterproductive.
Some other components found in pretzels that make them quite unhealthy as dog’s diet include cheese and raisins. Cheese can affect the dog in a harmful way. Most dogs are lactose intolerant and consuming pretzels with cheese as a part of its ingredients contradicts their digestive abilities.
Raisins on the other end, as well as grapes have no complications for humans, hence why it’s part of what makes up some flavored pretzels. However, in dogs, grapes and raisins have been known to cause acute kidney failure. In most cases, this condition is irreversible even if medical attention is given to the dogs.
We as dog owners can argue that certain pretzels contain honey and yogurt which tend to be safe when dog eats them. Then if both of these ingredients are used in making pretzels, what then stops my dog from consuming honey or yogurt pretzels?
Can Dogs Eat Pretzels Containing Honey ?
Asides from the fact that the sugar levels in honey are on the higher end. Pretzels coated with honey not only increase the sugar in the dog’s system. furthermore Honey pretzels play a role in tooth decay when your dog eats them.
Are Yogurt Pretzels Safe for Dogs?
Giving pretzels with yogurt can alter your dog’s stomach or upset stomach, especially if they are quite sensitive to lactose. Yogurts are made from milk, right?
If yes, then dogs snacking on pretzels that are spiced with yogurt should be avoided completely because of the health complications they stand to pose in dogs.
Can My Dogs Eat Pretzel Sticks?
Pretzel sticks should not be given to dogs on a regular basis because they also fall among salty snacks. Experts estimate that about 23 pretzel sticks contain twice the daily sodium requirement for dogs.
Although giving dogs one or two bites of this pretzel sticks as snack may appear to be safe , we must remember that other dog food which they eat also contains salt, which eventually increases their total daily salt consumption.
Again the question still begs, if salt is one of the fear factors in pretzels and one of the major reasons why we should not feed our dog pretzels; how about pretzels made with no salts such as unsalted pretzel sticks?
Should My Dog Consume a Few Bites of Cinnamon Pretzels?
Cinnamon pretzels are not suitable for dogs. Just like most hard pretzels, the sugar component of cinamon pretzels is bad for your dog’s health.
It does not only elevate blood sugar levels but may increase their risk of developing diabetes among other health issues.
Can My Dogs Have Unsalted Pretzels?
Giving pretzels might look safe when it has no salt. An example is the goldfish pretzels. Recently dogs eat pretzel goldfish, which has very little salt content compared to salt-spiced pretzels. However what about the high carbs, sugars, and sunflower oils that they are made from?
Despite being unsalted, they are sweet pretzels and they still contain ingredients that can eventually pose health threats when dogs eat pretzels. We should not forget that these high carbs and sugars have a way of predisposing our pets to diabetes, increased weight, high blood sugar, salt poisoning, kidney failure, and heart disease.
Even though the threat from salt toxicity has been curbed with the unsalted pretzels variant, it is still as unhealthy when dogs eat pretzel snack, due to the mentioned short-term and long-term side effects.
The tastes can be pretty enticing to our canine companions at home and we might be tempted to give them as treats especially when they show their funny faces. Pretzels in many forms are bad for dogs and should not be given to them.
Are Mustard Pretzels Good for Dogs?
As with other variants of pretzels, mustard pretzels are bad for dogs. They contain a lot of spices. Which makes this pretzels bad for your pet.
Some variants of the mustard pretzels contain sugar, onion powder and horseradish as part of its recipe, which can upset your dog’s stomach and eventually not safe for dogs.
What Should I Do When My Dogs Eat Pretzels
If your dog ate soft pretzels, hard pretzels, sweet pretzels or other types of flavored pretzels, and they start showing certain symptoms after consuming them; allow them to take a lot of water as this helps to stop the potential dehydration and excessive thirst from the too much salt contents.
This in turn would allow them urinate frequently to clear the salts via the renal and excretory systems, thus reducing chances of salt poisoning. However, it’s best to still report and get swift medical care from your veterinarian.
Although pretzels are snacks, which have been made to suit the body system of humans. With little to no nutritional value being offered by pretzels to dogs, it is best to avoid feeding pretzels, as they are bad for dogs. Whether they come as hard pretzels, soft pretzels, traditional pretzels, peanut butter pretzels or plain pretzels.
We as dog owners have a responsibility to keep pretzels out of reach of our dogs while making sure they are not given as treats. This is because the negative effects on the dog’s health cannot be overemphasized compared to what they stand to gain.