Can Dogs Eat Sweet Potato? What's Safe and How Much

This one comes up constantly, usually from someone standing in their kitchen holding half a sweet potato and wondering whether the dog staring at them is allowed any.

Short answer: yes. But how you serve it matters more than most people realise, and there is one bit that genuinely is not safe.

Can dogs eat sweet potato?

Yes, cooked and plain, in sensible amounts.

Sweet potato is a good thing to give a dog. It is high in fibre, rich in beta carotene, and full of vitamins B6 and C along with potassium. It is also gentle on most stomachs, which is why you will find it in so many dog foods.

Can dogs eat raw sweet potato?

No. This is the important bit.

Raw sweet potato is hard, dense and very difficult for a dog to digest. It is a genuine choking risk, and in a worse case it can cause a blockage in the gut. It is not that it is poisonous, it is that a dog's digestive system simply is not built to deal with it in that state.

If your dog has stolen a raw chunk off the worktop, they are most likely fine, but keep an eye on them and ring your vet if they seem uncomfortable.

How should I prepare it?

Plainly, and that word is doing a lot of work.

• Cook it properly. Boiled, steamed or baked until soft all the way through.
• Nothing on it. No butter, no oil, no salt, no seasoning. Absolutely no onion or garlic, which are toxic to dogs.
• Skin off. Easier to digest without.
• Cut it small. Bite-sized pieces, not lumps.
• Let it cool. Obvious, but a dog will not wait.

Mashed plain sweet potato stirred into their normal food is the simplest way, and it is genuinely useful if your dog has a slightly unsettled tummy.

How much can I give?

Treats and extras should be no more than around a tenth of what your dog eats in a day, and sweet potato counts towards that.

Rough guide for a first go: a tablespoon or so for a small dog, two or three for a large one. Start smaller than you think. Sweet potato is high in fibre, and too much too quickly gives you a very loose dog and a long evening.

Is sweet potato bad for dogs with diabetes?

It is worth being careful. Sweet potato is fairly high in natural sugars and carbohydrates, so if your dog is diabetic or overweight, check with your vet before making it a regular thing.

For a healthy dog, in the amounts above, it is not something to worry about.

What about the link to heart disease?

You may have come across this and it deserves a straight answer, because the way it gets repeated online is genuinely misleading.

A few years ago there was an investigation in America into a possible link between certain grain-free dog foods and a heart condition called DCM. Some of those foods used sweet potato, legumes and pulses in place of grains, and sweet potato got swept up in the headlines along with everything else.

The important distinction: the concern was about complete diets built around those ingredients, day in and day out. It was never about giving your dog a bit of cooked sweet potato as a treat, and no link has been established for that. If your dog is on a grain-free complete food and you are worried, that is a conversation for your vet about the food, not a reason to avoid sweet potato in a bowl.

I am not a vet, and if you have any concern at all about your dog's heart, please talk to one rather than to me.

Can puppies have sweet potato?

Yes, cooked, plain and in small amounts. It is one of the gentler things you can introduce.

Go slowly, as with anything new, and stop if it upsets them.

What about dried sweet potato?

This is what we sell, and it is a different thing again.

Our Sweet Potato Slices are sweet potato and nothing else, dried slowly until they go chewy rather than hard. No oil, no salt, no sugar, nothing added at all. They are soft enough for older dogs and for puppies from around 12 weeks, and they are one of the few genuinely vegetarian chews we do.

They are useful if your dog reacts to meat proteins, or if you want something to hand out on a walk that is not another piece of dried animal. They are not a long-lasting chew and they are not meant to be. If that is what you are after, a buffalo horn is the other end of the scale entirely.

But if you have got a sweet potato in the cupboard and ten minutes, honestly, just cook a bit of that. It costs you nothing and your dog will be just as pleased.

The short version

Cooked and plain: yes. Raw: no. Skin off, cut small, nothing added, and count it as part of the day's food rather than an extra on top.

Any questions, email me. I answer everything myself, though for anything to do with diabetes or your dog's heart, your vet is the person to ask.