What Can I Give My Dog for Christmas? A Plan for the Day

Last Christmas Day I looked up halfway through dinner and realised Ralphie had been handed something by three different people in about ten minutes, and every one of them thought they were the only one.

That is the actual Christmas problem. Not what to buy them. What to do with them on the day, while the kitchen is chaos and the house is full of people who all want to give the dog something.

So this is the practical version, from someone who has spent a fair few Christmases working it out.

What can I give my dog on Christmas Day?

Something that takes them a while, given at the right moment, and not very much else.

The temptation is to make a fuss of them with lots of little treats, because everyone else is opening things. The trouble is that lots of little treats, handed out by lots of different people, adds up to a dog who has had an enormous amount of rich food in one afternoon and a very uncomfortable Boxing Day.

One good long chew, given when you sit down to eat, does far more for them than a dozen scraps.

What do I give them while we are eating?

This is the bit worth planning, because it is the hour where everything goes wrong.

You want something that will keep them genuinely occupied in another room or under the table, not something that is gone in ninety seconds and leaves them back at your elbow. In practice that means a hard chew, or a hollow one that has been stuffed and frozen the night before.

Freezing is the trick most people do not know. Spoon pâté into a hollow chew, freeze it overnight, and it takes three or four times as long to get through as it would at room temperature. It is the cheapest way to buy yourself a quiet dinner.

How long does each type actually last?

Worth knowing before you pick, because the difference is enormous and it is not obvious from looking at them.

• Horns, antlers and yak chews. Months, not hours, given in sessions. These are the ones to reach for if you want the dog settled for the whole afternoon. They are hard, so they suit a dog who gnaws steadily rather than one who tries to crush everything.
• Hooves and hollow bones. A week or two, and they can be stuffed and frozen, which is what makes them the best Christmas Day option of the lot.
• Braided and stringy chews, like paddywack and pizzle. Hours rather than minutes for most dogs, with nothing hard in them. The sensible middle ground.
• Ears, jerky and anything light. Minutes. Lovely as a small moment, useless as an occupier.

If you are buying one thing for the day, buy from the first two groups. If you are buying something for the stocking, the last group is exactly right.

How many treats is too many over Christmas?

The usual guide is that treats stay under about a tenth of what a dog eats in a day, and Christmas is the time of year that guide quietly falls apart.

It is not one big thing that does it. It is a chew in the morning, a bit of turkey at lunch, something from your mum in the afternoon, a biscuit from a neighbour, and a stocking that was meant to last a week going in a single sitting.

Two things help. Decide the day before roughly what they are having, and tell everyone else that the dog has already had theirs. It sounds fussy. It saves a lot of mess.

If you want the actual numbers for your dog, our dog treat calculator takes their weight and works out a daily allowance for every treat in our range, in pieces rather than percentages. Worth five minutes before the week starts.

What about the richness?

Christmas treats tend to be the fatty end of the shelf, which is fine in itself but adds up fast when it is on top of everything else going on.

A couple of examples from our own figures: a hairy rabbit ear is 21.5% fat and a puffed chicken foot is 34.2%, while a buffalo horn is 1.6% and a beef pizzle 3.2%. All four are good treats. Only two of them are sensible to hand out repeatedly across a week of visitors.

Our fat guide lists every treat in our range if you want to check something specific. The short version for Christmas: save the rich ones for a moment, and use the lean long-lasting ones for the hours.

Can my dog have anything off the Christmas dinner?

A little plain turkey meat, with no skin, no bone and nothing it has been cooked with, is fine for most dogs.

Quite a lot of the rest of the table is not. Cooked bones, anything with onion or garlic in it, the dried fruit in the pudding and the mince pies, chocolate, and anything sweetened with xylitol all need keeping out of reach rather than rationed. We have the full list on our Christmas gifts page, and if anything has been eaten that should not have been, that is a call to your vet rather than a search engine.

The easier approach is to give them their own thing at the same time you sit down, so there is nothing to beg for.

What about visitors handing out treats?

This is the one nobody plans for and everybody has a story about.

What works for us is putting a small pot of training treats by the door and telling people that is the dog's allowance for the day. They still get the fun of giving the dog something, your dog still gets the fuss, and you are not quietly feeding them four times over.

Small, plain and low fat is what you want in that pot. Save the exciting things for when you choose.

What goes in a dog's stocking?

Small things, and fewer than you think.

A stocking that gets emptied in one go is just a very large meal. The ones that work are a handful of small, different treats, opened across the morning rather than all at once, with one proper chew saved for dinner time.

Variety matters more than quantity here. A dog is far more interested in four different things than in four of the same thing, which is why pick and mix style bags do so well at this time of year.

For what is in our range now, and what is coming in November, have a look at our Christmas gifts for dogs page.

Is a puppy's first Christmas different?

Yes, and mostly it is about the noise and the people rather than the food.

A puppy who has never seen a houseful of visitors, crackers going off and a tree covered in interesting dangly things is going to find the day a lot. A chew is genuinely useful here, not as a treat but as something familiar to settle with, somewhere quiet, away from it all.

Keep to what they already have. Christmas is not the day to try a new protein for the first time, because if it disagrees with them you will be dealing with it on Boxing Day with the vet closed.

The short version

Plan one good long chew for dinner time, stuff and freeze it the night before, keep a pot of small plain treats by the door for visitors, and decide the day before roughly what they are having in total.

Everything else is noise. The dog does not know it is Christmas. They know they got something nice and everybody made a fuss of them, which is the whole point.

If you are not sure what suits your dog, our treat finder asks three questions and shows you only the ones that fit. Or email me and tell me about them. I answer every message myself.