Christmas Dog Treats: 7 Recipes and the Christmas Dinner Foods That Send Dogs to the Vet

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Christmas dog treats are the easy part. The hard part is the four hours on Christmas Day when six people who don’t own a dog are all slipping your dog something under the table.

So this page does both: seven recipes your dog can actually have, and a blunt list of what’s on your Christmas table that shouldn’t go anywhere near them. Almost everything on that list is food, not decorations.

Here’s what’s on this page:

• 7 homemade Christmas dog treat recipes, including a full dog-safe Christmas dinner
• The Christmas dinner danger list — what’s genuinely toxic, what’s just a bad idea, and which one lands dogs in hospital most often
• A gift-jar treat mix for other people’s dogs
• The guest problem, and the one sentence that solves it

First: what’s on your Christmas table that shouldn’t reach your dog

Read this bit even if you skip the recipes.

Genuinely toxic — vet immediately

• Raisins, currants and sultanas. This is the big one at Christmas, because they’re hidden: Christmas pudding, mince pies, stollen, fruitcake, panettone. Grapes and their dried forms can cause acute kidney failure in dogs, and there is no established safe dose — small dogs have died from small amounts. If your dog eats any, call a vet the same hour, not the next morning.
• Chocolate. Advent calendars at dog height, tree decorations, boxes left on the coffee table. Dark chocolate is worse than milk, but all of it counts.
• Onions, garlic, leeks and shallots. Stuffing, gravy, bread sauce, pigs in blankets, and almost every savoury thing on the table. The damage to red blood cells is cumulative.
• Xylitol / birch sugar. In sugar-free sweets, some peanut butters, and increasingly in baked goods.
• Macadamia nuts. Common in Christmas nut selections.
• Alcohol. Including the brandy in the pudding and an unattended glass of mulled wine at dog height.

Not toxic, but a genuinely bad idea

• Cooked turkey bones. Cooking makes bones brittle and they splinter. The carcass cooling on the counter is the classic Christmas mistake — put it straight into an outside bin, not the kitchen one.
• Fatty trimmings, skin, and gravy. A big load of rich fat can trigger pancreatitis, and holiday weeks are exactly when it spikes.
• Stuffing. Onion again, plus sage and a lot of salt.
• Nutmeg. In bread sauce, custard and cakes. In quantity it’s genuinely toxic; in a lick of custard it isn’t, but there’s no reason to find out.
• Anything sugar-free until you’ve read the label.

Our full reference is here: Foods Dogs Can Eat and Can’t, and if raisins are anywhere in your house at Christmas, why grapes and raisins are an emergency is five minutes well spent.

The guest problem, solved in one sentence

You will not successfully police six people all day. So don’t try.

Put a jar of your dog’s own treats on the table and tell everyone: “If you want to give her something, it comes from this jar.” People want to include the dog. Give them a legal way to do it and the illegal ways mostly stop.

Recipe #7 below is designed to be that jar.

Christmas dog treats: the 7 recipes

Everything here is dog-safe as written. No xylitol, no chocolate, no raisins, no onion, no garlic, no nutmeg, no cooked bones.

Two notes on Christmas flavours specifically:

• Cinnamon in small amounts is fine. Nutmeg is not — they get used together in human baking, so measure rather than eyeball.
• Skip peppermint. Fresh mint in tiny amounts is fine, but peppermint essential oil — the thing that actually makes something taste like a candy cane — is not safe for dogs. The candy cane recipe below gets its look from beetroot, not from peppermint.

1. Christmas Dinner Bowl for Dogs

The centrepiece. Make this and your dog gets a proper Christmas dinner instead of scraps that shouldn’t be scraps.

Ingredients

• 1 lb turkey breast or thigh, cooked plain — no skin, no seasoning, no gravy
• 1 cup sweet potato, roasted and cubed
• 1 cup green beans, steamed
• ¼ cup fresh or frozen cranberries, cooked soft with a splash of water and no sugar
• 1 tbsp plain pumpkin puree

Method

1. Roast the turkey and sweet potato plain, alongside your own — just keep a corner of the tray unseasoned.
2. Steam the green beans, simmer the cranberries in a little water until they pop.
3. Debone the turkey completely. Every bone, checked twice.
4. Chop everything small, mix, cool to room temperature.

Portion: this is a meal, not an extra. Serve it instead of a normal dinner, not alongside one, or you’ve handed your dog a double portion on the one day they’re least likely to move it off. Keeps: 3 days refrigerated. Cranberries: plain only. Dried sweetened cranberries are a different product and often sit in the same bag as raisins.

2. Cranberry & Turkey Christmas Cookies

Savoury, festive-looking, and the best use of leftover turkey that doesn’t involve your own sandwich.

Ingredients

• 1 cup cooked turkey, finely chopped or shredded
• ½ cup fresh or frozen cranberries, chopped
• 1 egg
• 2 cups oat flour
• 2–3 tbsp water

Method

1. Oven to 350°F / 175°C.
2. Mix into a firm dough, adding water a spoonful at a time.
3. Roll to ¼ inch, cut with festive shapes if you have them.
4. Bake 25 minutes until firm.
5. Cool completely.

Makes: ~35 · Keeps: Refrigerate — 5 days, or 2 months frozen. These contain meat and aren’t shelf-stable.

3. Gingerbread-Style Dog Cookies

They smell like Christmas and contain none of the things that make human gingerbread a problem.

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain pumpkin puree
• 2½ cups whole wheat or oat flour
• 1 egg
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp ground ginger

Method

1. Oven to 350°F / 175°C.
2. Mix to a stiff dough. Roll to ¼ inch.
3. Cut into gingerbread-people shapes.
4. Bake 25–30 minutes until dry and firm.
5. Cool completely.

Makes: ~30 · Keeps: 2 weeks airtight, 3 months frozen. Deliberately missing: molasses (sugar), nutmeg (toxic in quantity), cloves. The cinnamon and a little ginger do all the work you need. Icing: if you want to decorate, use plain unsweetened yogurt thickened with a little cornflour. Not human royal icing.

4. Candy Cane Swirl Frozen Treats

Red and white, no peppermint anywhere near them.

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain unsweetened yogurt
• 2 tbsp cooked beetroot, blended to a smooth puree (this is the red)
• 1 tbsp plain pumpkin puree

Method

1. Split the yogurt into two bowls. Stir the beetroot into one until it’s properly pink.
2. Spoon alternating dollops of white and pink into a silicone mold or ice cube tray.
3. Drag a toothpick through once — once — to swirl. More than once and you get uniform pink.
4. Freeze 4 hours.

Makes: ~20 · Keeps: 2 months frozen. Beetroot warning: it will stain everything, including a white dog’s beard, temporarily. And it can turn stools reddish for a day, which is alarming if you’ve forgotten you made these.

5. “Christmas Pudding” Bites (the safe version)

Looks like the thing that’s most dangerous on the Christmas table. Contains none of it.

Ingredients

• 1 cup oat flour
• ½ cup plain pumpkin puree
• ¼ cup blueberries, chopped — standing in for the currants
• 1 tbsp xylitol-free peanut butter
• 2 tbsp plain yogurt, for the “brandy sauce” on top

Method

1. Mix flour, pumpkin, peanut butter and blueberries into a dough.
2. Roll into balls and flatten the bottoms so they stand up like tiny puddings.
3. Bake at 350°F / 175°C for 20 minutes. Cool completely.
4. Spoon a little yogurt over the top of each so it runs down the sides. Serve or refrigerate straight away.

Makes: ~18 · Keeps: 4 days refrigerated once topped. The point of this one: it’s a visual joke for you and a safe treat for the dog. Blueberries in, raisins absolutely out — that swap is the entire recipe.

6. Peanut Butter & Carob Christmas Bark

The chocolate-looking one. Carob is not chocolate and contains no theobromine.

Ingredients

• ½ cup carob chips (unsweetened, dog-safe — not chocolate chips)
• ¼ cup xylitol-free peanut butter
• 2 tbsp rolled oats
• 1 tbsp chopped blueberries or a few plain crushed banana chips

Method

1. Melt the carob gently in a bowl over hot water, not in the microwave on full power.
2. Stir in the peanut butter until smooth.
3. Spread thin on a lined tray, scatter the oats and fruit over the top.
4. Chill 1 hour, then snap into pieces.

Makes: ~1 tray · Keeps: 2 weeks refrigerated. Check the carob label — some “carob” products for humans contain added sugar and dairy. You want plain carob. Portion small. This is the richest treat here.

7. The Gift Jar Treat Mix

For other people’s dogs — and for the jar on your own table that solves the guest problem.

What goes in

• A layer of #3 Gingerbread-Style Cookies
• A layer of #2 Cranberry & Turkey Cookies (only if it’s going straight to a fridge — otherwise leave these out)
• A layer of plain dehydrated sweet potato slices
• A handful of plain carrot coins, oven-dried

Method

1. Bake and cool everything completely — any residual warmth creates condensation and condensation creates mould. If you’re making the frozen treats too, a silicone paw-and-bone mold does double duty for baking and freezing.
2. Layer into a clean, dry jar.
3. Tie a label on with the ingredients listed and a use-by date. This matters: the person receiving it may have a dog with allergies, and they can’t guess what’s in it.

Keeps: 2 weeks for the fully dry version, at room temperature. Don’t include anything containing meat or yogurt unless it’s staying refrigerated. A gift that goes off in someone’s cupboard is worse than no gift.

Which recipe for what

Frequently asked questions

Can dogs eat turkey at Christmas? Plain cooked turkey meat, yes — no skin, no seasoning, no gravy, and absolutely no bones. Cooked poultry bones splinter.

Can dogs have Christmas pudding or mince pies? No. Both contain raisins, currants or sultanas, which can cause acute kidney failure with no known safe dose. This is the number one Christmas risk in most houses.

Can dogs eat cranberries? Plain fresh or frozen cranberries, in small amounts, yes. Dried sweetened cranberries and cranberry sauce are a different matter — sugar, and often packed next to raisins.

Is cinnamon safe for dogs? In the small quantities used in recipe #3, yes. Nutmeg is the one to avoid, and the two often appear together in human recipes.

What about peppermint or candy canes? Skip them. Peppermint essential oil isn’t safe for dogs, and actual candy canes are sugar and sometimes xylitol.

My dog ate something off the table. What now? If it contained raisins, chocolate, xylitol, onion, garlic or alcohol — call a vet or an animal poison line immediately, even if your dog seems fine. If it was a cooked bone, call the same day. Don’t induce vomiting unless a vet tells you to.

How many treats is too many at Christmas? The same rule as the rest of the year — treats under about 10% of daily calories. Christmas is exactly when that quietly triples.

What if my dog is anxious with a house full of people? Different problem, and a real one. A stuffed frozen toy in a quiet room does more than another treat. Our natural calming remedies for anxious dogs covers what actually helps.

The bottom line

Making Christmas dog treats is the fun part and takes an afternoon. The part that actually protects your dog is the boring one: turkey carcass straight into an outside bin, no Christmas pudding, no mince pies, and a jar of dog-safe treats on the table so guests have somewhere legitimate to aim their generosity.

Nuggy’s contribution to Christmas is standing directly under whoever is carving, which is why the jar rule exists in our house too.

What’s your dog getting this year — dinner bowl, or the whole gift jar? If you’re also doing presents, our Christmas gift guide for dogs covers the things they’ll still use in February.

This article is general information, not veterinary advice. If your dog eats something toxic, contact your vet or an animal poison control line immediately.

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