Dog eats garlic. Dog doesn't get sick.

[dogs4life]

Anyone feed your dog garlic, cooked or raw?

I've heard it all, toxic, causes organ failure, blah, blah, blah.

BUT my dogs love it. I kid you not. If I drop a piece of garlic on the floor while I'm cooking, my dogs snatch it up before I can get to it.

So I did a little research and boy is there a lot of conflicting stuff out there on the web. You've got garlic in dog food and dog food recipes from holistic vets, but yet it's considered toxic by most vets and pet owners.

This is the conclusion I came up with, please let me know if you agree or disagree.

Garlic is safe and the toxic warnings are based on the "blanket" warning against all plants in the genus Allium (group) which contain onions, garlics and other bulb plants. The only references to toxicity in medical literature pertains to ruminant species (hooved, grazing animals) eating wild onion leaves and onion ingestion of dogs and cats causing Heinz body anemia. Nothing was directly linked to garlic or more specifically the commercially available garlic species we see in the store today.

If you are interested in the references I looked at, feel free:

Hutchinson, T. W. 1977. Onions as a cause of Heinz body anaemia and death in cattle. Can. Vet. J., 18: 358-360.

Thorp, F., Harshfield, G. S. 1939. Onion poisoning in horses. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc., 94: 52-53.

Kirk, J. H., Bulgin, M. S. 1979. Effects of feeding cull domestic onions (Allium cepa) to sheep. Am. J. Vet. Res., 40: 397-399.

Harvey JW and Rackear D: Experimental onion-induced hemolytic anemia in dogs. Vet Pathol 22:387, 1985.

CAUTION
Please note that toxic signs are vomiting, decreased appetite, diarrhea, pale gums, reddish or brown urine and/or lethargy. My reference to garlic being safe is in reference to WHOLE garlic NOT garlic extract or any other concentrated garlic product. If a dog already has anemia, the compounds in garlic will make the anemia worse and mask what is really going on. If you are concerned and want your dog tested, your vet can perform common lab tests such as Complete Blood Count (CBC) and blood smears to evaluate the red blood cells count and health.