At this point in time on this website, we’ve talked about plenty of dairy sources and which are safe to feed dogs (or give them to drink), and which aren’t. We’ve covered stuff like milk, yogurt and cheese, including the different kinds of cheese out there, such as regular cheese, cottage cheese and, the topic of today’s article, cream cheese for dogs.
So, what’s the deal here? Can dogs safely eat cream cheese (just like they can safely eat regular cheese and cottage cheese) without the risk of toxicity or poisoning being something you have to worry about? Or is there something dangerous you should be aware of before you feed some to Fido?
Can Dogs Eat Cream Cheese? Is Cream Cheese Good Or Bad For Dogs?
Just like you and I may decide to whip ourselves a sandwich of cream cheese for a quick breakfast or a snack, you may be thinking about giving some cream cheese to Fido to eat.
Thinking about giving your dog a snack or treat such as a small piece of bread with some cream cheese spread on it isn’t that uncommon among the community of dog owners.
The short answer to this question is YES, dogs can eat cream cheese safely, and cream cheese doesn’t have any poisonous or toxic effects on dogs.
However, if your dog suffers from any level of lactose intolerance, then cream cheese should remain off limits for them, just as any other source of dairy out there, so make extra sure of this point especially if you’ve never fed your dog any source of dairy before and are doing so for the first time.
In reality, the question here shouldn’t be whether or not cream cheese poses any sort of toxicity or poisonous effect on dogs, the question here should be why you want to feed your dog something so unnatural to their digestive systems as cream cheese.
Something as unnatural and heavily processed as cream cheese should be extremely limited in your dog’s diet if you want to really look after them, their health and their well being, meaning you should only give your dog a very small amount of cream cheese as a treat on very rare occasions.
How Much Cream Cheese Can I Give My Dog?
Be very careful not to go overboard in feeding your dog significant amounts of cream cheese on a regular basis, as cream cheese barely has any noteworthy health benefits to offer your dog and will only lead to a nasty case of diarrhea and digestive problems.
Not only will large amounts of cream cheese give your dog all sorts of stomach and digestive problems, but cream cheese is also exceptionally high in levels of fat, which translates to a greatly increased risk of obesity due to all those extra calories from fat consumed, as well as a greatly increased risk of developing pancreatitis.
And, not to mention the great lengths of processing that this form of cheese has to go through before it becomes actual cream, the last thing your dog needs to be eating a considerable amount of is anything that has been heavily processed.
Just make sure to only give your dog a small amount of cream cheese spread spread on something like a small slice of bread as a special, rare treat that isn’t fed to them too often, and you should be just fine.
Cream Cheese And Medicine For Dogs
A very popular trick that many dog owners like to take advantage of and use when their dogs give them a hard time taking their medication is wrapping (or coating) their dog’s medication with a little bit of cream cheese.
What this does is it disguises your dog’s medication in a tasty treat, your dog ends up gulping the entire thing all at once without ever thinking to themselves that there’s that nasty medication wrapped inside which they hate, and it ends up being a win-win for all sides involved.
Be careful, though, to only take advantage of this “trick” when you really need to and not every single time you have to give your dog medication, as over-using this “trick” will only be instilling bad habits in your dog that will be very hard to change in the future, and this will only lead to exceeding the limit of cream cheese they can safely consume without facing any problems.
Final Piece Of Advice
A final piece of advice we can give you if you’re adamant on giving your dog some form of cheese as a well deserved treat every now and then is sticking to cottage cheese, which is always going to be the best option for your dog among all types of cheese out there that you can give them.
Cottage cheese is the lowest processed type of cheese, the lowest in fat and is probably the form of cheese that’s able to offer your dog the most health benefits, so I would stick with that and ditch cream cheese if it were up to me.
However, even then, you still have to take into consideration the amount of cottage cheese you’re giving your dog and make sure not to go overboard.
The takeaway from all of this is that you can most certainly give your dog a tiny amount of cream cheese on rare occasions as a snack, but such food should make up no more than 3-5% of your dog’s diet, with the remaining 95% consisting of high quality dog food that specifically caters to their nutritional requirements.
Get this right and keep it in mind at all times, and you’ll be just fine giving your dog this white spread from time to time and on rare occasions.
