Christmas with a dog: what to sort out beforehand

Print my Pet · 25.09.2026 · 9 min read·Updated 31.10.2026

Christmas Eve, just after six. The doorbell goes for the fourth time, coats are piling up in the hallway, in the kitchen someone is pulling the roast out of the oven. And somewhere between twelve pairs of legs stands a dog who has not known what to do with himself for two hours.

That is where most Christmas problems with dogs begin. Not out of malice, not from a lack of training. But because on a single evening everything is different at once: smells, volume, people, mealtimes, rules. A dog does not read that as a celebration. He reads it as a state of emergency.

The good news: almost all of it can be sorted out beforehand. Not in a big project, but in about twenty minutes, spread over the weeks before. Here is what really counts, where the usual warnings exaggerate, and what you will no longer have to argue about on the 24th.

The most dangerous things are not at the tree, but on the table

It smells good, it is within reach, and it sits around for hours while everyone talks. Four things are really relevant here. For three of them it is worth looking at the numbers, because they take away the panic and show where the limit actually lies.

Chocolate: the type decides, not the amount alone

The problematic substance is called theobromine. Mild symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhoea can occur from as little as about 20 mg per kilogram of body weight, according to the MSD Veterinary Manual. The MSD Veterinary Manual gives 100 to 200 mg of theobromine per kilogram of body weight as the median lethal dose. Signs of poisoning appear at much smaller amounts, though.

The content is where it gets interesting. According to the MSD Veterinary Manual, milk chocolate contains around 2.3 mg of methylxanthines, mainly theobromine, per gram, semi-sweet and dark chocolate about 5.3 to 5.6 mg. Milk chocolate is not harmless either, especially for small dogs. In any case, call your vet instead of estimating yourself. To put it in perspective: for a dog weighing ten kilos, around 40 grams of dark chocolate, so less than half a bar, already reach the range from which first signs of poisoning are described.

The milk chocolate advent calendar is therefore a completely different problem from the bar of fine dark chocolate that a guest brings as a gift and leaves on the coffee table. If something has disappeared, it helps the vet on the phone enormously if you can name the cocoa content and the approximate amount. So do not throw away the packaging straight away.

Stollen, raisins, grapes

This is the underestimated danger, because it looks so harmless. Grapes and raisins can damage the kidneys, and raisins act in a more concentrated way. No safe amount is known: the Merck Veterinary Manual sees a possible risk from as little as more than one grape or raisin per 4.5 kilograms of body weight. So call the vet even for small amounts.

The unpleasant part is not the number, but what the literature says about it. Why some dogs react severely and others not at all is still unexplained to this day. That is why there is no reliable safe threshold. Christmas stollen, fruit bread, rum balls, panettone: all full of it. If your dog has got hold of a piece, this is not a case for wait and see, but for a phone call.

Anything with xylitol in it

Birch sugar sounds like the healthy option and is the opposite for dogs. Xylitol triggers a massive release of insulin, and blood sugar plummets. According to the MSD Veterinary Manual, low blood sugar has been observed from as little as about 0.1 gram per kilogram of body weight, and first signs can appear within thirty minutes. That is not much time.

The danger here is less the Christmas baking itself than what is lying around on the side: sugar-free biscuits, chewing gum in a guest's coat pocket, sweetened nut butter, some cough sweets. A glance at the ingredients list is enough.

The roast and what goes on around it

Onions and garlic are in almost every sauce and damage dogs' red blood cells. Poultry bones do not belong in the bowl: cooked ones splinter, and raw ones can also cause injuries or blockages. That is why the leftover goose carcass is not a treat but a risk. And alcohol acts many times faster in a dog than in a human, including as eggnog liqueur that someone, meaning well, has poured into a shallow dish and put on the floor.

So at Christmas there is no bone feeding, not even raw bones. Which chews suit your dog, ask your vet practice.

Lots of warnings about the tree, little differentiation

With the poinsettia you really can breathe a sigh of relief. The ASPCA classes the milky sap as irritating, but its toxicity as generally overestimated. A dog that nibbles on it is more likely to get an irritated mucous membrane from the sap than poisoning. With puppies, who still put everything in their mouths, a call to the vet is still sensible, simply because a young stomach can cope with less.

Two other things are more serious. First, tinsel, gift ribbons and angel hair. Threads of this kind are notorious in veterinary medicine as linear foreign bodies: they can get stuck in the intestine, and then they do not come out again on their own. Second, the water in the tree stand, to which many people add a freshness agent. For a dog it is simply a drinking bowl at floor level that nobody guards.

Candles, on the other hand, are rarely a fire problem and often a tail problem. A medium-sized dog carries his tail at roughly the height of a coffee table. Anyone who puts tealights there has reckoned without the wagging radius. By the way, the same goes for glasses of red wine.

For a dog, visitors are not a joy but work

Even a friendly, well socialised dog is working on an evening like this. Every new person wants to be greeted, sized up, observed. At some point that is no longer fun but exhaustion, in some dogs after only a short time. Exhausted dogs do things they otherwise do not do: they snap at children's hands, steal from the table, bark at the door.

Two points help more than anything else. The dog must not have to greet anybody. If he would rather stay lying down, he stays lying down, and nobody goes over to him. And children who come to visit need a clear instruction: no disturbing him in the crate, no sitting on his back, no holding him tight. That is not strictness towards the children, but the condition for the evening to end well for everyone.

Six things that take two minutes each

The real trick with Christmas with a dog is not a safety topic but a planning topic.

Set up the retreat earlier, not on the evening itself. A blanket or crate in a room that is guaranteed to stay empty on the 24th, and two weeks beforehand. A dog who is supposed to get used to a new spot only in the middle of the chaos will not get used to anything.

Look up the number of the emergency vet service. Over the holidays your practice is closed, and a number like that is hard to find when things have to happen fast. Look it up once, hang it on the fridge, done.

Put the big walk before the visitors, not after. A calm, proper walk in the afternoon helps many dogs to be more relaxed in the evening, and costs nothing. Anxious dogs need, instead of a lot of activity, above all a quiet place to retreat to.

One announcement to all guests, once, at the start. Nobody feeds from the table. If you state that as a rule beforehand, you do not have to step in eight times individually and seem impolite eight times.

Name one person who is responsible. When it gets too much, exactly this person takes the dog to the quiet room. Without an agreement, nobody feels responsible on an evening like this, because everyone assumes someone else is already watching.

Clear away wrapping paper and ribbons immediately. Not onto the pile next to the sofa, but into a closed bag. This is the simplest of the six points and the one that everyone reliably forgets.

The first Christmas with a puppy

If your dog has only been with you for a few months, one more point comes on top of everything above: a puppy cannot regulate himself in the chaos. He does not get calm when he is tired, he gets hectic. Between visiting phases he needs real sleep breaks in the quiet room, even if he does not seem tired at that moment. Better once too early than once too late.

What else is coming up in the first weeks, we have put together in the free puppy starter pack (Welpen-Startpaket). If you want to go deeper: Welpenerziehung & Junghundtraining (Puppy Training & Young Dog Training) deals, among other things, with exactly this question: how to teach a young dog calm instead of expecting it from him. All titles are on the books page.

And the present?

One last thought, because it is on the table on an evening like this anyway: most of what dog people get for Christmas is once again something for the dog. Another collar, another toy, another treat tin. Kindly meant, but often not what stays in the memory.

What stays is something that shows the dog. A picture on the wall stays in view, it hangs there and is seen every day, even in five years. We design it in the style of your choice from a photo you already have on your phone. You see the result as a preview before anything is printed, and if the ear position is not right or the expression does not sit, we change it. That costs nothing extra.

If you want to browse: in the Christmas gifts for animal lovers you will find the designs that suit December, and under dog portraits all styles and materials sit side by side. For a printed picture, it is best to count back two to three weeks from the photo to the box in your hallway, which leaves room for a change. The preview itself is usually there the same day.

And then, a week later, comes New Year's Eve. For many dogs that is the harder evening of the two. That too can be prepared for, and again not on the day itself.