Can Dogs Eat Rice? Plain, Cooked and Nothing Else

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Quick Facts

This is our own research, not veterinary advice. For nearly every food there are many sources, and they do not always agree with each other. We check each claim against the veterinary and poison control sources, and we say plainly where they disagree. Even so, if you are in any doubt, contact a vet and do your own research before you feed anything to an animal in your care.

Plain cooked rice is safe for dogs, and it is the one food vets actually recommend rather than merely tolerate, because it is bland, easy to digest and the starch helps firm up a loose stool. The whole answer is in the word plain: no salt, no stock with onion or garlic in it, and nothing else from the pan. White rice is the better choice for a bad stomach, and brown is harder to digest rather than better.

I have given dogs rice plenty of times, and always the same way: a little plain rice cooked in water, no salt, no additives. The most I have ever done is pour in a little fresh chicken stock cooked without salt, before it has been seasoned for people. Nothing more than that. The dogs have loved it every time.

That is the whole recipe, and it is worth saying plainly because most of what goes wrong with rice goes wrong in the seasoning rather than the rice.

If a dog has eaten something it should not have, what to do when a pet eats something dangerous covers the sequence, and the wider list of what is safe is on our page on what you can feed a pet.

If you are interested in getting into house sitting, our book Travel More for Less puts the whole process in one place: clear, step by step guidance from your first questions to your first confirmed sit, and the reviews that open the door to the next one.

Can Dogs Eat Rice? Yes, Plain and Cooked

Rice is not toxic to dogs, and it does not appear on any poison control avoid list. It is a common ingredient in commercial dog food, and it is the base of the bland diet that vets hand out for stomach trouble.

The reason it works as a remedy is straightforward. It is bland, so it does not upset a stomach that is already unhappy. The carbohydrates are easy to digest. There is some fibre, which helps with stool formation, and the starch is what binds a loose stool and makes it firmer.

Rice is 130 calories per 100g cooked, so it is not a low-calorie food. It is food rather than a treat, which matters for how much of it a dog should have.

One caveat worth knowing: white rice has a high glycemic index, so if a dog is diabetic or overweight, a vet should be the one deciding whether rice is a good idea.

The Whole Answer Is the Word Plain

Seasoned rice is where the trouble is. Salt is a genuine problem in quantity, and the seasonings that turn up in rice dishes are the ones on the do-not-feed list: onion, garlic and chives.

That rules out most of the rice a person would actually have in the house. Fried rice, takeaway rice, rice from a restaurant, anything from a packet with a flavour sachet. The rice in all of those is innocent and the rest of the bowl is not.

If I am making anything for a dog, I would never add salt or spices. Plain boiled rice, and at most a small dollop of butter. Otherwise it is straight rice. I do not want to upset a stomach, and onion and garlic are exactly the sort of thing that would, so keeping it simple is the best way to do it.

The one stock exception. Stock is fine if it is stock you made yourself and it has not been salted or seasoned. That is the version I have used. A stock cube or a shop-bought liquid stock is a different thing entirely, because salt and onion are usually the first two ingredients.

White or Brown

Both are safe. The difference is what you want them for.

Brown rice has more fibre, at 1.6g per 100g cooked against 0.4g for white, and a lower glycemic index. For an everyday diet that sounds like the better choice, and for a healthy dog it is fine.

For a bad stomach it is the wrong way round. Brown rice is harder to digest, which is the opposite of what you want when the gut is already struggling, so white rice is the one vets reach for. I eat white rice almost exclusively myself, so white is what a dog gets from our kitchen too.

The Iceland Dog, and What Softening the Food Did

The best illustration I have of rice doing something useful was a dog in Iceland. One day it was simply slow. Lethargic, and not biting down properly on its food, which made me think it had hurt a tooth or its mouth.

So I watched it for a day or two rather than panicking, and I changed one thing: I made the food softer. Water into the bowl, a little chicken stock that had not been seasoned, and some rice, partly to soften everything up and partly just to make it a different meal. Then I kept watching.

It worked. The dog picked up over the next couple of days and was back to normal quickly. My honest reading is that it had bitten down on something that hurt, or had a small infection that settled on its own. I am not claiming the rice cured anything. What I am confident about is that a dog with a sore mouth will eat soft food when it will not eat hard food, and rice is an easy way to get there.

It also loved it. That part matters more than it sounds, because a dog that is off its food needs a reason to eat, and a bowl of warm rice with a bit of stock is a very good reason.

The Arsenic Question

This is worth addressing properly, because a reader may well have seen it. Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment and accumulates in the rice plant more than in most crops, which is why rice consumption is a recognised risk factor for chronic arsenic exposure in people.

It has been studied in dogs. A pilot study at the University of Helsinki compared Staffordshire bull terriers eating rice-based dry dog foods, meaning rice was the first or second ingredient, against dogs whose diet contained no rice at all. Every dog had been on its diet for at least a year. The rice-fed dogs had higher arsenic levels in their hair.

The detail that matters is what the study actually says about it. The authors describe the difference as statistically significant but quite small, and say that from a toxicity viewpoint it might not be significant at all. Research on arsenic toxicity in dogs is limited and has mostly looked at kidney damage from higher levels than these.

And the context is rice as the diet, not rice as an occasional bowl. The dogs in that study were eating rice-based food every day for a year or more. A spoonful of plain rice when a dog has a bad stomach is a different scale of thing entirely.

One detail from the study I find interesting: the dogs with the lowest arsenic levels were all eating raw food diets.

My own position, and it is opinion rather than science: I do not worry about this, for the same reason I do not worry about salmonella in eggs. The food supply is policed far more tightly than it used to be, and boiling rice reduces what is there further. I give rice occasionally as part of a normal diet rather than as the diet, and I am comfortable with that. If you would rather not feed it at all, that is a perfectly reasonable decision and nobody should talk you out of it.

How Much Rice

As a treat alongside normal food, rice sits under the usual ceiling: treats should stay under about 10% of a dog's daily calorie intake, which is the standard most vets and the literature give.

The published portions are by dog size, and they are given two or three times a week rather than daily.

Those calorie figures are our arithmetic on the published energy value of 130 kcal per 100g cooked. The portion sizes themselves are the ones the sources publish.

If it is a bland diet rather than a treat, the arithmetic changes. A bland diet replaces normal food for a few days, so it is a meal and not a snack, and the published ratio is two parts rice to one part protein. The protein is usually boiled chicken or turkey, boneless and skinless, with nothing added. That is a short-term diet, not a new way of eating.

On a Sit: When the Owner Says Bland Diet

Rice turns up on a sit in one of two ways. There is a bag of it in the cupboard like any other kitchen, or the owner has left instructions for a bland diet because a dog has a sensitive stomach.

If there are instructions, follow them exactly. Somebody has already worked out the ratio and the portion for that specific dog, and it took them longer than it will take you.

If there are no instructions and a dog has a mild upset stomach, rice is a reasonable thing to offer, but the decision is not really yours. I would message the owner rather than start cooking, because a dog that is off its food can be the first sign of something that needs a vet, and the owner knows that dog better than I do.

The habit that covers this is asking before you improvise, and the pre-sit question list is where that starts.

Where This Research Comes From

The sources behind this page:

Conclusion

Rice is safe, useful and forgiving, and it is one of the few foods where the advice is unanimous: plain, cooked, and nothing else. White for a bad stomach, brown for an everyday diet, and the seasoning stays in your own bowl.

I have used it to get a dog eating when it would not touch anything harder, and I have never had a reason to regret it.

Caro and I have completed 20 house sits across 12 countries, driven 19,000km across Europe in our 1998 VW T4, and saved over $26,500 in accommodation costs over three years of house sitting.

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Frequently Asked Questions

• Can dogs eat rice?

  Yes, plain and cooked. It is not toxic, it is a common ingredient in dog food, and it is the base of the bland diet vets recommend for stomach trouble.

• Can dogs eat brown rice?

  Yes, and it is safe. It has more fibre and a lower glycemic index than white, but it is also harder to digest, so white rice is the better choice when a dog has diarrhoea.

• What rice is best for a dog with an upset stomach?

  Plain white rice, cooked in water with nothing added. White is easier to digest than brown, and the starch helps bind a loose stool and make it firmer.

• Can dogs eat fried rice or takeaway rice?

  No. The rice is fine, but fried and takeaway rice brings salt, onion and garlic, which are the things that actually cause harm. Plain boiled rice only.

• How much rice can a dog have?

  As a treat, 1 to 2 tablespoons for a small dog up to 2/3 cup for a giant, two or three times a week. As a bland diet it replaces normal food for a few days at two parts rice to one part protein.

• Is there arsenic in rice, and should I worry?

  Arsenic does accumulate in rice, and a University of Helsinki study found higher hair arsenic in dogs eating rice-based dry food for a year or more. The authors described the difference as small and possibly not toxicologically significant, and it is about rice as the diet rather than occasional rice. My own view is that it is not worth worrying about.

• Can dogs eat raw rice?

  There is no reason to. Cooked rice is the useful version, and raw grains are hard enough that they offer a dog nothing.

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