Can Dogs Eat Spinach? Yes, Steamed, in Small Amounts

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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.

Spinach is not toxic to dogs and small amounts are fine, but the two warnings attached to it need putting in proportion. Oxalic acid can interfere with calcium absorption and, at extremes, with the kidneys, and a healthy dog handles small amounts of it without difficulty. The isothiocyanates are the same family of compounds found in broccoli and kale, and they cause stomach upset in large amounts rather than small ones. So the answer is steamed, in a small amount, and there is no strong reason to bother.

I have never given a dog spinach, and I would not. I eat it regularly myself, which is exactly why the question is interesting: it is a food I like and feel good about, and that feeling has nothing to do with whether it suits an animal.

What has surprised me most while writing these pages is how much I have learned that I thought I already knew. That is the reason for doing it. A house sitter who is confident about the wrong things is more dangerous than one who checks.

The rest of what is safe is on the safe food list, and the broccoli page covers the same family of compounds from a different vegetable.

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 Spinach? Yes, Steamed

Spinach is not toxic to dogs. It brings vitamins A, B, C and K, iron, beta-carotene, antioxidants and roughage, and by the numbers it is the most substantial green vegetable on this site: about 23 calories, 2.2g of fibre and 2.9g of protein per 100g, which is more fibre and far more protein than celery or courgette.

None of that is a reason to feed it, because a complete dog food already covers the basics. Spinach is a top-up, not a supplement, and the sources are clear that regular supplementation is not necessary.

The cooking method matters more than people expect. Raw leaves are harder to digest. Boiled spinach loses most of its nutrients into the water. Steaming is the answer, because it softens the leaves without throwing the goodness away.

Wash it thoroughly first, because leafy greens are where pesticide residue and bacteria like E. coli tend to sit, and prepare it entirely plain: no butter, no oil, no salt, no garlic and no onion.

The Oxalate Fear, and Why It Is Overstated

This is the warning that gets repeated everywhere, so it is worth getting the scale right.

Spinach contains oxalic acid, and oxalic acid can block the body from absorbing calcium properly. In extreme cases that leads to kidney damage, which is a real thing and not a myth.

But the same guidance says that dogs with healthy kidneys process small amounts of soluble oxalates easily, and that a dog would have to eat an extreme amount of spinach for the oxalic acid to become a concern. That is a much narrower warning than "spinach damages kidneys".

The second warning is about isothiocyanates, a natural compound also present in broccoli and kale. These cause severe stomach upset, again in large amounts. Small amounts do not.

So the whole thing comes down to dose, and it is the same pattern as every other vegetable here. The vegetable is not the problem. A bowl of it is.

There is one group where the answer changes: a dog with existing kidney problems should not be given spinach without a vet saying so. For a healthy dog, this is a small-amount food and nothing more.

If you are worried about oxalates specifically, boiling and discarding the water does remove some of them, at the cost of the nutrients. Steaming and keeping the portion small is the simpler compromise.

Canned Spinach and Spinach Dip

The vegetable is safe and both of the common ways of serving it are not.

Canned spinach is heavily salted for preservation, and that salt can worsen heart disease, raise blood pressure and cause vomiting and diarrhoea. This is not a small point: salt is one of the more quietly harmful things in a dog's diet because it never looks like a treat.

Spinach dip is worse. It brings dairy, which some dogs cannot tolerate, and enough fat to put pancreatitis on the table for a dog that is prone to it. A bowl of dip left out at a party is exactly the sort of thing a dog finds.

Both failures are the same failure: it is not the spinach, it is what the spinach arrived in. That is the one rule that covers nearly every food on this site.

The dairy side of it is covered properly on the cheese page, and the courgette page makes the same point about the pan.

Eight Years Without Meat

I was vegan for eight years, and a strict one. I went out of my way to find vegan food and I was committed to it, and I would not describe myself as having been in bad health.

What I noticed was what happened when I started eating meat again. My body changed for the better. My muscles felt better, my fitness improved, and the difference was clear enough that I would not go back.

That is one person and it is not evidence about anybody else. What I take from it is not that meat is superior for everyone, because every person is different and their diet should be different. I take from it that vegetables have a role and meat has a role, and a diet built around one of them at the expense of the other is not obviously better than a basic mixed one.

The same logic applies to animals, with an important difference: I chose my diet and a dog does not choose its own. So my job is not to improve on what the owner has worked out. It is to feed what the animal is used to.

And the thing that has changed most recently is not meat or vegetables. It is processed food, which is new on the timescale we are talking about, and I think it is responsible for a lot of illness that people do not connect to it.

Being Able to Eat Something Is Not the Same as It Suiting You

Here is the example I keep coming back to, and it is about me rather than a dog.

I have eaten gluten all my life. Recently, as I cut back on it, I noticed things I had not connected to food at all: my skin goes very dry, my joints are inflamed and they are not as loose as they should be.

The food did not change. I did, or the accumulated total did. Which means "I can eat it" and "it is good for me" are two different sentences, and only one of them is a reason to keep eating it.

Over time, a thing that causes no visible problem can quietly get worse. That is the argument for treats being treats: occasional, small, and not part of the staple diet. A dog that gets a bit of everything every day is running an experiment nobody is recording.

The same idea is on the celery page, where the point is that repetition is how a tolerance turns into a problem.

How Much Spinach

Treats of every kind should stay under about 10% of a dog's daily calorie intake, which is the standard most vets and the literature give. Spinach is so light that the portion is measured in teaspoons, and the fibre is the practical limit.

The published portions are for steamed, chopped leaves.

Those calorie figures are our arithmetic on the published energy value of 23 kcal per 100g, with a teaspoon of cooked spinach assumed to be about 4g. The portions are the ones the sources publish.

If a dog needs a green vegetable and a bit of bulk, green beans are the easier answer, and carrots are the one I would actually hand over.

On a Sit: If You Are Unsure, Do Not

I have never fed spinach to a dog, and after looking into it I would not start. Not because it is dangerous, but because there is nothing it does that a carrot does not do better and with less thought.

If a leaf falls on the floor and a dog gets to it before I do, I am not going to panic. A tiny amount of spinach is not an emergency, and treating it as one would be its own kind of error. I would pick it up where I could, and not make a habit of it.

The conclusion I have actually reached from all of this research is simpler than any individual food: if I am unsure about something, I do not give it. It is not my animal, I am not there to test my knowledge on it, and the downside lands on a dog that did not agree to the experiment.

If a dog is going to be spoiled, a carrot, a bit of cucumber or a little natural peanut butter will get a better reaction than a smoothie. There is no reason to make an animal a smoothie.

Stick to the food the animal should be eating and treat everything else as a treat. Not every day, not in quantity, and not at all when the owner has not asked for it.

The habit that makes it easy is asking before you improvise, and the pre-sit question list is where that starts. A tub of dip left out is the sort of near miss that this page deals with, and the peanut butter page is the best example of a treat done properly.

Where This Research Comes From

The sources behind this page:

Conclusion

Spinach is safe for a healthy dog in small steamed amounts, and the kidney warning is about extremes rather than about a leaf on the floor. Canned spinach and spinach dip are the versions to refuse, for reasons that have nothing to do with spinach.

It is also unnecessary. If you want to give a dog a vegetable, a carrot or a green bean does the same job with less to think about, and that is the version I would actually hand over.

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 spinach?

  Yes, steamed and in small amounts. It is about 23 calories, 2.2g of fibre and 2.9g of protein per 100g, with vitamins A, B, C and K and iron.

• Is spinach bad for a dog's kidneys?

  Not in small amounts. Oxalic acid can interfere with calcium absorption and cause kidney damage at extremes, but the guidance is that healthy dogs process small amounts easily and it would take an extreme amount to matter.

• Can dogs eat raw spinach?

  Yes, but it is harder to digest than cooked. Steaming is the best method, because boiling leaches most of the nutrients into the water.

• Can dogs eat canned spinach?

  No. It is heavily salted for preservation, and that salt can worsen heart disease, raise blood pressure and cause vomiting and diarrhoea.

• Can dogs eat spinach dip?

  No. It contains dairy, which some dogs cannot tolerate, and enough fat to risk pancreatitis. The spinach is not the problem in the dip.

• Can puppies eat spinach?

  In very small steamed amounts, but there is no reason to. Puppies have stricter nutritional needs and a balanced puppy food already covers them.

• How much spinach can a dog have?

  A quarter teaspoon for a dog under 9kg up to a tablespoon for a giant, steamed and chopped, and inside the 10% of daily calories that treats are allowed.

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