Can Dogs Eat Gingerbread? Cookies, Icing, Houses and Spices

People ask us can dogs eat gingerbread every December, and our answer is to keep it on your plate. A crumb off the floor is not an emergency, but the sugar, the spices and the icing on top are all reasons not to hand a piece over on purpose.

This page covers what goes into a gingerbread cookie, what gets piped or stuck on top, and what a gingerbread house adds. After that comes what to do if your dog already got into some, and what to hand over at the table instead. We freeze-dry single ingredient treats in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and one of them gets a short section near the end.

What is in gingerbread

Gingerbread is a sweet, spiced dough. Flour, brown sugar and molasses make up most of it, with butter to carry it and sometimes an egg to hold it together. Ginger and cinnamon give it the flavor, and many recipes add cloves and nutmeg on top of those. Soft gingerbread cake and crisp gingerbread cookies use the same list in different amounts.

Nothing on that list was chosen with a dog in mind. It is sugar and butter with a lot of spice, which makes it a people cookie. Nutmeg is a spice we would not feed a dog, and we leave it at that. Plenty of recipes use it, and the box mix and the bakery cookie do not always say how much.

Can dogs eat gingerbread cookies?

Keep it on your plate. If a crumb of plain cookie hits the floor and gets eaten, that is a small plain piece and nothing more needs to happen. What we skip is passing one down on purpose. A cookie is sugar, butter and spice, and there are treats made for dogs that do the job without any of it.

The gingerbread man needs a second look. Raisin eyes and currant buttons are a skip, and so are the candy buttons down his front. The cookie underneath may be plain, but the decorations are where most of the trouble sits.

Icing, candy and chocolate chips

Royal icing is powdered sugar beaten with egg white or meringue powder. It dries hard and white and is nearly all sugar. Then come the decorations: gumdrops, peppermints, sprinkles and chocolate chips. Chocolate has its own page in our guides, can dogs eat chocolate, and the short answer for chips on a cookie is skip them.

The one to read labels for is anything sugar free. Some sugar free icings and candies use xylitol. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control page "People Foods to Avoid Feeding Your Pets" writes: "Xylitol can cause low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and potentially liver damage." Sugar free stays away from the dog.

The gingerbread house

A house is easy to underestimate because it looks like decoration. A kit is baked walls and a roof, a bag of icing for glue, and a pile of candy for the trim. Many kits also include plastic figures or small accessories, and the base is usually cardboard wrapped in foil. Some builders add hot glue or craft glue to hold up a heavy roof. None of that is food, even when it sits next to the part that is.

Houses also stay out for weeks, which is a long time to leave a pile of sugar and candy in a room with a dog. Put it on a high shelf or in a room with the door shut. A counter is lower than it looks from where you stand, and a coffee table is lower still.

If your dog gets into some

Pick up what is left and work out what was in it, including the candy, the icing and any plastic. A crumb of plain cookie or a lick of icing is not an emergency. A whole cookie with chocolate chips is a bigger question, and so is anything iced with a sugar free product or a chewed piece of a house. A whole house is a call to your veterinarian. Keep the recipe or the kit box handy for that call, because the ingredient list is the useful part.

What to hand your dog while people eat

The easiest fix is to give the dog something of its own while the cookies are being decorated. At the shows we work, the dog gets a piece while the people talk, and a decorating table is the same setup. For the rest of the holiday table, our guide to Christmas foods dogs can eat goes through it dish by dish.

Our pick for this is Freeze-Dried Beef Liver. The only ingredient is beef liver, freeze-dried raw in small batches in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and nothing else goes in the bag. It comes in 1.5 ounce, 3 ounce and 6 ounce bags. The pieces are medium sized and break easily, so one piece turns into several small ones. On our own scorecard it gets 5 of 5 for training value and 3 of 5 for crunch. It is lightweight and non-greasy, and we list it for adult dogs and puppies of all sizes.

Break it down to suit the dog: a few small bits for a small dog and a few larger pieces for a big one. As with any new food, start with one small piece and wait a day before giving more. The label lists 81.6 kcal ME per ounce and says to feed it as a treat, reward or topper, for intermittent or supplemental feeding only. It also asks you to supervise while feeding and to keep fresh drinking water available. It is not a complete and balanced diet. You can find it and the rest of our holiday treats on our Christmas page.

Storing the treats and the cookies

Baked gingerbread cookies keep in a tin with a lid, and the tin belongs in a cupboard rather than on the counter edge. A finished house can sit for weeks, so plan where it lives before you build it.

Freeze-dried liver is simpler. The bag is marked with a best by date one year from the production date. Once it is open, reseal the bag, keep it cool and dry, and use it within 30 days. A bag left open on a kitchen counter next to a pot of boiling water will not stay crisp, so keep it away from steam.

Gingerbread questions

Is a plain gingerbread cookie okay for a dog?

A crumb that landed on the floor is nothing to act on. We would not hand one over on purpose, because it is sugar, butter and spice, and there are dog treats that skip all of that.

What about a cookie with icing?

Skip it. Icing is nearly all sugar, and any icing or candy marked sugar free should stay away from the dog until you have read the label for xylitol.

Is the nutmeg in gingerbread a problem?

Nutmeg is a spice we would not feed a dog, and we do not say more than that. If a recipe lists it, that is one more reason to keep the cookie on your plate.

What if my dog ate part of a gingerbread house?

Take away what is left and note what was in it, including candy and any plastic. A crumb is not an emergency, and a larger piece or anything with chocolate chips or sugar free icing is worth a phone call. The section above on getting into some has the steps.

Can dogs have raw gingerbread dough?

Skip it. Raw dough is flour, sugar, butter and spice, and some recipes include a raw egg. There is no reason to share it, and the baked version is the same list, only cooked.

Can puppies have gingerbread?

Skip it for puppies as you would for adult dogs. If you want a puppy at the table with something to chew on, one small piece of freeze-dried beef liver is how we would handle it, started slowly like any new food.