Can Dogs Eat Frozen Strawberries?

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Photo by Bernal Saborio on Flickr

Calling all Pimms fans and Wimbledon fans!

This article answers the question “can dogs eat frozen strawberries?”

And if you are still puzzled over the Pimms and Wimbledon links, let me explain.

Mixing cucumber and strawberries with ice and adding it to a glass is a popular way of serving Pimms.

And the traditional food eaten at Wimbledon is strawberries and cream?

Not impressed with my slightly corny attempt at an introduction?

Well, here’s hoping that the bulk of the article pleases you much more. 

So back to frozen strawberries, how dog friendly are they?

Can dogs eat frozen strawberries?

It is time to breathe a sigh of relief because it is perfectly safe for your dog to eat frozen strawberries.

Overall using frozen strawberries as an occasional treat for your dog offers up many more benefits than risks.

So let’s dig a little bit deeper into some of these.

Firstly, the benefits.

The largest benefit that your dog will gain from eating strawberries will be from the nutrition it provides.

And I will look at this in much more detail in the next section.

Secondly, is the different texture that it will provide for your dog.

Foods that have different textures are important to dogs, just nowhere near as important as how a food smells. 

This dog food company believes that any food has nine important qualities that must appeal to dogs. 

And in terms of importance, texture appears somewhere in the middle. 

OK, so earlier I mentioned risks. 

What risk is there for a dog eating frozen strawberries?

It is true that the risk to most dogs is very small but for a dog who eats very quickly and doesn’t chew everything, a frozen strawberry could be a choking hazard.

There is a tiny chance that as the strawberry moves through the mouth and down the throat at lightning speed, it could get stuck somewhere and cause your dog to cough and splutter. 

But the good news is that it shouldn’t get stuck for very long.

Your dog will dislodge it by coughing or retching or if all else fails try the Heimlich maneuver on them!

What types of strawberries should dogs not eat?

Off the top of my head, strawberries are available in three different forms.

  1. Fresh strawberries in punnets
  2. Frozen strawberries in pre packed bags that are “blender ready”
  3. Canned strawberries in syrup

Of course, I’m not including the many types of strawberry yoghurts or ice cream that are available because I hope that you wouldn’t be thinking of feeding those to your dog!

Fresh strawberries and frozen strawberries are fine to give to freeze and give to your dog but canned strawberries aren’t because of all of that sweet syrup that they are sitting in. 

And those bags of frozen strawberries that you can buy are just so easy to use.

And, how ever clever your dog is, I’m not sure that they will be able to tell the difference between a fresh strawberry that has been taken from a punnet and frozen by you and a frozen strawberry that comes from a bag!

What is the nutritional value of frozen strawberries?

Strawberries are mostly water- just over 90% of a strawberry is water. 

Nearly 8% of strawberries are made of carbohydrates- ¼ of this is fiber and ¾ is sugar.

The rest of a strawberry contains minute levels of fat and protein.

When it comes to vitamins and minerals, strawberries are an excellent source of vitamin C, manganese and folate.   

Why would you feed a dog frozen strawberries?

Dogs might be fed frozen strawberries for a whole variety of reasons. 

The biggest reason that dogs will be fed strawberries is that their owner loves to eat strawberries and so they are just checking that it is OK to share the occasional one with Fido. 

Although I joked in the introduction about the link between frozen strawberries and Pimms, probably the largest market for frozen strawberries are health conscious people who make lots of smoothies.

So we are probably looking at the gym members or runners and not Pimms drinkers

How many frozen strawberries should I give my dog?

Although it would be almost impossible for your dog to overdose on strawberries, it would be sensible to only feed them to your dog every now and again.

If your dog did accidentally get access to a bagful of frozen strawberries then your worst case scenario is that your dog will have a bad case of diarrhea for a few days as their body rids itself of all of those strawberries.

But if you are thinking of feeding your dogs frozen strawberries on a regular basis then you might want to keep in mind the 10% rule.

This is a rough guide that states that any treats that you feed your dog should not exceed more than 10% of the total amount of calories that your dog consumes daily. 

So my Golden Retrievers have about 450g of ground meat per day, which as a rough estimate is about 640 calories.

A 200g serving of frozen strawberries has just over 60 calories

And there are about 10- 12 strawberries in a 200g serving, which is a lot of strawberries for your dog to consume.

In fact, many people would say that ten strawberries is way too many!

What is the best frozen fruit to feed my dog?

Although it would be really easy and comforting to know that there is one particular frozen fruit which stands head and shoulders above all the others and can be crowned “Best Frozen Fruit For Your Dog 2021”, I don’t think that fruit exists.

If you are a fruit fan and you would like to add them to your dog’s diet then I think that as well as feeding them any fruit in moderation, you should feed them a variety of fruits.

This is important because, although all fruits are around 90% water, the blend of vitamins and minerals each frozen fruit has will be slightly different. 

Think about it in terms of a few months and then every week feed them a different fruit. 

This will give them a chance to become familiar with each fruit but because they are only eating it for a week, they will experience a wide range of different fruits. 

Another key consideration is to be aware of the fruits that your dog should never eat because they are toxic.

And I will look at these in the next section. 

Are there any frozen berries or fruits that are dangerous to dogs?

Fortunately this list isn’t very long.

But what it lacks in length it more than makes up for in toxicity as there are some fruits which are deadly for your dog.

[1] Grapes and raisins

Let me start off with grapes. It was only when I was researching for an article about grape jelly that I realised how deadly grapes were for dogs.  

Grapes and raisins are so deadly to dogs but experts don’t know exactly how many grapes it would take to kill a dog. 

They are deadly enough to recommend that if you see your dog eat even one grape then you should phone your vet very quickly. 

[2] Cherries

Frozen cherries are a staple in some people’s freezers but they are our second fruit which is highly toxic to dogs. 

You see their pits have very dangerous levels of cyanide as do their stems.  

Eating the pit and the stem of one cherry in all likelihood does not poison your dog but if they gobble up more than a couple of cherries they might be in for a rough ride.

The flesh of a cherry will not harm a dog, but who is dedicated enough to cut the flesh away from the pit?

[3] Raspberries

This one is a real surprise to me.

Not so much because I was shocked that raspberries are poisonous but it is their specific toxin that blew me away.

The good news is that your dog would need to eat a lot of raspberries in order to put themselves in any real danger- and by that I mean more than a cupful.

But what I didn’t know until now was that raspberries contain xylitol, which I thought was a substance that was created in a lab.

Xylitol is very toxic to dogs but it is only present in raspberries in very small amounts.

But when xylitol is used as a sweetener in popular foods such as peanut butter, it can be a real dog- killer

James Grayston

My name is James and I love dogs. have owned four Golden Retrievers in the past 15 years. Currently I own two "Goldies"- a five year old and a seven month old. The photo shows me with our youngest when she was about 7 weeks old!