Can I give my dog vitamins or nutritional supplements?
Yes. No. Maybe. Well…

The answers to this question are as varied as the locations your dog has hidden his bone in your flower beds. Many food companies now make supplemental sauces or gravies, others offer daily multivitamins, and some have odorless and tasteless drops that can be added to water. Before using any supplement, talk to your vet. Dogs’ bodies use nutrients in a way similar to the human body in that the digestion of certain vitamins and minerals can inhibit others. With too much of one vitamin, other vitamins’ levels can drop drastically and result in life-threatening deficiencies. Your vet can offer recommendations for good brands of multivitamins; many vets’ offices now sell multivitamins.

You should never, under any circumstance, give your dog additional doses of one specific vitamin unless it has been prescribed by your veterinarian. While the use of multivitamins is risky, the consumption of a high dose of a specific vitamin can cause extreme illness for your pup.

My dog just ate the chocolate bunny out of my Easter basket. Is that bad for him?
In most cases, yes. While the biggest risk for a human eating a chocolate bunny is an extra layer of padding on the hips, a chemical in chocolate can be poisonous to dogs.

The chemical, theobromine, exists in higher levels in darker chocolate. If Peter Cottontail was made with white chocolate, you probably don’t have to worry much and should just keep a close eye on your dog for the next few hours to make sure he doesn’t get sick. If the bunny was made from dark chocolate, over 4 ounces, and your pup weighs less than ten pounds, it would be a good idea to get to the vet as soon as possible to head off any adverse reactions.

Before you accost your local pet store manager for stocking chocolate treats, check the label. Most chocolate dog treats are actually carob, which is harmless, or contain levels of theobromine so low that even a miniature pooch could handle them.

Oh, someone stop him! That’s just disgusting! No, please, seriously, why is my dog eating his own/his sibling’s/the cat’s feces and how do I make him just stop?!
This is a very simple problem to explain and can be somewhat easy to prevent. First, chill out. Remember that dogs didn’t magically appear on the earth fully domesticated and ready to do our bidding. They’ve evolved from thousands of different breeds of wild dogs, many of whom were scavengers. Consuming the fecal matter of little woodland creatures was an excellent way to consume extra vitamins, so the behavior is sometimes hard-wired into dogs.

My cat, Mr. Meowington, shares his food with my dog. That’s okay, right?
Most of the time, yes. And if you’ve been letting your dog mooch off of Mr. Meowington for any length of time and try to take away the cat food, you may end up with an extremely unhappy pup, if to you “unhappy” means “ragingly angry and vocal.” Cat food is far higher in protein than dog food, which makes it taste richer and provides a lot of extra energy. However, if your vet has prescribed a low-protein diet for your dog or he’s already bouncing off the walls with energy, Mr. Meowington should eat separately from his canine pal.