Can Dogs Eat Melon?

You are enjoying a bowl of juicy melons, and you look down to find your pup pleading for a slice of melon with those irresistibly cute dog eyes. Suddenly, you find yourself fighting an internal war between giving in and handing your pup some melons against your better judgment or playing it safe and ignoring its pleas. 

You wonder if anything could go wrong if you feed your pup this delicious fruit. After all, melons are fruits, and all fruits that are safe for you to eat are also safe for your dog’s consumption, right? Wrong. Because fruits are considered a healthy snack, it is easy to misjudge what fruits your canine friend can and cannot eat.

However, don’t be deceived. Some fruits, like grapes and raisins can be toxic to dogs, so it is essential to confirm what fruits are healthy before feeding them to your pet. So, can your dog eat melons?

Can Dogs Eat Melons?

As a dog owner, you are often tempted to share your food with your pet. After all, what better way to show your doggo you care about it than sharing your delicious meals with them? However, because a dog’s nutritional needs and digestive system are quite different from ours, dog parents constantly find themselves scraping vomits off carpets or cleaning up diarrhea when they feed their dog something they were never supposed to.

Dog parents constantly worry about what their pets can eat, asking questions like ‘Can a dog eat avocados?’ and ‘Can dogs eat Oranges?’. Knowing what your dog can and cannot eat can get overwhelming, making it challenging to keep track of the long list of foods to steer clear of.

Although there is a long list of possible food-related concerns, melons are one of the most common fruits that parents often debate. With their juicy goodness and refreshingly delicious taste, melons look harmless enough for dogs to consume. However, looks can be deceiving, and the most succulent fruits may put your pet at risk.

If you are one of the many dog parents that ask yourself if melons are safe for your dog to eat, the short answer is yes. You can breathe a sigh of relief knowing your dog can safely enjoy melon snacks and treats with you. However, there is a catch.

Are Melons Safe For Dogs?

While melons are not necessarily toxic to dogs, they pose serious health hazards to your dog when not fed to them appropriately. Knowing what these health hazards are will significantly help make sure your dogs remain safe and healthy while enjoying these refreshing fruits.

Some common health hazards that feeding your dogs melons can cause include:

Suffocation Risk and Gastrointestinal Problems

Before you freak out, it is essential to know that melons are relatively safe fruits. However, just as you won’t enjoy eating melon rinds, your dogs won’t too. But this is less about the taste of the rind and more about the effect of eating melon rinds. Melon rind is the tough outer layer of the melon.

On melons like watermelon, the rind is a tough and fibrous green outer layer with a pale white interior. The rind, if you are brave enough to taste it, is usually very bland and hard compared to the juicier lemon flesh. Although many people claim melon rinds are packed with health benefits for humans, a dog’s digestive system is not built to handle melon rinds.

Firstly, melon rinds are a choking hazard, thanks to their fibrous hardness. Rinds can lodge in your poor pup’s airways when large enough, blocking off the air and causing suffocation.  Secondly, although you might find it relatively easy to chew melon rinds, dogs cannot digest this melon part. 

When your dog consumes melon rinds in large quantities, pieces of rinds can lodge in their gastrointestinal tracts, where they will remain undigested. This can cause your dog so much pain that it will require a surgical solution to get the stuck rinds out of its digestive tract. 

Lastly, melon rinds- even when consumed in small quantities- and seeds can lead to Gastrointestinal upset. This can cause your dog to get sick, leading to stomach pains, diarrhea, and vomiting. 

Increased Blood Sugar

As you can probably guess from their sweet tastes, Melons are incredibly high in sugar. Their naturally high sugar content makes them dangerous to dogs when consumed in large quantities. Serving your pup melon once in a while as a treat is a great idea. However, indulging them in this sweet fruit more often than necessary will be a careless act of setting them up for danger.

The high sugar content in melon can significantly increase your dog’s sugar level when consumed continuously. A too-high blood sugar level can cause your dog to become hyperglycemic, putting them at increased risk of having diabetes mellitus. The high sugar content can also increase your pup’s chances of gaining unhealthy weight.

If your pooch is lucky enough not to develop any of these health problems due to increased sugar content, they still remain at risk of developing an upset gastrointestinal system. This will cause them to experience vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach pain.

Constipation

Melons are packed with lots of highly beneficial nutrients, including fiber. As with humans, fiber aids a healthy digestive system in dogs. It helps your dog maintain a healthy weight, suds proper food digestion, and reduces the risk of colon cancer. It should be a great thing that melons provide lots of fibers, but as with humans, too much everything is terrible for your dog’s system.

Continuous consumption of melon will cause excessive fiber in your pooch’s body, setting them up for constipation. Constipation in dogs usually goes unnoticed by many pet parents until it’s too late and has graduated to obstipation. This can cause lethargy, unproductive straining, lack of appetite and vomiting.

In worse cases, constipation can cause health-threatening conditions. The adverse effects of feeding your dog melon wrongly can be scary and discouraging. After all, it is better to be safe than never and steering clear of melons seems like a better option for putting your dog at risk of many health issues.

However, we will continue to reiterate how beneficial melons are to your pups. In reality, the danger of a melon doesn’t lay in the fruit itself but in your method of feeding the fruit to your dog. To help your pouch enjoy the many nutritional benefits melons offer, you must feed them properly.

How To Feed Your Dog Melon Properly

When fed in moderation, melons are incredibly beneficial to your canine friend. Not only do they make a refreshing summer snack that can help ward off the heat, but they also help your pet become healthier and stronger. Learning to feed your pet melon in moderation will help you avoid putting its health at risk.

However, when the dreadful question of how much you should feed your dog rears its head, many dog parents have no idea what the correct serving method and portion should be. Since there is no one-size-fits-all melon serving rule for dogs, it is your duty as a dog parent to ensure that you feed your dog melons as occasionally as possible.

Melons should not be made into full meals or substituted for a food ration. They should be treated as snacks and treats or earned as a reward for a good deed your pup does. Melons are especially useful on hot days since they are moisture infused and are refreshing for dogs.

When offering your dog melons, remember to get rid of the rind and seeds. This cautious step will ensure that you avoid any health hazards, especially since dogs don’t know better and will eat melon rods and seeds if they find them lying around. Only serve the fleshy parts of the lemon. Some ways you can serve melons to your dog include:

• Dicing it into small bites for small dogs.
• Cutting it into sizeable chunks.
• Serving it as frozen chunks to cool your pup on a hot day.
• Blending it into a puree, pouring and freezing it in ice trays, and serving the frozen watermelon purée cubes.
• Making dog-friendly watermelon ice cream. To do this, you will need to use other safe ingredients like cucumbers, cranberries, xylitol-free peanut butter, and yogurt. Feel free to experiment- with safe ingredients!- and find an ice cream recipe that your doggo likes.
• Dehydrate the watermelon and serve.

What Happens When Your Dog Overeats Melon?

Melons are great for dogs. However, as we all know, too much of everything is bad. When your dog overeats melons, the fruit can quickly become toxic to its health and cause health problems. Too much watermelon in your dog’s dirt can cause stomach upset, diarrhea, and constipation. These problems can range from mild to severe, and in most cases, your dog might need a trip to the vet.

Benefits of Melons

While the effects of your pup overeating melons can be pretty discouraging, it is essential to know that the benefits outweigh the cons. Melons may be dangerous without caution, but by adhering to the serving rules, you help your dog enjoy the incredible benefits melons offer.

Some of these nutritional benefits include:

• Dietay fiber: Fiber aids bowel regularity and helps your pup produce firm stools. It also helps dogs to produce a healthy intestinal pH to reduce the growth of unhealthy bacteria, thereby contributing to total gut health. Melons in small quantities provide dogs with the necessary dietary fiber content that regulates peristalsis, controls diarrhea, and reduces constipation. If your dog suffers from diabetes, controlled feeding of melons will help it regulate blood glucose levels and reduce the impact of blood sugar fluctuation. Essentially, the fiber in melons play a crucial role in keeping your dog healthy.
• Moisture: Melons are high in water content. The body needs water to perform its regular activities. It aids in the digestion of food, absorption of nutrients, and secretion of enzymes. The moisture in melons will also keep your dog hydrated and regulate its temperature.
• Antioxidants: Antioxidants protect the cells against free radicals that may result in heart disease, cancer and other diseases. It also reduces system-wide inflammation, neutralizes the effects of chronic inflammation, and helps in the restoration of active muscles. Antioxidants protect your dog’s health, and melons are packed full of them.
• Vitamin A: This essential fat-soluble vitamin supports healthy vision, bone growth, and a healthy immune response. It also aids cellular differentiation and reproduction. Essentially, Vitamin A plays a role in ensuring the proper function of your dog’s bodily systems.
• Potassium: Potassium is a primary electrolyte. It plays a role in the functioning of electrical charges in the heart, nerves, and muscles.
• Vitamin B: Vitamin B are mostly water-soluble coenzymes that assist cellular metabolism and rejuvenation. It also encourages other biochemical reactions like the assimilation of fat and protein.

Types of Melons

There are different types of melons which makes it more challenging for pet parents to know what melon they should feed their dog. Below are some types of melons, and what you need to know about feeding them to your dog.

• Watermelon: Watermelons are a popular melon variety. They have a fleshy and succulent red or pink part surrounded by a white and green fibrous rind. They are eaten by humans but are equally beneficial to dogs when served in moderation. Watermelons are 92% water with no cholesterol or fat, making them an extremely healthy snack. They are packed with all the above-mentioned benefits that are great for your furry friend. Although watermelons naturally have seeds, they also come in seedless varieties. We recommend taking out all the seeds before feeding your dog watermelons or buying the seedless variety. Remember, melon rinds are bad for dogs, so you make it a point to only feed your dog the fleshy part in bits and pieces.
• Cantaloupe: Your dog can eat cantaloupes, but like any other melon, it has to be served in moderation. Cantaloupes have tan-green rinds covered in spider web-like patterns and a bright orange fleshy part. They are sweet, juicy, tender, and burst with flavor. However, they have rinds and seeds that are not safe for your dog to eat. If you decide to feed your dog cantaloupe, it is vital to do so with caution.
• Honeydew Melon: Honeydew melon is another melon variation that you can feed to your dogs. It has a light-green flesh and white/yellow rind. It is refreshing and sweet with a subtle hint of earthy flavor that your dog will undoubtedly enjoy. Like watermelons, honeydew melons are packed with moisture, vitamins, and minerals. However, they also have seeds and a rind that you should never feed to your dog.

Should You Feed Your Dog Melon?

Yes, melons have many health benefits that are a great way to keep your dog healthy. However, it is essential that you do not substitute your dog’s food for melon slices in a bid to make your dog eat healthier. This will lead to serious health concerns. Additionally, it would help if you always feed your dog melon fruit flesh, not the rind or seeds.

There are many other fruits that you can share with your dog, such as radish, eggplant, and pomegranate, among many others.  Are you looking to explore human foods with your dog? Check out our list of human foods that dogs can eat.