"Harmful to Pets" Reminder

People love their pets. This is a recurring theme in fiction as well as real life.

And one of the ways that people show their love for their pet is to allow them to eat the same things they do. And in some cases, those foods are actually alright for the animal to eat.

However, there are some foods that animals absolutely should not eat, even if humans can.

As such, many a show has made it a point to remind people not to feed their pets certain foods, either by outright reminding them in the episode, having the animal get ahold of said food, to their detriment and possible death, or as a Public Service Announcement at the end of an episode, particularly in older animated works.

Chocolate is one of the more well-known examples, but hardly the only one. And some foods can be fine for some species of animals, but not others.

Also, in addition to foods, there are certain behaviors and acts that can be harmful to pets that people simply may not know about or be aware of, and do inadvertently out of ignorance.

Might be a type of Furry Reminder if the animal in question is sapient.

A way to subvert Artistic License – Animal Care. Might be shown in an And Knowing Is Half the Battle segment. See also Don't Try This at Home.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Azumanga Daioh: Tadakichi, Chiyo's dog, tries begging for food when Sakaki and the others are served cake by Chiyo. Chiyo gently pushes him aside saying, "No, no. None for you," then explains to Sakaki that such things are bad for him, so they try to keep him from eating human treats and such.
• KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode: During the segment at the end of episode 6 where it shows how to make the dog-themed chocolate from the story, Akira reminds Ichika and the viewers to not actually give sweets to animals. Since that episode didn't involve actually giving any dogs chocolate (or giving sweets to pets in general), this presumably was to make sure the children in the audience didn't think that it was okay to give dogs chocolate just because Cure Chocolat is themed after both dogs and chocolate.
• Implied in Fruits Basket — Kyo's most hated foods are chives and leeks, which are toxic to cats in real life. It's not shown what kind of effect they would have on him transformed.
• Haru has to be stopped from cuddling a sick Subaru in My Roommate is a Cat because her owner had a leek around him to help feel better and his friends didn't want her to nibble it in curiosity.
• Nichijou when the Professor doesn't want to eat her green onions and tries to make Sakamoto the cat eat them, to which he replies "Are you trying to kill me?" since green onions are toxic to cats.
• Pet Shop of Horrors: The cryptic instructions that Count D requires his clients to follow often contain real pet care advice, like "don't feed sugar to rabbits."
• Spice and Wolf: In the second season episode, "Wolf and the Amber Melancholy", Lawrence becomes worried that Holo's sudden onset of illness is due to allowing her to eat onions. Holo gives him a reassuring laugh and says that she is not, in fact, a dog.
• Wonderful Pretty Cure!: Komugi is a dog that can turn into a human, whose owner-turned-sister, Iroha, keeps reminding her that she can only eat human food or the gummy-like Niko Fruit as a human since such food would be bad for dogs to eat.

Comic Strips

• Get Fuzzy: Rob's mother puts her cat on a vegetarian diet. This unsurprisingly results in her being unhealthy and unhappy, so much so that she begs to be put out of her misery.
• Mutts: For Valentine's Day, Mooch gives Earl a box of chocolates, but Earl tells him that since he's a dog, he can't have any chocolate. Mooch proceeds to eat said chocolates for Earl before being reminded that chocolate is also toxic for cats. He spits them up and mumbles, "Consider this a public shervice announcement."
• Phoebe and Her Unicorn: In one strip, Phoebe was shown feeding bread to ducks, which led to fan response that bread is bad for ducks. Thus, a later strip would have Phoebe mention to Marigold that she used to feed ducks bread before she found out it was bad for them.

Fan Works

• Zuma's Fear: When Damian Stone attempts to force Marshall (a Dalmatian) to eat a chocolate bar, everyone reacts in horror, implying that chocolate is as deadly to dogs in this universe as it is in real life.

Films — Animation

• DC League of Super-Pets: When asked if he knows what everyone says about dogs, Krypto answers: "We shall never eat chocolate." His father's hologram also warns him about chocolate a few scenes later.
• In The Movie of Teacher's Pet, Spot the dog becomes human and celebrates the fact that he can finally eat chocolate.

Films — Live-Action

• The Witches (2020): Bruno, who was turned into a mouse, tries to eat a grape, but Daisy tells them that grapes are poisonous to mice. While mice aren't technically poisoned by the grapes' chemicals in the same way that dogs are, a whole grape contains so much sugar and water that it could easily kill one anyway.

Literature

• Bad Kitty: In "Happy Birthday, Bad Kitty", Kitty is given a huge cake, but she's not the least bit grateful for it because it's not chocolate. There is then a two-page-long explanation on how you should never let a cat have chocolate or it can easily kill them.
• Bunnicula: Zig-zagged. Harold, a dog, is depicted frequently eating cream-filled chocolate cupcakes. One of the young-reader books has him Breaking the Fourth Wall to inform readers that in real life a dog shouldn't eat chocolate.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules: Greg makes a book report about moose and notes that moose will eat just about anything, so he lists some things that moose do not eat, such as bubblegum, metal, and pizza. There is an illustration of a chef offering a moose pizza, only for the moose to turn it down.
  • In "Double Down", Greg has a bagful of candy corn in his room, but the family's pet piglet ends up finding it and eating the whole bag. He looks quite ill and nauseous, so Greg and Rodrick try to take him to a vet before Susan finds out, but this backfires when the pig throws up in front of her.
• The Puppy Sister: At one point, Aleasha, (a dog who has started turning into a human), is given Halloween candy by her human "brother" Nick, since she asked for it and some of it was technically hers from having gone trick-or-treating. Since her transformation is not complete yet, she becomes quite nauseous and is taken to see a doctor who the family knows would accept the idea of a dog turning human.
• Warrior Cats has a variation in Secrets of the Clans, where the medicine cat Leafpool warns the reader in-character that they should not give a sick cat the herbs that the characters use in the books, but rather should bring them to a veterinarian instead.

Live Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory: In a Valentine's Day episode, Leonard and Penny are dog-sitting Cinnamon, Raj's beloved pet, and accidentally leave Valentine's chocolate where Cinnamon can get at it. Penny explains to Leonard that chocolate is really bad for dogs, and they rush her to a vet, where they are later met by a furious Raj. Cinnamon is, thankfully, fine after the vet treats her.
• Gilmore Girls: When Luke is pet sitting Lorelai's new dog, Paul Anka, for the first time, Paul Anka manages to get into one of the cabinets and eat half a block of baking chocolate. Luke panics and rushes him to the vet, explaining that the one thing he knows about dogs is that they can't eat chocolate. He makes sure to serve Paul Anka a safe and gentle breakfast after bringing him home, to help soothe his stomach.
• House of Anubis: Willow briefly adopts two wild hedgehogs and cares for them in secret. Joy and Mara try to convince Willow to release them by pointing out that wild hedgehogs don't make great pets, with Mara having to stop Willow from feeding them milk because they can't digest it.
• Rizzoli & Isles: Korsak is an animal lover extraodinaire. Jane's adopted dog, Joe Friday, keeps licking at her paws, and no one has been able to figure out why until Angela Rizzoli talks about feeding chicken to the dog. Korsak states that most smaller breeds of dog are actually allergic to chicken and that Joe Friday licking at her paws was a sign of an allergic reaction.
• In Star Trek: Enterprise Captain Archer knows that too much cheese is bad for his dog, Porthos. It doesn't really stop him, though.
• The Wire: Ziggy Sobotka buys a duck and goes to the Stevadore's local bar to play an elaborate bit about having gone blind and acquiring the duck as both his guide animal and lawyer, and he and the bar patrons start pouring it saucers of beer and shots of Whiskey. After just a few days of this, the duck drops dead, and the same bar patrons hypocritically wonder out loud what kind of idiot gives a duck whiskey.

Video Games

• Fate/Grand Order:
  • During the Shinjuku Pseudo-Singularity, Altria Alter wonders if she should give her dog Cavall II chocolate or an onion as a treat, only for the protagonist to protest that dogs should eat neither of those things.
  • In Lobo's Valentine's scene, the protagonist tries to give Lobo something other than chocolate because he's a wolf. Lobo however has no issue with it; not because he can eat it (he can't) but because he likes the scent for its novelty.
• In Minecraft, the same update that added parrots, which could be tamed with cookies at the time, added splash text saying "Don't feed chocolate to parrots" due to chocolate being poisonous to them and the cookies being chocolate chip. Later, in 1.12-pre3, they just changed it so that parrots were tamed with seeds instead, and feeding a parrot a cookie will instantly kill it, complete with poison particles.
• In Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor, Nancy Drew has to bribe Loulou the talking parrot with cakes she must mix herself. Putting avocado, chocolate, or lunch meat in the cake's mix can kill Loulou and trigger a Game Over, so wise gamers should use Nancy's phone to consult a "Safe Foods For Parrots" article online before preparing a treat for the bird.
• Before the title screen of Wobbledogs, there's a message saying that the wobbledogs can eat things that are dangerous to real dogs.

Webcomics

• Housepets! sometimes features the eponymous pets eating chocolate, and always makes a point of establishing it's the pet-safe kind, not human chocolate.
• Unshelved: When Tamara outlines a book, she reveals that she sometimes lets her dog lick the chocolate frosting off her cupcakes. A kid points out to her that chocolate is deadly to dogs, even if she only gives him a little bit.

Web Original

• Houshou Marine, a member of hololive, once gave Valentine's chocolate to fellow member Korone. It killed her after only two bites, accompanied by a disclaimer not to feed chocolate to dogs.
  • A followup animation Shows that Korone was ultimately fine because she is more human than dog. The same cannot be said for her genmates, who are all animals that cannot eat chocolate, such as a cat and a fox.
• In Phelous's crossover review of Foodfight! with Allison Pregler and Brad Jones, the three constantly make jokes about how Dex Dogtective should be poisoned during the many times he eats raisins over the course of the film.
  Allison: Okay, so he's got a girlfriend who gives him raisins and a best friend made of chocolate. Isn't that a bit like having your loved ones made of rat poison and arsenic?

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: In "Slumber Party Panic", Mr. Cupcake asks Jake (an anthropomorphic dog) if he prefers chocolate or fudge, and the latter claims that both things are deadly to him. Oddly enough though, he eats chocolate ice cream in another episode with no negative side effects.
• Arthur:
  • In "Sick as a Dog", Arthur shares too many snacks (including very old candy and pancakes) with his dog Pal, resulting in the latter seeing the vet. Arthur initially accuses DW of doing something to Pal until the vet reveals that it's because Arthur shared too much human(oid) food with him. Arthur apologizes to DW and decides to just stick with giving Pal dog food.
  • In "One Ornery Critter", Arthur brings up the fact that chocolate is really bad for dogs, after seeing Buster eat a chocolate bar while he's around his aunt's dog Carrot Cake.
• BoJack Horseman: A scene in a grocery store has two anthropomorphic dogs bemoan that they shouldn't eat chocolate because it can literally kill them, but that they love chocolate anyway.
• Bunnicula: One episode revolves around chocolate and its potential danger to dogs. Harold almost eats a cocoa bean until Chester stops him and tells him it's made of chocolate and bad for dogs. When Bunnicula drains a cocoa bean and becomes a chocolate rabbit, a dog with a "bro" attitude almost eats him, but another bro dog tells him that he's about to eat chocolate; it's bad for him, he says, and so are grapes, he adds. Later, when cornered by chocolate-craving kids and the bro dogs (who want to toss Bunnicula around like he's a football), Harold licks him to keep them away, disgusting the kids and earning the bro dogs' respect...though he does get sick from licking the chocolate. The episode's end also has Chester point out that chocolate is also bad for cats.
  • An earlier episode has Harold mistaking a ghostly harmonica for a chocolate bar. He asks if he's allowed to have this because dogs can't have chocolate bars, though Bunnicula confirms it's a harmonica.
• DuckTales (2017): In "The Rumble For Ragnarok!", Dewey gives a lollipop to Fenrir the wolf, who chokes on the lollipop and spits it back out. The audience becomes angry and appalled by it, with one giving Dewey this remark:
  "What are you doing?! You can't give candy to a dog! What are you, a dummy?!"
• Family Guy, "Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story" has a brief segment in the future where Brian the dog has apparently died. He's shown drinking in Heaven with Kurt Cobain, Ernest Hemingway, and Vincent van Gogh, and all of them discuss their deaths. Everyone shot themselves except for Brian, who says that he "got into the garbage and ate some chocolate".
• In the Disney short Feast, there is a message encouraging viewers to find "a new friend at your local animal shelter (but feed them responsibly)", unless they like making return trips to said shelter after feeding said "new friend" the same foods Winston the dog eats in the short that shouldn't be eaten by real dogs such as pizza and cupcakes.
• FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman: In the season 2 premiere episode, Ruff gives his new Fetchers some chocolate bars. He tells them he wants them but can't since chocolate can make dogs sick.
• Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats: There were a series of PSA announcements at the end of the episodes regarding pet care, including making sure that your pets didn't eat human food that could be bad for them.
• Lou and Lou: Safety Patrol has a segment in which the titular characters give a friend of theirs safety tips on interacting with dogs, with one tip being not to give a dog chocolate as a treat.
• One of the Martha Speaks interstitials shown between the episodes talks about what foods are unsafe to feed dogs. And in the first episode the scientist tells the audience at home not to feed alphabet soup to their dog like Martha as it's only a cartoon.
• In the Molly of Denali episode "Puppy Sitting," Trini is looking after Khi, one of Tooey's sled dogs. Trini wants to feed Khi pizza crusts like she does with her own pet dog, Four Spots, but Tooey reminds her that while pizza crusts are okay for a house dog like Four Spots, they're not good for sled dogs like Khi.
• Muppet Babies (2018): In "Puppy for a Day", the kids have Rizzo the rat pretend to be a dog and he eats a lot of pizza, only to get some indigestion from it. Bunsen informs the others that since he's a rat, it's better for him to eat cheese.
• Puppy Dog Pals: While in Europe to put some of Bob's art in the Louvre, Bingo and Rollie traipse through a vineyard. Rollie reminds his brother not to eat any of the grapes, as they're bad for puppies.
• Robot Chicken:
  • One sketch features Mutt's dog Junkyard dying after eating a chocolate statue of Roadblock. This is later followed up by another sketch where Mutt appears in an And Knowing Is Half the Battle segment warning some kids not to feed their dog chocolate, only to learn that it's actually carob, a chocolate substitute that dogs can eat.
    "Your dog's fine, but your mom's a filthy hippie."
  • There's a sketch where Jon constantly feeding Garfield lasagna comes back to bite him in the worst possible way, as Garfield develops a severe case of Type 2 diabetes. Jon refuses to pay the $22,000 needed for treatment, so Garfield dies and Jon gets a new cat named "Garfield II"... whom he feeds spaghetti and meatballs instead of actual cat food, apparently having learned absolutely nothing.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Bart Gets an Elephant", Homer tries to have Stampy live off of peanuts, only for the elephant to get sick the next day. Lisa warns Homer that elephants need to eat plants to live, so he has Stampy eat the leaves off trees at an arboretum.
  • In "Lisa the Vegetarian", Homer attempts to feed a goat a tin can, which it clearly isn't interested in. Marge tells him that he's supposed to feed it and the other petting zoo animals pellets from a nearby dispenser.
• El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera: In "Zebra Donkey" when Manny is asked to take care of the school mascot for the weekend, they go out to an ice cream parlor to have banana sundaes. But then Frida runs in and warns Manny that Zebra Donkey can't have bananas because it's toxic for his kind, and unfortunately at that time, it's too late, and Zebra Donkey ends up passing away.

Real Life

• Very much Truth in Television; there are several things that pets can get a hold of that can do them lasting or even fatal harm.
• Dogs can be harmed by, among other things, onions, grapes, raisins, caffeine, and artificial sweeteners, particularly xylitol. And of course, chocolate. In fact, grapes and raisins can be lethal for dogs, as it can result in kidney failure and death. Vets advise that a situation where a dog is suspected of eating grapes or raisins should be treated as a medical emergency, and the owner should take them to a vet as soon as possible.
• Contrary to popular fiction, giving your cat a saucer of milk is actually very bad for them, as most cats are lactose-intolerant. Indeed, they should avoid dairy altogether. They also cannot eat chocolate, onions, citrus fruits, grapes and raisins, caffeine, and artificial sweeteners like xylitol.
• In real life, rabbits are so sensitive to sugar that carrots are too sweet to feed them as more than a small treat once or twice per week.
• Because they are carnivores, dogs and cats are particularly vulnerable to being poisoned by certain foods, resulting in Harmful To Pets overlapping somewhat with All Animals Are Dogs. Herbivores like pigs, cows, and goats are much less sensitive. In fact, cows love chocolate too.
• Making parrots want crackers is actually very bad for them, since high amounts of salt and sugar is lethal to birds. Even worse than crackers are avocados, which are toxic to birds that are not quetzals.
• Some common houseplants and flowers such as sago palms, lilies, azaleas and tulips can cause stomach irritation or even severe kidney or liver damage if ingested by pets. In particular, lilies might as well be considered cat poison, with even a few grains of pollen being enough to cause lethal kidney failure. Thoughtful plant stores or florists will label plants as toxic to pets, but it doesn't hurt to double check on your own as well.

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