Not Today, Satan

In a previous piece, you learned that a single ill-advised slurp can set off a life-threatening spiral for your pet, starting with a pebble or two of sugarless gum and ending with a very costly veterinary bill. You could bypass all that chaos and grief by simply keeping xylitol-containing materials out of your dog’s reach. Easy, right?

Sugarless gum might be the most common way to access this poison, but if you’re a curious pup that noses into human belongings as a hobby, you will start to see xylitol everywhere you turn. At the time of this writing, chewing gum brands Pur, B-Fresh, and Epic Dental are among the most concentrated sources of it, but many other brands of gum (really common ones, too, like Dentyne, Orbit, Ice Breakers, and Mentos) contain substantial amounts of xylitol. Because of its protective effect on human teeth, it can also be found in numerous toothpastes and mouthwashes. Because of its caloric advantage over sugar, it is commonly mixed into peanut butter, hard candy, jam, yogurt, gelatin, and puddings. It’s often a component in medicines that are formulated as a liquid, a gummy, or a material meant to dissolve on contact with the mouth. Children’s vitamins are a frequent offender. It could even be included in face creams, lip balms, and personal lubricants. For some reason, xylitol can also be a component of exercise garments, cooling towels, diapers, and baby wipes. Let’s not forget bulk ingredients such as protein powders and bags of pure xylitol intended for baking. The latter packs enough punch in a single tablespoon to poison a 100-pound dog. For reference, a pretty standard banana bread recipe calls for 12 tablespoons. Per loaf. Xylitol is used in the same quantity and has the same appearance as regular, granulated white sugar. Therefore, once the bulk product is dealt out into a sugar bowl, or a storage canister on your baking shelf, it is no longer distinguishable as a hazardous substance.

Yikes. So, we’ll just need to examine the ingredient list of… every single thing? Not so fast—this compound has many legal aliases, including birch sugar, wood sugar, and wood or birch bark extract. It also has several chemistry names such as E967, pentitol, and pentahydric alcohol; lengthy strings of syllables containing the word xylitol or some portion of it; foreign spellings of the word xylitol (such as zylatol); foreign words such as “sucre de bouleau”; generic names such as “sugar alcohol” and “natural sweetener”; even the very wholesome-sounding “kabocha extract” (from kabocha variety squash).

Please know that I am not trying to keep you awake staring at the ceiling all night. My best advice is to avoid feeding your dog things that are meant for humans, to be especially cautious about “sugar-free” and “gummy” products, and ultimately to keep everything sweetened with xylitol completely out of your home. Identifying the hazards, though… how could that possibly be more difficult, when this highly toxic compound seems to be ubiquitous, from diapers to sunscreen to homemade banana bread, and manufacturers can’t even agree on what to call it? Isn’t there anything we can do to make our dogs' lives a little less treacherous?

Watch this space to see how you can change the narrative.

Dr M.S. Regan