Dog Ate Grapes, Raisins or Xylitol? What to Do Right Now

Call now: the numbers

If your dog ate grapes, raisins, or anything that contains xylitol, call your vet or the nearest emergency clinic now, even if your dog seems completely fine. If you can’t reach a vet, call an animal poison control line. Both are open 24 hours a day:

• ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center: (888) 426-4435. A one-time consultation fee may apply.
• Pet Poison Helpline: (855) 764-7661. The fee was $89 per incident as of October 2026, and follow-up calls about the same case are included.

No amount of grapes, raisins or xylitol can be called safe for your dog. Don’t wait for symptoms to show up. With both poisons, what a vet can do is most useful in the first few hours, before your dog looks ill.

Don’t make your dog vomit at home unless a vet or poison line tells you to and explains how. Never use salt.

This page is general information, not veterinary advice. It can’t assess your dog. Only a vet can.

What to have ready when you call

You’ll get faster, better advice if you can answer these questions. Gather what you can while you dial. Don’t let it hold up the call.

• Your dog’s weight, even a rough figure, plus age and any health problems or medicines.
• What was eaten. Keep the wrapper, bag or box. For xylitol, the product name and ingredient list matter more than anything else.
• How much is missing. Count what’s left and compare it with a full pack. A guess is fine if you say it’s a guess.
• When it happened, or the last time you know the food was untouched.
• Any signs so far: vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, wobbling, shaking or collapse.

If you’d like a structured version of these questions while you wait on hold, the grape and raisin checker and the xylitol calculator both walk through them. Every result they give ends with the same instruction: call.

Grapes and raisins

Why there’s no safe amount

Grapes and raisins can cause sudden kidney failure in dogs. Not every dog that eats them gets sick, and nobody can tell ahead of time which dogs will. The fruit itself also varies.

The Merck Veterinary Manual names tartaric acid as one proposed cause. Dogs are poor at getting rid of organic acids like it, so it can build up in the kidney tubules. The amount of tartaric acid differs from fruit to fruit, which is one reason the same handful can hurt one dog and not another.

Because nobody can predict who will react, a vet will treat any amount as worth a call. The size of your dog doesn’t change that.

What counts

According to Merck, these have been linked to kidney failure in dogs:

• Grapes of any color, seedless or not.
• Raisins. Sultanas are dried grapes too.
• Zante currants, the small dried “currants” sold for baking and used in trail mix, scones and hot cross buns. They come from a grape vine.
• Tamarind, including tamarind paste and candies.

Fresh true currants from a currant bush (genus Ribes) have not been linked to kidney injury. Be careful here, though. Baked goods labeled “currant” usually contain Zante currants, which are grapes. If you aren’t sure which kind it was, treat it as a grape.

Raisins stay a problem after cooking. Bread, cookies, muffins and cereal bars with raisins all count.

What happens and when

Merck says most affected dogs vomit or have diarrhea within 6 to 12 hours. Kidney failure, in which the dog makes little or no urine, develops within 24 to 72 hours.

Many dogs look normal for the first day. That is exactly why waiting for symptoms is a mistake. By the time a dog stops peeing, the outlook is poor: Merck says dogs that make no urine are unlikely to survive without dialysis.

Xylitol

What it does to dogs

Xylitol is a sugar substitute. In people it has little effect on insulin, but in dogs it triggers a fast, large insulin release that can drop blood sugar dangerously low. Higher doses can also badly damage the liver.

The Merck Veterinary Manual gives two levels, per kilogram of body weight:

Dose of xylitol	What has been reported
Above about 100 mg/kg (45 mg per lb)	Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)
Above 500 mg/kg (227 mg per lb)	Severe liver failure in some dogs

These are levels at which harm has been seen. They aren’t a promise in either direction. Below them, a dog still needs a call, because the amount eaten is almost always an estimate.

How fast it acts

Merck says signs of low blood sugar can start within 30 minutes. The FDA puts the window at 10 to 60 minutes. Some products, gum in particular, release xylitol more slowly: Merck says signs can be delayed 12 to 18 hours, and the FDA says some dogs show no serious effects for up to 12 to 24 hours.

Signs to watch for: vomiting first, then weakness, low energy, staggering, collapse and seizures.

Liver damage is slower. Merck says signs of liver injury may not appear until 24 to 48 hours or more after eating, although liver enzymes in a blood test often rise within 4 to 12 hours.

Where it hides

Xylitol isn’t just in gum. Between them, the FDA and Merck list:

• Sugar-free gum, candy, breath mints and desserts
• Some peanut and nut butters
• Baked goods
• Toothpaste and mouthwash
• Chewable vitamins and dietary supplements
• Cough syrups, sugar-free liquid medicines and some over-the-counter medicines
• Some sunscreens, cosmetics, deodorants and hair products

On labels it can also appear as birch sugar or wood sugar, according to the FDA. “Sugar-free” on the front doesn’t tell you whether xylitol is inside. Only the ingredient list does.

At a glance

What was eaten	What it can cause	How fast
Grapes, raisins, sultanas, Zante currants	Vomiting or diarrhea, then kidney failure	Gut signs in 6–12 h; kidney failure in 24–72 h
Tamarind	Same as grapes (Merck groups them together)	Same as grapes
Xylitol, most products	Sudden low blood sugar	Can start within 30 minutes
Xylitol in gum or slow-release products	Low blood sugar, delayed	Up to 12–18 h (Merck)
Xylitol, higher doses	Liver failure	Signs often 24–48 h or later

What the vet may do

The details depend on your dog, the amount and the time since eating. These are the approaches the Merck Veterinary Manual describes.

For grapes and raisins:

• If your dog has no signs yet, getting the fruit out quickly by making the dog vomit, using a drug the vet gives.
• After a large amount, or if diarrhea started on its own within 12 hours of eating, IV fluids for at least 48 hours to protect the kidneys.
• Blood tests to watch kidney function while the fluids run.

For xylitol:

• Vomiting is attempted only under a vet’s supervision, and only while the dog is still acting normally. Activated charcoal doesn’t bind xylitol well, so it isn’t recommended.
• Blood sugar checks every 1 to 2 hours for at least 12 hours, with sugar (dextrose) given into a vein if it drops. Low blood sugar can last 24 hours or more.
• Liver blood tests every 24 hours for at least 72 hours. Merck says dogs that ate more than about 100 mg/kg should be hospitalized.

When low blood sugar is treated promptly, Merck describes the outlook as good. Once the liver is badly affected, it is much more guarded. That is the strongest reason to call early.

Worked example: why a big dog still needs the call

Say a package of sugar-free candy is chewed open, and the maker’s information shows the missing pieces held about 1.5 g of xylitol in total. The dose works out like this. It’s the same arithmetic as the xylitol calculator:

Dose (mg/kg) = grams of xylitol × 1,000 ÷ weight in kg (1 lb = 0.4536 kg)

• A 70 lb dog weighs 70 × 0.4536 = 31.75 kg. 1.5 g is 1,500 mg, and 1,500 ÷ 31.75 = 47 mg/kg.
• An 8 lb dog weighs 3.63 kg. 1,500 ÷ 3.63 = 413 mg/kg, far above the low-blood-sugar level and close to the liver-failure level.

The big dog’s figure is under the 100 mg/kg level. The answer is still call now. Here’s why:

• The 1.5 g is a guess. A few more pieces, or a product with more xylitol per piece, moves the number fast. For the 70 lb dog, about 3.2 g reaches 100 mg/kg and about 15.9 g reaches 500 mg/kg.
• Many products don’t say how much xylitol they contain. The calculator then treats the amount as unknown and tells you to call.
• Merck’s levels describe when harm has been reported. They don’t promise that a dog below them is fine.

For grapes and raisins there is no safe dose to calculate. Merck gives only a rough guide, that more than one grape or raisin per 10 lb (4.5 kg) of body weight may carry a risk, and no amount below which a dog is known to be fine. This site deliberately doesn’t turn that into a pass-or-fail number.

Common mistakes

• Waiting to see if symptoms appear. Grape kidney damage shows up a day or more later, and gum can delay xylitol signs by many hours. By then, the simplest treatments may no longer work.
• Making your dog vomit with salt. Pet Poison Helpline says salt and salt water should never be used to make an animal vomit, because of the high risk of salt poisoning. Don’t give any home remedy unless a vet or poison line tells you to and explains how.
• Assuming a big dog is fine. With grapes, size doesn’t predict who reacts. With xylitol, the amount eaten is usually uncertain enough that a calculation can’t rule out danger.
• Trusting “sugar-free” or “natural” on the front of the pack. Read the ingredient list for xylitol, birch sugar or wood sugar. Look up the exact product if the wrapper is gone.
• Forgetting baked goods and mixes. Raisins in cookies, bread and trail mix, and xylitol in “keto” or “low-sugar” baking, are easy to miss.
• Searching instead of calling. Reading takes minutes you may need. Call first and read while you wait.

Prevention

• Keep gum, mints and sugar-free candy in closed bags or cabinets, not in coat pockets, purses or low tables.
• Brush your dog’s teeth only with toothpaste made for pets, as the FDA advises.
• Check the label before giving your dog peanut butter or a spoonful of anything “lite”.
• Keep fruit bowls, lunch boxes and snack mixes out of reach, and tell children and guests that grapes and raisins aren’t dog treats.
• Save both poison line numbers in your phone now: (888) 426-4435 and (855) 764-7661.

Other kitchen poisons

Chocolate, onions and garlic cause their own kinds of harm. Chocolate depends heavily on the type and amount. Onions and garlic damage red blood cells, and the signs can take days to show. If one of these is the problem, the chocolate toxicity calculator and the onion and garlic toxicity calculator start with the same instruction to call, then explain the risk.

Phone numbers and fees were checked on the ASPCA and Pet Poison Helpline websites in October 2026. Medical details come from the Merck Veterinary Manual chapters written by an ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center veterinarian, and from the FDA.