Q: Are dogs lactose intolerant? My dog gets tiny bits of cheese for doing tricks, but I wonder if I’ve been rewarding him with the wrong food.
Adelai Ende
York, Pennsylvania
Dear Ms. Ende,
A: Strictly speaking, yes, many dogs are lactose intolerant. They lack the digestive enzyme needed to break down lactose — a type of sugar — in milk and milk products. But not all dogs pay the price for ingesting dairy foods: gas, bloating, rumbling tummy, and/or diarrhea. There are plenty of lactose-intolerant dogs who do just fine on small amounts of dairy foods used as treats.
It often depends on the type of dairy food given, too. Milk has more than twice as much lactose as yogurt (11 grams per cup versus 5). And hard cheeses like Swiss have only one gram of lactose per ounce. Of course, no dog should be drinking an entire cup of milk or eating an entire ounce of cheese, so the amount of lactose a dog consumes will be much less.
If your dog is exhibiting symptoms of lactose intolerance shortly after you give him treats in the form of dairy products, you should stop. But if the tiny amounts of cheese you’ve been giving your pet have not been hurting him, you needn’t worry.
