We moved house a few months ago. Our new neighbourhood has a lot of cherry trees that were very pretty in the spring but are now dropping cherries all over the pavement. Holly has taken to hoovering up the cherries on her evening walk. We don't mind that as cherries (in moderation) are probably OK. The worrying bit is that she has started to crunch up and swallow the stones. Apart from the worry that she might get a sharp bit of stone stuck in her throat, we have no idea whether cherry stones contain anything harmful. Does anyone know whether cherry stones contain anything that we should worry about?
As far as i know cherry stones contain cyanhydric acid which is poisionous(similar to peaches, apricots, plums....). I don't know how many of those stones Holly would have to swallow to be affected or if the crunching makes it more or less dangerous but i wouldn't let her eat too many of those tbh. Can't be to good for her teeth either.
Very timely post for me, as Willow has also picked up some fallen cherries recently. She doesn't seem too enamoured and spits them out, but she keeps on trying. I'm keeping her on the lead passing the tree for now. I found this online http://ask.metafilter.com/98295/Are-cherry-pits-really-poisonous-to-dogs Someone apparently researched (I've not confirmed, so it's just hearsay at this point) and came up with this:
I have 2 large cherry trees in the garden which have shed many cherries across the lawn, drive - in fact everywhere, well that's the ones the birds haven't eaten . Juno has been pretty good with them and dropped when told or left when told and she has been rewarded with some cherries minus stones. Must admit she hasn't tried to eat the stones, prefers to spit it out and move on. The preferred delicacy at the moment is rabbit droppings as we have rabbits running around the garden
