08/10/2026
🐕🐩🐾🐶It's National Dog Month. We wanted to warn about a wonderful native plant that's great for birds, but BAD for dogs. Please read on.
Pokeweed provides critical food in late summer and early autumn for birds like thrashers, catbirds, cardinals, mourning doves, robins and bluebirds so we don't want everyone to remove it....
..but all parts of the plant are poisonous to dogs. If you have Pokeweed plants and dogs, here's what we recommend.
-Scout your yard for the plants and assess whether your dog could get to the plants or the fallen berries.
-Since the berries are what is most attractive to the majority of dogs, at a minimum we recommend cutting the berries of any accessible plants and disposing in the trash
-If your dog likes to eat vegetation, we recommend digging the entire plant and discarding safely (where the dog can't access it)
-Scout out areas where you walk for fallen berries one sidewalks and roadsides and remove before your dog can get to them
One note: most experts say that consuming a berry or two will likely only cause mild digestive symptoms (unless your dog is tiny), but consuming a handful or more should be considered an absolute emergency.
Keep this number nearby: ASPCA poison control hotline: 888-426-4435
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