Zeke found a ripe persimmon on our walk today, and he liked it. That didn’t surprise me, because I remember my old dog Jesse standing on her hind legs eating persimmons off a small tree in my parents’ yard, many years ago. Now, since the possums have been pruning our two persimmon trees, there is a veritable fortune in unripe persimmons lying on the ground. I piled up most of the limbs here.
This happens to be on the route that I use when I walk the dogs around the house. Zeke was naturally interested.
Most of the persimmons are still yellow, which means they are green. A few have ripened, so to help him out, I found a couple. You can tell when they’re ripe because they’re soft and pull away from the stem easily.
Zeke can tell when one is ripe because I hand it to him.
Most Web sites I checked say not to feed persimmons to dogs because the seeds can cause irritation or blockages in the small intestine. That’s probably true, although eating whole persimmons doesn’t seem to cause the foxes any problems, at least judging by the number of seeds in their scat.
I think Zeke is big enough that he won’t have any problems passing the seeds, so I’m not worried. Still, I don’t recommend that anyone else feed their dog persimmons. I don’t feed them to Lucy (she’s far smaller than Zeke), but she isn’t interested anyway. She prefers marshmallows when eating unhealthy treats.
Our Pomeranian, Queequeg, will eat anything he finds on the ground, and despite his snub nose, he can sniff out carrion and scat and who-knows-what far better than big Flike and his substantial muzzle. So far, they haven’t discovered persimmons, but in our forest, we must be there at exactly the right time to get any since the wild critters can clean a tree quickly.
Pablo — The possums are working on the persimmons, but if things go the same way this year as they did last year, there will still be a few on the tree into December. On the other hand, I haven’t seen as much pruning going on before this year, so maybe they’ll finish them off early.
Almost all the coyote and fox scat I’ve ever seen have been full of seeds, so it really surprises me that dogs shouldn’t eat persimmons. OTOH, it may be that domestication has changed a few digestive things for dogs that make them a little more susceptible to irritation. Interesting that Zeke is drawn to the fruit, just like the old days!
Robin — I wonder if the prohibition is just a simplification. I can see that persimmon seeds could cause trouble for a small dog like Lucy, but can’t really see why they would cause a big dog like Zeke any trouble. The problem is deciding how big is big enough. So the easy solution is to just say that no dog should eat persimmons.
Mark; We’ve got some persimmon trees in our preserve. (They were all planted, I believe, but they do just fine here.) Most of the fruits are purloined by our visitors, but a few stay on the ground. Personally, I don’t particularly like them; it’s their texture that causes me to wrinkle up my nose.
When I brought my students to my preserve a few weeks ago, I showed them the persimmons and encouraged them to try one if they never had before. Several of my Chinese students were giggling in a group, and I asked them what was humorous. They said that the persimmons were so small–they have persimmons 4X this size in China. I told the students it is possible to buy the imported Chinese persimmons in the grocery store here as well. The students told me how the fruits are typically eaten in China: they are frozen for a while, then they are scooped out like ice cream. Maybe it’d like them better that way.
Scott — I haven’t actually tried our persimmons. Leah wants me to bring here a ripe one, but very few are ripe so far, and all I have found went to the dog. I didn’t know that there were persimmons in China.
I just googled persimmon seed to see what they look like. I’ve never eaten a persimmon. They are a pretty good sized seed. I could see how a dog might be uncomfortable with something that size. An interesting thing came up though on good ol’ google. Lots of articles wondering about the size of persimmon seeds predicting winter weather.