Thanksgiving Meal for Dogs: Our Plain Holiday Bowl for 3 Dogs (and What I Keep Off Their Plates)
When the whole house smells like Thanksgiving, I don’t want my dogs getting bites of buttery turkey skin and gravy. So I make them their own bowl. This is our thanksgiving meal for dogs: plain boiled chicken, steamed Korean sweet potato, soft cabbage and a little scrambled egg, on top of the kibble they already eat every day.
I’ve been making homemade food for our three for about three years now, and I did a test run of this holiday bowl in early November so I could photograph every step before the big day. Our oldest girl is a 14-year-old Pomeranian who doesn’t have many teeth left, and the two boys are 3 and eat fast, so the bowl has to work for a senior and two speed eaters at the same time.
Below you’ll find exactly what goes in it, how much I used for three small dogs, why there’s no turkey, how their supplements fit in, and the Thanksgiving foods that never go anywhere near their bowls. That last list is longer than you might think, so it’s worth reading before the guests show up.
Quick Look: Our Thanksgiving Bowl
| What’s in it | Plain boiled chicken breast, steamed Korean sweet potato (peeled), steamed cabbage, scrambled egg, and their usual kibble |
| Seasoning | None. No oil, butter, salt, milk, onion or garlic |
| Protein | Chicken, the same protein they eat every day. No turkey |
| For 3 small dogs | 1 long Korean sweet potato and 1 1/2 eggs for one meal, so each dog gets half an egg |
| Kibble | Their regular vet-prescribed kibble, mixed in the same 70:30 homemade-to-kibble way as always |
| Supplements | Mixed into the bowl like every morning. Our senior’s joint chew goes straight from my hand |
| Who ate it | A 14-year-old Pomeranian (12 to 13 lb) and two 3-year-old boys (about 10 lb and 8.6 lb) |
| Bowls | Raised slow-feeder bowls, because all three eat fast |
| Best for / Good to know | Best for dogs who already eat plain chicken and sweet potato. Good to know: if your dog is on a prescription or low-fat diet, check with your vet before adding anything new for the holiday |
What’s in Our Thanksgiving Meal for Dogs
I kept this bowl short on purpose. Every ingredient is something all three of my dogs already eat and love, cooked with nothing added. A holiday is fun for us, but for them a new food on a busy day can turn into an upset stomach, and nobody wants that on Thanksgiving night.
- Chicken breast, boiled plain. This is their everyday protein, so it’s the base of the bowl.
- Korean sweet potato, steamed and peeled. This is the Thanksgiving side they can actually have. It’s also one of their favorite foods. If I say “sweet potato” out loud, all three wake up from a nap.
- Cabbage, steamed soft. Cabbage is already in their weekly batch, so it’s nothing new for their stomachs.
- Scrambled egg, no oil. This is the holiday extra. Chicken, sweet potato and egg are the three foods my dogs go the most crazy for, so this bowl has all three.
- Their regular kibble. Their homemade food always gets mixed with a vet-prescribed kibble, and a holiday doesn’t change that.
I buy Korean sweet potatoes at H Mart because, honestly, I think they taste the best, and my dogs clearly love them too. If you want the full breakdown of how I cook them and how much each dog gets on a normal day, I wrote it all up in how I cook sweet potato for my dogs.
Why I Use Chicken Instead of Turkey
Plain, cooked turkey with no skin and no seasoning is on the AKC list of Thanksgiving foods dogs can have, so turkey itself isn’t the problem. I still don’t use it, and here’s why.
Chicken is what my dogs eat every single day. All three are on a vet-prescribed kibble, and our oldest is 14. A holiday is the last day I’d want to try a new protein on her, because if her stomach reacts, it’s a long night for both of us. If I ever want to change something in her food, I’d rather ask our vet on a regular week than experiment on Thanksgiving.
The other reason is simple. The turkey on a human table usually comes with butter, skin, salt and herbs, and pulling out a truly plain piece is harder than it sounds. Boiling a couple of chicken breasts separately takes the guessing out of it.
How I Make Our Thanksgiving Bowl, Step by Step
This takes a bit of stovetop time, but none of it is hard. I cooked the parts ahead and put the bowls together right before their meal.
Step 1: Boil the chicken plain
I put the chicken breasts in a pot of water and boil them with nothing else in the pot. No salt, no broth, no garlic. Once they’re cooked all the way through, I let them cool and shred them by hand into thin strands. Shredding matters for our oldest girl. With only a few teeth left, long thin pieces are much easier for her than chunks.
Step 2: Steam the sweet potato and cabbage
I steam the sweet potatoes whole, skin on, in a steamer basket with cabbage leaves tucked around them. The sweet potato is done when a fork slides into the middle with no push at all. I steamed two long ones, but one was plenty for one meal for all three dogs.
When everything is cool enough to touch, I peel the sweet potato (the skin never goes in their bowls) and mash it. The cabbage gets cut into small pieces.
Step 3: Scramble the eggs in a dry pan
I used one and a half eggs for three dogs, so everybody gets half an egg. I scramble them in a cast iron pan with no oil, no butter, no milk, no water and no salt. Just egg. A dry pan means a little sticks to the bottom, and that’s fine. I keep stirring until there are no runny parts left, because I only give my dogs eggs that are fully cooked.
Step 4: Build the base
Shredded chicken goes on one side of each bowl, and sweet potato and cabbage go on the other. I build all three bowls at the same time.
Step 5: Add the egg on top
The scrambled egg goes right on top, one half egg per bowl. This is the part that makes it look like a holiday plate.
Step 6: Kibble and supplements go in last
Their kibble goes on top, then their daily supplements. On a normal day their homemade food and kibble are mixed about 70:30, and I kept the same idea here. If you’re curious how I worked out that mix, it’s all in mixing homemade dog food with kibble.
Step 7: Serve in raised slow feeders
All three eat from raised slow-feeder bowls. They’re fast eaters, and the ridges slow them down a little. Our oldest switched to a taller bowl a few months ago so she doesn’t have to bend her neck so far, and I wrote about the signs she needed a raised bowl if you’re wondering about your own senior.
How This Bowl Is Different From Their Everyday Food
Every weekend I make one big batch of homemade food for the whole week. It’s chicken, broccoli, carrot, cabbage, sweet potato, kabocha and bell pepper, all steamed and blended, then frozen in portions. Three dogs, two meals a day, seven days, so that’s 42 portions every week. The full recipe is in my weekly homemade chicken dog food recipe.
The Thanksgiving bowl is a simpler, chunkier version of that, with an egg on top.
| Everyday bowl | Thanksgiving bowl | |
| Protein | Chicken | Chicken |
| Vegetables | Broccoli, carrot, cabbage, sweet potato, kabocha, bell pepper | Sweet potato and cabbage |
| Extra | None | Half a scrambled egg per dog |
| Texture | Steamed and blended smooth | Shredded chicken, mashed sweet potato, chopped cabbage |
| Made | Once a week, frozen in 42 portions | Just for this one meal |
| Kibble and supplements | Same | Same |
On Thanksgiving Day I’ll probably add a spoonful of plain pumpkin puree and one or two more of the vegetables they like. Pure pumpkin is on the AKC list of foods dogs can have. Pumpkin pie filling isn’t, because it has sugar and spices in it, so if you add pumpkin, look for a can that says 100% pure pumpkin.
Adding Their Supplements to a Holiday Bowl
Their supplements don’t take the day off just because it’s a holiday. Most of them get mixed right into their food so they can’t pick them out. If you want the whole lineup and timing, it’s in our daily dog supplement routine. These are the two you can see in the photos:
- Our oldest girl: Missing Link Senior powder, half a teaspoon a day. That’s the brown powder on her bowl.
- The two 3-year-old boys: eggshell calcium powder (the white powder) plus an omega oil.
One thing is new this month. Our vet recommended Dasuquin for our oldest girl’s joints, so about two weeks ago I switched her over from the Zesty Paws Senior Advanced Mobility chew she used to get. This is the only supplement she gets straight from my hand instead of mixed into food. One soft chew a day, and she takes it like a treat.
The bag is the soft chew version for small to medium dogs under 60 pounds. The label says dogs from 10 to 29 pounds get 1 chew a day for the first 4 to 6 weeks, then 1 every other day after that, so that’s the plan I’m following. It’s only been two weeks, so I’ll share how it’s going after a few more months. What a joint supplement can do for your own dog is a question for your vet.
How They Ate It
I took a quick video while they ate, and these are stills from it. Our oldest girl ate in her teddy bear sweater. With only a few teeth left, shredded chicken and mashed sweet potato are easy for her.
Our mini goldendoodle got the green bowl. In the back, you can see our maltipoo at his own bowl.
Our maltipoo got the pink bowl. You can see the egg, sweet potato and kibble right on top.
Chicken, sweet potato and egg are their three favorite foods, so this was an easy bowl to love.
Thanksgiving Foods I Keep Away From My Dogs
This is the part I’d tell every dog owner before Thanksgiving. Most of what’s on the human table isn’t plain, and the things that make it taste good to us (butter, salt, onion, garlic, sugar) are exactly what our dogs don’t need. This list comes from the AKC and the ASPCA, and it’s the list I go by in my own kitchen. It’s also why the Thanksgiving tablecloth scene in Netflix’s A Dog’s Perfect Christmas made me laugh and wince at the same time, and I talk about it in my A Dog’s Perfect Christmas parents guide.
| Food | Why it stays off their plate |
| Turkey skin and drippings | Very fatty and usually covered in butter or oil, which can upset the stomach and raise the risk of pancreatitis |
| Cooked bones | They can splinter and cause choking or injuries inside |
| Gravy, stuffing and casseroles | Rich and fatty, and often made with onion, garlic or other seasonings |
| Onions, garlic, scallions | Toxic to dogs, even in small amounts |
| Sweet potato casserole | The plain sweet potato is fine, but the marshmallows, brown sugar and butter on top aren’t |
| Pie and baked goods | Sugar and spices, and pumpkin pie filling isn’t the same as plain pumpkin |
| Chocolate and sugar-free desserts | Chocolate is toxic to dogs, and xylitol in sugar-free treats is dangerous for them |
| Grapes and raisins | Toxic to dogs |
| Raw bread dough | It can expand in the stomach |
| Raw batter with eggs | Risk of salmonella |
| Ham | Fatty and salty |
| Alcohol | Never for dogs |
Two more tips from those same lists. Keep the kitchen trash where your dog can’t reach it, because on Thanksgiving it’s full of bones, onions and scraps. And if you want to share something, give it in their own bowl after the meal instead of handing it down from the table.
If you think your dog ate something on this list, call your vet or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at (888) 426-4435. I also keep a list of the fall foods dogs should not eat, which covers a lot of the same holiday ingredients.
How Much Should a Dog Eat on Thanksgiving?
This bowl has their kibble and supplements in it, so I treat it as their meal, not as a snack on top of a meal. That’s the easiest way I’ve found to let them celebrate without overdoing it.
A rule a lot of vets use is the 90/10 rule. About 90% of a dog’s daily calories come from their complete, balanced food, and treats and extras stay at 10% or less. VCA Animal Hospitals explains it well. For small dogs like mine, that 10% goes fast. Half an egg is already a real treat for an 8.6-pound dog.
For reference, on a normal day a meal for our 10-pound boy is about 39 grams of homemade food plus 17 grams of kibble. Weight is something my husband watches closely in our house. If our oldest starts looking a little heavier, treats stop and her walks get longer, holiday or not.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you only take one thing from this, make it this: keep your dog’s Thanksgiving bowl plain and familiar. Use the protein they already eat, cook it with nothing added, and let the bowl be their meal instead of an extra one. That way the holiday is fun for them and quiet for their stomachs.
Next up, I’m making chicken and rice for my dogs for the first time, and I’ll share exactly how it goes. Until then, tell me in the comments what goes in your dog’s Thanksgiving bowl. And if sweet potato is a favorite at your house too, here’s how I cook sweet potato for my dogs.
