Easter Weekend With Your Pet: Celebrating Safely With Raw-Friendly Alternatives

Easter Weekend With Your Pet: Celebrating Safely With Raw-Friendly Alternatives

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Easter weekend is one of the highlights of the year. Long walks through bluebell woods, lazy lunches in the garden, the house full of family — and somewhere in the middle of it all, a dog who is utterly convinced that everything on the table was prepared specifically for them.

But Easter is also one of the riskiest weekends of the year for pets. Chocolate in every room. Rich food on every surface. Well-meaning relatives slipping treats under the table. A moment's distraction is all it takes.

The good news? Keeping your dog safe doesn't mean leaving them out of the fun. With the right preparation, your dog can have their own Easter — a proper one, complete with activities, adventures, treats, and even a little travel. Here's everything you need to make it happen.

Why Easter is a High-Risk Weekend for Dogs

It's not just the chocolate (though that's the big one). Easter tends to mean:

  • More food around the house than usual — on low tables, in bags, left out after meals
  • More people, including guests who may not know what dogs can and can't eat
  • Richer cooking — roasts, gravies, stuffings, and baked goods full of ingredients that don't agree with dogs
  • Treats in unusual places — Easter eggs hidden around the garden or living room, well within a dog's reach

None of this is reason to panic. It's just reason to be a little more switched on than usual for a few days.

What Your Dog CAN Have This Easter

Here's where the weekend gets properly fun. Your dog doesn't need to sit on the sidelines while everyone else feasts — they just need their own version of the spread.

A person feeds a golden retriever from a blue bowl on stairs, with a basket of toys and dog food nearby.

Their Favourite Raw Meal, Served With a Bit of Ceremony

Sometimes the best Easter treat is exactly what your dog always has — but made to feel like an occasion. Serve their usual Nutriment complete raw meal in a new bowl. Add a little topper. Let them eat alongside the family. Dogs live in the moment, and a bit of ceremony goes a long way.

If you'd like to introduce something a little different, a rotation of proteins across the long weekend works brilliantly. Duck on Good Friday, lamb on Easter Sunday — same nutritional quality your dog is used to, but with the variety that keeps mealtimes exciting.

A bag of Nutriment Lamb Bunnies dog treats on a purple background with treats scattered around.

Natural Treats as Easter Egg Alternatives

If you want to give your dog the experience of finding something special — without the chocolate — natural treats are the answer. Nutriment Natural Treats offers a wide range of single-ingredient, high-quality chews and snacks that are genuinely exciting for dogs.

Hide a few around the garden. Let them sniff them out. Same energy as an Easter egg hunt, entirely dog-appropriate — and more on that below.

Carrots, cucumber, green beans, and broccoli on a white countertop with kitchen items in the background.

Raw Vegetables as Easter Snacks

Several dog-safe vegetables make brilliant low-calorie Easter snacks, and most are already in the kitchen this time of year:

  • Carrots — crunchy, naturally sweet, and brilliant for teeth
  • Cucumber — hydrating and mild, great for warm Easter days
  • Green beans — high in fibre and usually a real hit
  • Broccoli — fine in small amounts and genuinely nutritious

Serve them raw and plain — no seasoning, no dips, nothing added. Just the vegetable itself.

Shiba Inu lying on a blanket outdoors, chewing on a bone-shaped treat.

A Natural Dental Treat to Round Off the Day

A good natural chew at the end of Easter Sunday gives your dog something satisfying to work on, supports dental health, and keeps them occupied while you tackle the washing up. AniForte's Dental Snack or Nutriment Natural Treats Yak Bar is a natural option that earns its place in the Easter treat drawer.

Easter Activities You Can Do With Your Dog

Easter weekend is four days long. That's four full days of walks, adventures, and shared experiences — and dogs are built for every single one of them.

1. An Easter Egg Hunt — Dog Edition

One of the most joyful things you can do with your dog over Easter costs almost nothing. Take a selection of natural treats — small pieces of dried meat, fish skin, or similar single-ingredient snacks — and hide them around the garden or a room in the house before letting your dog in.

Watch them use their nose. Let them work for it. Most dogs will be completely absorbed for 20–30 minutes, and the mental stimulation involved is worth more than a 30-minute walk in terms of tiredness. You can make it harder as they get better — burying treats under pots, tucking them into cardboard tubes, hiding them behind flowerpots.

It's enrichment, it's fun, and it costs a handful of treats.

2. A Bluebell Walk or Nature Trail

Late Easter falls squarely in the season when British woodland is at its most spectacular. Bluebells, wild garlic, birdsong — dogs come alive in these environments. Search for National Trust properties, local nature reserves, or Ancient Woodland near you and build an Easter walk around them.

A few practical notes:

  • Wild garlic is toxic to dogs. It grows abundantly in woodland in spring, often in large drifts that look tempting. Keep your dog close and on lead in heavy growth areas, or train a reliable "leave it" before you go.
  • Check the site's dog policy — most National Trust sites allow dogs on leads, but some areas have seasonal restrictions during nesting season.
  • Take water. Dogs overheat faster than we expect, especially on longer walks after winter.

3. A Dog-Friendly Pub Lunch

Easter Sunday lunch doesn't have to mean staying home. Thousands of pubs across the UK are dog-friendly, and many have gardens coming into their best at this time of year. Use apps like Bring Fido or the dog-friendly filter on Google Maps to find options near you.

A few tips for pub visits with dogs:

  • Bring a mat or blanket so your dog has a defined settle spot
  • Take their own water bowl — not all pubs provide them
  • Bring a chew to keep them settled during the meal
  • Ask to be seated away from the kitchen door — high-traffic areas make settling harder

4. A Photography Walk

Easter weekend light is some of the best of the year — long, golden, and soft. Take your dog somewhere beautiful and bring a camera or your phone. Bluebell woods, coastal paths, open moorland — early morning walks in particular produce images you'll genuinely want to keep.

This doubles as enrichment for your dog (new smells, new environments) and something genuinely enjoyable for you.

5. Garden Games and Enrichment at Home

If the weather turns — as it often does at Easter — or if you have younger dogs or seniors who aren't up for long adventures, there's plenty you can do at home.

  • Snuffle mats — fill them with small treats and let your dog forage
  • Frozen raw food Kong or lick mat — portion out some of their raw meal, mix with a little safe veg, freeze overnight, and give it as an Easter "gift" on Sunday morning
  • New toy introduction — Easter is as good an excuse as any to rotate in a new toy or tug rope
  • Training session — 10–15 minutes of positive training is more tiring than most people realise, and it deepens your bond

Travelling With Your Dog at Easter

Easter is one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, and more and more people are choosing to take their dogs with them rather than leave them in kennels. Whether you're heading to a cottage in the Lake District, visiting family in another part of the country, or catching a ferry to Europe, a little preparation makes all the difference.

Planning Your Route

Build in breaks. Dogs should stop every 2 hours on long journeys — not because the law requires it (though Highway Code guidance recommends it), but because it genuinely reduces stress and motion sickness. Service stations with grass areas work well; so do quiet lay-bys with safe verges.

Avoid peak Easter traffic where possible. Good Friday afternoon and Easter Sunday evening are typically the worst windows. If you can travel Thursday evening or early Easter Saturday morning, your dog (and you) will thank you.

Map out dog-friendly stops in advance. Apps like Bring Fido allow you to search for dog-friendly cafes, parks, and rest stops along a route.

Keeping Your Dog Safe and Comfortable in the Car

Use a secure travel crate or a crash-tested harness. Unrestrained dogs are a safety risk for everyone in the vehicle and, under Rule 57 of the Highway Code, you can be held liable for driving without due care if your pet is unrestrained.

Never leave your dog in a parked car, even for a few minutes in mild weather. Temperatures in a parked car rise far faster than most people expect — and Easter sunshine is warm enough to be dangerous.

Line the boot or crate with familiar bedding. A scent your dog knows is calming in an unfamiliar environment.

Keep their travel kit accessible, not buried in the boot: water, bowl, lead, a favourite treat, poo bags, and a light towel.

Feeding Your Dog When Travelling

This is one of the trickiest aspects of travelling with a raw-fed dog, and it's worth planning ahead.

Pre-portion meals before you leave. Freeze individual meal portions in zip-lock bags the week before your trip. They stay frozen during travel and defrost in the fridge at your destination — no cold chain worries, no mess, no improvising.

Use an insulated cool bag or travel cooler for the journey itself. A quality cool bag with ice packs will keep raw food at a safe temperature for 12–16 hours, which covers most UK road trips comfortably.

If raw feeding isn't practical for the trip — if you're camping, staying somewhere without refrigeration, or making a very long journey — Nutriment Freeze Dried Food or Gently Steamed offers gently cooked, shelf-stable options that maintain nutritional integrity without the cold chain requirement. No compromise on quality; practical for the road.

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What to Do If Your Dog Eats Something They Shouldn't

Even with the best precautions, accidents happen. If your dog gets into something they shouldn't:

  1. Stay calm and identify what they ate — and roughly how much
  2. Contact your vet immediately — don't wait for symptoms, especially with chocolate, raisins, or xylitol
  3. Keep packaging if you can — it helps the vet identify exact ingredients quickly
  4. Don't try to make them vomit unless a vet specifically instructs you to

The Animal Poison Line (animalpoisonline.co.uk) is available 24/7 for urgent advice outside of vet hours.

Happy Easter From Nutriment

A brilliant Easter for your dog doesn't require much — just a little awareness, a few smart choices, and the kind of treats and activities that are actually made for them.

From everyone at Nutriment: we hope the walks are long, the accommodation is welcoming, the traffic is kind, and your chocolate stays safely out of reach.

Looking for something special to put in your dog's Easter bowl? Explore our complete raw range and our natural treats range — or discover more from Natural Instinct, Nutriment Natural Treats, and AniForte for everything your dog needs this Easter.