Grapes were never known as Toxic until year 2004, so what was the germen Shepherd eating before then? We may never know for sure, but it’s likely that they were eating grapes or grape-like fruit long before comments about their toxicity started coming out. It is possible to find reports of grapes causing illness in cows and sheep even 100 years ago, but this was thought to be because of the vineyard pesticides used at the time.
Later toxicity reports linked generally health problems with certain grape varieties due to high natural toxin levels (eg Concorde), well above those discovered in 1990s research for which concentrations are sometimes required for animals to become ill…