Feeding Dogs A Vegetarian Diet

[Cavalier]

There's something about your posts - this is the second one which has made me say "bullshit"

There are a few things that don't quite add up for me, it's just a vibe I'm getting.

23 January 2006

I am a final year vet student and will be a fully registered vet in less that 10 months

25th September 2009

In all my years being a vet (and injecting around 20 dogs a day with dectomax)

7th October 2009

No Im not a repro specialist, but have been a vet for a long time and work in a very busy practice

Three years isn't that long, lovey.

29th September 2009

We see about 5 cases of Parvo a week

31st October 2009

The risk of Parvo infection where I live is HUGE. I personally treat 10-15 cases a week.

Within one month your Parvo cases have jumped from 5 per week, to 10-15 cases per week.

Dont patronise me. Does it really matter who I am???

You guys honestly need to get a life....

Yes within a month our parvo cases did increase from 5 a week (which is fairly normal) to 10-15. It called an outbreak.

Who cares what anyone says on a public forum anyway??? Seriously - forums are for fun chat and sometimes you grab a bit of info. Surely nobody with half a brain would actually take the advice given on this forum and take it as gospel. Most of it is rubbish anyway. No wonder most people come on this forum a few times then leave. Unless you are part of the natural dog, no vaccinations, BARF diet, brigade you are blasted. What a small minded bunch of people you all are. You can all think what you like - Im out...

Edited November 5, 2009 by Cavalier

[Tim'sMum]

Get a rabbit, dont mess with nature calling her a fruitloop. She has heard it all before and its cruel, so anyone that says this she is not going to give 2 hoots what they think.

But I have said everything I have to say now so to huski good luck

That's a good thing I suspect!

Honestly....what is more cruel? Someone feeding their pet an unnatural diet, which would cause severe health problems....or....telling someone they are a fruitloop/nutjob for even contemplating it?

Perhaps the latter option is more blunt....but then blunt is often the only way to get through to 'fruitloops'.

Dogs don't/won't hunt huh? Tell that to the Blue Tongues that were in my backyard....now residing in lizard heaven due to my 'non-hunting' well fed dog.

Kyliegirl....if you ever did decide to live on a diet of cabbage and fish, you are right that you might look OK....but you would probably have no friends! Phew!

[Guest bigdogg]

back peddling.... hahahahahaha

[WreckitWhippet]

There's something about your posts - this is the second one which has made me say "bullshit"

There are a few things that don't quite add up for me, it's just a vibe I'm getting.

23 January 2006

I am a final year vet student and will be a fully registered vet in less that 10 months

25th September 2009

In all my years being a vet (and injecting around 20 dogs a day with dectomax)

7th October 2009

No Im not a repro specialist, but have been a vet for a long time and work in a very busy practice

Three years isn't that long, lovey.

29th September 2009

We see about 5 cases of Parvo a week

31st October 2009

The risk of Parvo infection where I live is HUGE. I personally treat 10-15 cases a week.

Within one month your Parvo cases have jumped from 5 per week, to 10-15 cases per week.

Dont patronise me. Does it really matter who I am???

You guys honestly need to get a life....

Yes within a month our parvo cases did increase from 5 a week (which is fairly normal) to 10-15. It called an outbreak.

Who cares what anyone says on a public forum anyway??? Seriously - forums are for fun chat and sometimes you grab a bit of info. Surely nobody with half a brain would actually take the advice given on this forum and take it as gospel. Most of it is rubbish anyway. No wonder most people come on this forum a few times then leave. Unless you are part of the natural dog, no vaccinations, BARF diet, brigade you are blasted. What a small minded bunch of people you all are. You can all think what you like - Im out...

For the record: there isn't an owner or a breeder on here who advocates NO vaccination

[Nekhbet]

cows, sheep, chickens, goats, fish etc are PREY animals. They are eaten by PREDATORS like the felids and canids. We raise them to be eaten, and in the wild they are eaten. If you dont want to fine but I could never stop a predetor eating meat if it physically can.

Cats are obligate carnivores. They HAVE to have protein from meat sources to survive. There are some amino acids only from bacterial meat sources as there are some only from plant sources.

Dogs are omnivorous in order to survive in the environments they evolved in. The canids will eat plant sources of food but take a look, they look a little poor for it. Bears wanting to fatten up for winter hit the animal protein, not the salad bar even though plant sources make up their diet. Also they have no amylase in their saliva that is true - they have no need to start the digestion process of plant carbohydrates in their mouth. Remember too plant proteins and animal based proteins are very different as to how much the animal can actually digest. Why feed your cat soy, corn, rice with powdered additives when you can chuck it a chicken wing which is also good for its teeth. Dogs on a low digestion diet will have their stomach acid reduced, their gut function lowers and you see poor digestion from it. A dog surviving and a dog thriving are two different things. There are some dogs out there who cannot tolerate meat, frankly they should be culled from the breeding pool.

Cav if your dog is allergic I would be looking into wheat which the vegan food has none. As for artificial rubbish not all dog foods have it in there. My dogs go balmy without fresh meaty bones to gnaw, there are no bad teeth and everyone has iron guts as their GI tract is being stimulated properly. Canned and highly processed food will not do that, lazy guts means lazy immune system. Honestly if you're a vet and cannot handle meat juices on your dogs ears how do you operate? Blood, guts, vomit, poo and all manner of secretions and smells are part of daily life ... or are you like one vet I worked with who gagged and bolted at the mere mention of poo or vomit.

[chuckandsteve]

People really like to fight here dont they. Read the posts, no one ever said it was ideal, just that a dog can thrive on it, I am sure everyones dogs get something that is not ideal for them its not a perfect world.

Also several people have been talking about their dogs eating poo... Is that ideal? No but it happens and they live happy and full lives.

I also said I was probably wrong about the hunting not my specialty so whats the problem there? Get over it a discussion in any form is about getting informed not abusing people.

And let me ask is what a dog would hunt naturally their ideal diet? No its what they can catch

I would say anyone feeding their dog a vege diet and working really hard to balance it is doing a lot better than those who feed "you'll love coles" but I dont see you attacking them.

[LDR]

Haven't read the whole thread, just what we do at home slightly OT .... Timmy gets BARF for one meal a day and chook necks for the other (he has sardines, raw eggs and the odd bit of natural yoghurt or cheese as a treat).

So essentially a raw diet.

We only just realised though pretty much ALL of his treats are vego Not deliberately, but when we want to do some traing pre dinner (ie sit calmly, do not beg for food, respect the kitchen boundaries) our training treats are raw veg (whatever we are prepping for tea - he LOVES cucumber, we even leave a half a chopped one aside for training treats when we have one).

And each morning he happily slurps some of my green smoothie dregs (I have one for breakie each day - blended baby spinach, banana, couple of other pieces of fruit, sometimes parsley and always psyllium husk) he LOVES it and would drink a bowl full if allowed.

I wouldn't cut meat out of his diet all together as I think dogs do need it, but I could easily feed him fruits and veg and grain (he gets the odd sneaky slice of toast at my parents) and he wouldn't complain. How well he'd do is anyone's guess.

EFS

Edited November 5, 2009 by LilDogsRule

[WreckitWhippet]

I'm not sure what "thrive " means to some people.

To the experienced breeder, exhibitor and owner, "thrive" usually means along the lines of doing exceptionally well, looking glorious in coat, having excellent muscle tone etc and in the case of babies they are active, nice and plump, glossy.

There is a difference between " thriving" and merely "getting by" in a dog. I doubt there are many if any dogs that truly "thrive" on a vegetarian diet.

[Nekhbet]

I would say anyone feeding their dog a vege diet and working really hard to balance it is doing a lot better than those who feed "you'll love coles" but I dont see you attacking them.

we dont touch that with 10 foot poles either

I found something even scarier ... vegan ferret diet ;) I think my lot would go mad without fresh meat or a rabbit head

[Diva]

People really like to fight here dont they.

No, mostly they like to discuss with enthusiasm and commitment. And call people out when they claim expertise they don't really have or make contradictory statements.

I kind of like all that, it's sometimes annoying but much better than the unthinking superficiality you get on a lot of forums. There's some of that here too, but you can never rely on everyone agreeing with you - which is great

And let me ask is what a dog would hunt naturally their ideal diet? No its what they can catch

That's debatable too ;) When prey and predator have co-evolved I think the prey and other natural resources in the shared environment probably is the ideal diet. Dogs haven't 'evolved' in the same sense, given it's been controlled by man for the past couple of hundred years, but some of the animals my dogs were bred to hunt are feral species in Australia and I'd bet they'd go pretty close to an ideal diet if I could get the whole animal.

I would say anyone feeding their dog a vege diet and working really hard to balance it is doing a lot better than those who feed "you'll love coles" but I dont see you attacking them.

Anyone working at it is doing better than those that don't probably. And don't worry, the supermarket food fans get a few comments when they post too - but mostly those posters say they can't afford more than that, and that draws more empathy and practical suggestions.

I hope dogs can do well on vegetarian diets because some vegetarians are going to put them on one regardless, and I don't want those animals to suffer. But I'd be much more reassured by several 'thriving' generations to prove it works. Good luck with it.

Edited November 5, 2009 by Diva

[Jed]

hmm, and that's the problem. Would probably not be detrimental results initially, but the damage would occur years down the track in the form of problems with the pancreas, liver, heart, intestines, etc. And Pottingers cats certainly proved that the damage goes on in the following generations.

Lots of incorrect things we do to our dogs show no problems for years. Some dogs are fine, a lot are not.

[LDR]

I found something even scarier ... vegan ferret diet I think my lot would go mad without fresh meat or a rabbit head

;) I've always had an irrational fear of chickens and ferrets (hey what can I say I'm a bit weird ) and now knowing they eat rabit heads I'm terrified of the lil critters!

[Steve]

It is crazy to assume that dogs have evolved to be able to eat these kinds of diets in a short amount of time. Evolution of physiological and anatomical issues take hundreds of thousands, if not, millions of years.

Dogs are not omnivores by choice – sure they eat other things because they are opportunists and they will eat anything to survive but they have evolved as and still are very much carnivores. All of the dog’s traits have allowed it to survive and thrive on carnivorous diets for millions of years. Domestic dogs' ancestors roamed the earth millions of years before the appearance of the first human! The Timber Wolf is said to be the domestic dog's closest living relative. Their diet is comprised of 55% white-tailed deer, 16% beavers, 10% snowshoe hares, 19% rodents and other small mammals. The wolf and the wild dog ingest almost the entire carcass of the prey they catch. This means that there is a small amount of pre-digested vegetation eaten when the stomach (tripe) of an herbivore is eaten. Given the choice, feral domestic dogs eat small animals as their main source of food. During hard climate etc when meat is harder to come by, wolves and wild dogs become more opportunistic, eating eggs, fish, fermenting fruit, seeds, nuts and grasses to supplement the meat that they are able to catch. This is another survival tactic but dogs can’t sustain themselves forever on these limited food sources.

Let’s look at the science

The dog's anatomy and physiology clearly shows it as a predator and it can’t move its jaw sideways as animals can which choose to eat plant foods.

This is important and it can be related to commercial food as well as vegan.

The major issues today are the ones relating to the digestive system. The stomach is large and muscular, making it possible to eat large amounts of food in a small time span. The stomach is highly acidic, which allows for ingestion of whole bone pieces that can be broken down into a powder-like substance quickly. This acidity also allows a dog to eat large amounts of harmful bacteria without being affected. This provides dogs with the ability to eat rotting carcasses in times of need, a good survival mechanism. The pancreas of the dog is much smaller than a human's and only contains a fraction of the enzymes that we produce. This means that the food items that a dog eats must come complete with the active enzymes needed to bind with stomach acid and break down food for assimilation.

In dogs, meat enables this process to occur naturally. Cooked food and grain are highly indigestible for any canine species, since cooked food contains only dead enzymes and dogs don’t make the enzymes needed to break down grain. For example, Amalayze is found in the saliva of humans and is used to break down starch in the mouth. Canine saliva does not contain enzymes and is only used as a lubricant for swallowing large pieces of food. The intestine and the bowel of a carnivore are much shorter than a human's, allowing for quick absorption and elimination of food and waste products so bacteria don’t get a foothold. Carnivores have also evolved to absorb almost all of the water content from prey food. This allows a dog on a meat diet to be hydrated for long periods without needing as much water. A dog on a meat diet takes in heaps less water in comparison to one on commercial food.

They have no nutritional requirement for grain. Dogs do not produce enzymes to digest grain or obtain nutrients from it. This is a scientific fact.

The food sources present in a vegetarian diet may be able to be made to have the nutrients [vitamins and minerals , proteins etc but the digestion and absorption and assimilation is completely different. The dogs are not actually absorbing adequate nutrients from the food they are eating. There are also no long term studies conducted for how these foods affect dogs over their entire lifetime. Usually test trails are short, under 1 year and are conducted on younger animals.

The really - really big deal is the Enzymes . Enzymes are substances which make life possible. They are needed for every chemical reaction that occurs in a mammal’s body. Without enzymes, no activity at all can take place. No vitamins, minerals, or hormones can do any work without enzymes. There is no combination of proteins or any combination of amino acids or any other substance which will give enzyme activity. There are proteins present in enzymes. However, they serve only as carriers of the enzyme activity factors. Mammals inherit a certain enzyme potential at birth.

This is a limited supply of activity factors or life force which must last a lifetime. It's just as if you inherited a certain amount of money. If the movement is all one way - all spending and no income - you will run out of money. The faster the use up of the supply of enzyme activity, the quicker it will run out. Regardless of the species, the faster the metabolic rate, the shorter the lifespan - This is a scientific fact .

Other things being equal, dogs live as their body has enzyme activity factors to make enzymes from. When it gets to the point that they can't make certain enzymes, then their life ends. Whenever a food is COOKED, the enzymes in it are 100% destroyed.

If the right enzymes are in the food the dog eats, they would do some or even a considerable part of the work of digestion by themselves. However, when the dog eats cooked, or plant food, this forces the body itself to make the enzymes needed for digestion. This depletes the body's limited enzyme capacity if the body is overburdened to supply many enzymes to the gastric juice, pancreatic juice and intestinal juice, then it must use what it would use for the production of enzymes for other purposes.

How can the dog’s body also make enough enzymes to run the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs, muscles and other organs and tissues?

Because the pancreas of the dog is so small, it has to work really hard to break down plant foods. This means that pancreatic enzymes are depleted quickly and used to break down food with inadequate nutritional content. In turn, the body uses another survival tactic: it begins to absorb enzymes and other essential nutrients from its own tissues to maintain the equilibrium of the body. This can only remain in balance for so long and it will result by a shortening of the life span.

Plant food is also systemically dehydrating to dogs, as their bodies are designed to absorb water from their prey. To compensate, they have to drink large amounts of water to stay hydrated. This puts extra strain on the kidneys.

Raw Meat, tripe, bone, organ are filled with the enzymes needed to properly digest and assimilate nutrients. Raw meat diets have fed the order Carnivore for 60 million years.

[Jed]

Steve ;)

[sas]

I fed Dante on a Vegetarian diet for a little while but notbecause I'm a Vegan....I'm a Meataterian LOL

Dante was fed this diet due to trialing different things for his allergies.

We used the Royal Canin kibble, I did a fair bit of reasearch on it and deemed it scientifically suitable for him for a short term trial.

What is dissapointing here are a bunch of people who know very little on this given subject and turn their opinion into fact...tutt tutt...you only make yourself look silly.

Thanks Steve for the educational point of view.

Edited November 6, 2009 by sas

[Diva]

Dante was fed this died

;)

(Sorry, couldn't resist the silly typo joke)

I forgot about the Royal Canine version, if I had to go vego for the dogs I'd go with one like that from an established premium dog food company.

[tomas]

Raw Meat, tripe, bone, organ are filled with the enzymes needed to properly digest and assimilate nutrients. Raw meat diets have fed the order Carnivore for 60 million years.

What he said ;)

My 5 Vizslas are about to sit down to half a raw possum each,all organs intact and some green tripe.

Yesterday it was a whole chicken each.

Tomorrow,who knows,will see what I can get. Maybe a bowl of ox heart as they have had some bone the last 2 days and I hardly ever go 3 days with bony meals.

My point is,it is'nt hard . I work on 80% meat,10 % bone,10% organs of which 5 % is liver.

I took in a litter brother to one of my boys at 14 months,he had terrible skin allerigies and was allergic to everything,his brother I raised did'nt,he had been raised on dry and canned food,of various kinds. All dermatology tests his original owners did said he was allergic to all meats and dust and blah blah,they were going to put him down. Nup,we will have him I said. Well within about 6 weeks this dog looked normal and has never had a skin issue since,he is nearly 9 and asleep next to me after running 1 1/2 hours at the beach.

IMO feeding a dog a vegetarian diet is abuse! Tell the lady at work that!

[Kissindra]

I didn't know RC had a vego diet, how interesting! I see it says :Canine VEGETARIAN FORMULA™ dry and can diets are formulated to meet the

nutritional levels established by the AAFCO Dog Food Nutrient Profiles for adult

maintenance.

Someone needs to update the veganpets website then as this is what they say:

"Currently there is no other Vegan pet food on the market that is nutritionally complete in any where in the world. (U.S.A. has a pre mix for sale that is used to make your own food.) There are a few companies in America claiming to have vegetarian food available but could not be considered to be nutritionally complete because it is not manufactured by extrusion. None have undergone feeding trials. None meets the standards determined by AFFCO...."

still waiting to get the info on the veganpets kibble food trials and research.

Edited November 6, 2009 by Kissindra

[raz]

IMO feeding a dog a vegetarian diet is abuse! Tell the lady at work that!

I have to agree. Check out street dogs in India. They survive by eating leftover rice and lentils. Not what you'd call a healthy looking dog by any standards, let alone porked up western standards. Show and pet dogs in India dont get vego standards shoved down their throats.

[pie]

I'm not sure what "thrive " means to some people.

To the experienced breeder, exhibitor and owner, "thrive" usually means along the lines of doing exceptionally well, looking glorious in coat, having excellent muscle tone etc and in the case of babies they are active, nice and plump, glossy.

There is a difference between " thriving" and merely "getting by" in a dog. I doubt there are many if any dogs that truly "thrive" on a vegetarian diet.

Agree, I think a few people in this thread are getting the terms mixed up.

--------------------------------

I personally don't think a vegetarian diet is right unless it is required for health issues, a lot of the posters in this thread have already said what I was going to say.