Vegetarian Dogs

[shmoo]

im a vego, and some people argue that because i still feed my dogs meat, that i am not a vego at all. but it doesnt seem right to me to take meat out of a dogs diet.

i came across this V-Dog.

Any thoughts or anybody have any stories?

[cactus]

I have been vego for a quarter century- I didn't force my diet on my kids and I sure as shyte wouldn't force it on a dog or cat :rolleyes:

A lot of *people* dont do well on a vego diet, I'd hate to think what those poor animals suffer.

I'd have to add that it can be hard enuff to get a well balanced, wholesome meat diet that your dog thrives on without going to all the unneccesary trouble of meat-replacements and the extra supplementation that would require. But hey, if it floats people's boats and they DO go to all the trouble of ensuring that the meals have the necessary nutrition in them, then each to their own. But to those who say you aren't vego yourself, they are just fanatics who cant separate themselves from their animals.

I'd heard soy was bad for dogs- can anyone clarify that?

For myself, I avoid giving my dogs grains at all lol.

[NorthernStarPits]

Ingredients:

Wheat, Whole Corn, Soybean Meal, Wheat Middlings, Corn Gluten Meal, Soybean Oil, Beet Pulp, Pasta, Rice, Peas, Dicalcium Phosphate, Brewers Yeast, Whole Linseed, Salt, Calcium Carbonate, Fructooligosaccharides, Rosemary, Parsley, Mineral Supplement (Iron sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Manganese Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Calcium Iodate, Cobalt Carbonate, Sodium Selenite), Choline Chloride, Vitamin Supplement (Vitamin E supplement, Vitamin A Acetate, Niacin, Vitamin B12 supplement, Biotin, Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin, Vitamin D3 supplement, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite, Folic Acid), Mixed Tocopherols

Guaranteed Analysis:

Crude Protein (min) 20 %; Crude Fat (min) 8 % ; Crude Fiber (max) 4 % ; Moisture (max) 10 % ; Ash (max) 8 % ; Calcium (min) 1% ;

Phosphorous (min) 0.8% ; Sodium (min) 0.5 % ; Copper (min) 10 mg/kg ; Vitamin A (min) 12,500 IU/kg ; Vitamin D (min) 1,250 IU/kg

Vitamin E (min) 70 IU/kg

Thats the bit i like from the site,it seems to be quite balanced in nutrition(not that i'm a nutriguru or anything) and thats all important to me, i'm sure dogs can live quite well on a veg diet so long as it meets all the nutritional needs, just like people,and just like some people that live almost completly on meat and organs like eskimos ect ,dogs live just fine with that too aslong as they get the heart kidney liver lung ect for the vits and minerals

so i guess its just a personal choice for your pet but should be based on nutrition.

[cactus]

Ingredients: Fructooligosaccharides,

luv that word- I wonder if it tastes as good as it sounds.

[morgan]

I'd heard soy was bad for dogs- can anyone clarify that?

For myself, I avoid giving my dogs grains at all lol.

Soy is highly toxic to people and all animals! It should not be consumed unless in a fermented form like soy sauce or miso - there are too many natural toxins in it to be fed in any other form (inc tofu). It is especially toxic to the thyroid in any animal or person, and implicated in quite a number of different cancers. Feeding soy in the diet almost decimated one zoo's cheetah breeding program, as they rapidly became infertile, esp the next generation, and destroyed many fanciers bird breeding programs over several generations. eg crimson rosellas take 18 months to colour up, yet those fed with some soy in their diet colour up in less than 3 - sends their hormones haywire!

As for myself, I don't even believe in people eating grains - try to avoid them where possible.

[iceni]

I recall a few years back a couple being prosecuted for cruelty in the states for feeding their dog a vegetarian diet. Dogs are carnivores, ie: large canine teeth, jaws that move up and down only designed to tear not chew and short intestines to dump off quickly all that co-carcinogen toxic stuff that is left over from a meat diet.

Give a dog a ham and salad sandwich and the lettuce and tomato is more often than not spat onto the floor.

We are vego's too, we give our dogs soy products, or rather they steal them off the counter while our backs are turned and it does not seem to have harmed them at all. Whilst we find it repusive to feed one type of animal to another we cannot impose our value judgements on them by not feeding what they were designed to eat. They primarily require protein and fat for energy, we primarily require carbs and sugars.

Our parrots love the soy milk out of the O/H's breakfast bowl in the morning and queue up for a spoonful ! that does not seem to have harmed them either

Its been interesting to note that one of our girls that is pregnant at the moment seems to have sugar cravings, she goes into a right froth anytime there is a peice of cake or something sugary around, so we give it to her and then she settles down quite happily.

I could think of a lot worse things to eat than soy!!

Morgan,

could you please tell me where you got your "toxic soy" info from, I would be most interested to read it, Canola yes, there is no such thing as a "Canola Plant" its chemically altered Rape Seed that is very toxic. Our cockatoo's are very healthy and our Sun Conure has outstanding colours, I can supply a pic if you like and they all regularly have soy milk.

And why would anyone feed Soy to cheetahs???

Edited May 1, 2006 by iceni

[morgan]

And why would anyone feed Soy to cheetahs???

Same reason it goes into dog and human foods - cheap alternative source of protein. Apparently it was fed world-wide to cheetahs in zoos and caused problems.

Here is a link to a well respected site giving details of studies on animals fed soy.

Soy and animals

[stand. poodle fan]

My dogs tap dance for meals with bones in them - a lot less enthusiasm for dry food meals - their preference is clear.

You may be able to meet nutritional requirements without meat but what keeps teeth and gums healthy plus the absolute joy they get from chowing down on a bone which definitely meets some canine instincts - a marrow bone can keep them busy for hours.

[Sagittarian]

I'm a vegetarian - have been since .... um, too scared to say as it reveals my age. LOL.

My dogs - being OMNIvores, have a meat based diet, with veg, grains, and fruit. Even if I had a cat, which is a CARNivore, I would offer more than simply meat.

Having a giant breed (like iceni), I have to be certain that the individual needs are properly met. I must be doing okay, as my dogs have wonderful results as far as health, particularly heart, joint, and longevity.

I cannot understand a non grain diet, and one of the things that really concerns me about EVO (astronomically high protein and little carbs) is that dogs are not Atkins recipients. Grains are not some evil additive - in a properly balanced diet they offer prolonged energy - whether for dogs or humans.

My husband - bless him - is a meat eater, and I've never tried to change that. My boys also eat meat, but their overall diet is really balanced, with a big emphasis on non meat proteins and amino acids.

I did once sell a pup to a Seventh Day Adventist who raised him a a pure vego - at the age of 12 months he really was not in the physical league of his siblings, who were super fit and healthy.

Personal beliefs are all very well, but when we take on the welfare of others - whether they be human, canine, feline, whatever - we must, and I do mean MUST, take full responsibility for their total wellbeing, based upon their individual needs, not our philosophical needs.

Sorry.

(Ducking)

Sags

[shmoo]

these are some really good points

keep 'em coming!

[morgan]

I cannot understand a non grain diet, and one of the things that really concerns me about EVO (astronomically high protein and little carbs) is that dogs are not Atkins recipients. Grains are not some evil additive - in a properly balanced diet they offer prolonged energy - whether for dogs or humans.

My concern about grains is that in their present form they have only been around for a few hundred years. In any form they have only been around for 10,000 years, when agriculture first started due to the pressures of increasing population on limited numbers of game to be hunted. Compare this to 60 or 70,000 years of evolution, with humans eating meat, nuts, fruit, eggs, vegetables. Dogs, as they have been associated with humans for so many millennia, would have had a similar diet, so digestions all round were not geared to grain consumption, and carbs were only eaten in the form of fruit and vegetables. Many people today still cannot handle the vastly increased amount of gluten to be found in many grains, as this has has only occurred in the last century or so with selective plant breeding.

So, while people and dogs are, to varying degrees, omnivores, there is an evolutionary bias to meat consumption - indeed vegans have no adequate source of vit B12 without animal protein and their brains suffer as a result - the synthetic forms are inadequate, and the plant based forms are too difficult for the body to absorb. If vegans' health suffers, I don't see why a dog's wouldn't.

[Keen]

I once visited some people (friends of friends) who had an old English sheepdog which lived on a vegetarian diet. The dog was 3 years old, and all it did was eat and sleep. I have never seen such a lethargic dog. And the poos it did were MASSIVE and the stink unbelievable! It ate 3 huge pots of vegetable matter a day, but I could still feel how thin it was. It died the next year. The owners were so smug about his vegetarian diet being good for him, that I wanted to phone them up and 'have a few words' when we heard he had died, but my husband wouldn't let me.

I have a poodle who will NOT eat vegetables. Any vegie chunks in her food are left licked clean and left in the bottom of the bowl. If I mash the veggies up really small, she just won't eat it at all. Now I know you are all thinking "she'll eat when she gets hungry!" Well, no, she doesn't. The longest she went was 10 days without eating when we went away and the kennel she was staying at decided she would eat their food, not the food I had provided (which was vegie free). She lost over 20% of her body weight, and she was always a lean dog. It nearly killed her. I managed to get her back to a reasonable weight by feeding cooked chicken mince and rice, and cooked beef mince and pasta. She is 15+ now and still won't eat vegies, but I figure if she's lived this long I'm not going to try to force her to eat vegies. She has access to a good quality dry food which she will eat 'occasionally', and she is still a very active dog.

[shmoo]

last night one of my boys ate the boiled brocolli and califlower from my dinner! i was interested to see if he would like it and he did. there was no sauce or spices added on it. (btw he didnt eat much)

[Keen]

I should add, shmoo, that our OTHER dogs would eat apples from the apple trees (we had a commercial orchard), walnuts, almonds, peaches, figs, as well as peas and strawberries (my strawberries ) from the vegie garden (if we forgot to shut the gate), corn and blackberries. I guess this supplemented their normal dog diet. :rolleyes: They both lived to ripe old ages and were healthy and active to the end.

[shmoo]

i had a small strawberry plant once... i came home to find it stripped of all its strawberrys! my boys ate them!

[iceni]

Our saints like some fruit and veg too, they also like ice cream, cake, donuts and the like but those items were not and are still not free roaming either solitary or in herds around the planet. One of our girls has a passion for cherries and macadamia nuts - I applaud her taste but not the cost!! Nuts / berries / grains / roots / tubers and the odd carcass have been man food for a very long time. Life spans have increased on a healthy, balanced diet, sanitation and medicine, in developed countries we are now dying young from diseases of excess not deficiency, as in the past.

Lack of Vit B12 or inability to utilise it due to lack of intrinsic factor causes pernicious anaemia as well as neural damage and yes vegans can and do succumb to this, but the source gained from veggies is usually from the traces of animal fertilisers left on the veggies and not necessarliy the veggie itself and we do only require miniscule amounts. Alcohol also knocks out the intrinsic factor secreted in the stomach for uptake of some of the B vitamins - which is why alcoholics suffer some of the same symptoms as those with P/A - but do without good ol' EtOH? heck that would involve yet another major lifestyle change so we pays our money and takes our chances.

Our saints are not too impressed with raw meat but certainly hang around the dinner table for some of what we are having. Food animals are raised in such conditions that automatically creates an unhealthy food source for us and our canine friends. I got jacked off with the constant gastritis in the saints from human grade chicken carcasses and lamb flaps and bones that we used to feed. We tried the BARF diet and thats exactly what our saints did LOL it obviously works for some but not in our case.

These days they get a good quality kibble, a processed veterinary formulated meat roll and each morning they get something different on breakfast from the following menu:

Salmon

Boiled Egg (from "my girls")

Cheese

Tuna

Yoghurt (with cultures)

Sardines in soya oil (naughty us)

And on the seventh day usually an Anzac Biscuit or a Donut for elevenses

they think its just the greatest!! but NO supplements EVER !

anyhoo this was not the original topic so I shall beat a hasty retreat ;-)

Morgan,

maybe the cheetah's should be grateful they did not have ground up lion left overs in their diet too or we could see the advent of large feline spongiform encephalopathy - I say leave them in the wild where they belong, then just maybe they might be more happy to breed and be able to eat what they are supposed to

now I am definately off - I have to hand over half my apple donut to the preganant one or she will spit all over me and the furniture !

[Ibizan]

Our saints like some fruit and veg too, they also like ice cream, cake, donuts and the like but those items were not and are still not free roaming either solitary or in herds around the planet. One of our girls has a passion for cherries and macadamia nuts - I applaud her taste but not the cost!! Nuts / berries / grains / roots / tubers and the odd carcass have been man food for a very long time. Life spans have increased on a healthy, balanced diet, sanitation and medicine, in developed countries we are now dying young from diseases of excess not deficiency, as in the past.

Lack of Vit B12 or inability to utilise it due to lack of intrinsic factor causes pernicious anaemia as well as neural damage and yes vegans can and do succumb to this, but the source gained from veggies is usually from the traces of animal fertilisers left on the veggies and not necessarliy the veggie itself and we do only require miniscule amounts. Alcohol also knocks out the intrinsic factor secreted in the stomach for uptake of some of the B vitamins - which is why alcoholics suffer some of the same symptoms as those with P/A - but do without good ol' EtOH? heck that would involve yet another major lifestyle change so we pays our money and takes our chances.

Our saints are not too impressed with raw meat but certainly hang around the dinner table for some of what we are having. Food animals are raised in such conditions that automatically creates an unhealthy food source for us and our canine friends. I got jacked off with the constant gastritis in the saints from human grade chicken carcasses and lamb flaps and bones that we used to feed. We tried the BARF diet and thats exactly what our saints did LOL it obviously works for some but not in our case.

These days they get a good quality kibble, a processed veterinary formulated meat roll and each morning they get something different on breakfast from the following menu:

Salmon

Boiled Egg (from "my girls")

Cheese

Tuna

Yoghurt (with cultures)

Sardines in soya oil (naughty us)

And on the seventh day usually an Anzac Biscuit or a Donut for elevenses

they think its just the greatest!! but NO supplements EVER !

anyhoo this was not the original topic so I shall beat a hasty retreat ;-)

Morgan,

maybe the cheetah's should be grateful they did not have ground up lion left overs in their diet too or we could see the advent of large feline spongiform encephalopathy - I say leave them in the wild where they belong, then just maybe they might be more happy to breed and be able to eat what they are supposed to

now I am definately off - I have to hand over half my apple donut to the preganant one or she will spit all over me and the furniture !

[cavNrott]

.

Edited May 8, 2009 by cavNrott

[rubiton]

From all those animal planet tv shows (esp Animal Precinct with those poor cats that an owner tried to feed a vegetarian diet to) would have thought dogs prefer a meat based diet (ie in the wild they ate teh prey and whatever plant materiel said prey had eaten) but can survive if necessary on plants. cats cannot they need meat or end up very very sick.

Unfortunately you do hear ofthose rare cases where someone has tried to put their ideals onto their pets when it comes to eating rather than finding the diet that best suits the animal.

[Poodle wrangler]

Me thinks it's anthropomorphism!

Check out a dog's teeth and tell me they're not designed to eat meat!

Human's on the other hand, don't have such pointy canine teeth to rip meat apart. We do just fine without meat and there are plenty of good, often cheaper alternative out there for us. JMHO.