Vegan dog food

[Shalista]

I've been poking around at different diets for dogs and i found this huge chain of links faq - veganpets

it looks like there's a serious chunk of evidence saying not only that vegan dog feeding works but that it can be healthful for some dogs.

i raw feed so i could never imagine feeding vegan to my dog. Still, given how many arguments i hear against raw feeding and i'm doing it anyway...... thoughts?

(plz look at the links before commenting)

 

[Shalista]

whoda thunk. took bax in for routine shots and i asked my vet. he said vegan is 100% doable in dogs and just cautioned a weening on period. odd given the blow back i get for raw diet.

 

[leashedForLife]

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Dogs can thrive on a vegan diet, but it’s more complex to formulate than a simple omnivore diet, & any dog diet requires a knowledge of trace minerals, essential & nonessential vitamins, etc.

Unless the dog had a serious food allergy to multiple meat proteins, I myself wouldn’t bother; it’s too awkward to make up at home, & too expensive to buy premade.

I eat a veg / dairy / egg diet with whole grains, yogurt, nuts & seeds, fruit, occasionally cold water fish (wild caught & sustainable), so I am hardly about to criticize anyone for feeding their dog meat as part of their diet, altho I do encourage my clients to try to choose organic or at minimum, nonGMO ingredients including their meats - which means the animals were not fed GMO grains, etc, nor were herbivores fed MEAT BYPRODUCTS ... which is how sheep scrapie, a prion disease, ended up in cattle. Feckin eejits. They fed dead / down / diseased animals of one species to another herbivore species to “increase the protein “, ye gods, how damned stoopid can they be?!?!...
Did it never occur to them that disease can jump into other species?!

They still feed the sweepings from CAFO chicken houses to conventionally kept dairy & beef cattle, as if chicken droppings and feathers are high quality food for cellulosic diet grazers.


- terry

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[Mad Murphy]

Caution is advised
Vegetarian and Vegan Diets for Dogs and Cats

I had a rather silly neighbour once who insisted she was a vegatarian (she then covered her veggie burgers and sausages in beef gravy to make them taste nice) and she insisted on making her dog a veggie dog too,, Result was the normally well behaved dog started running off and eating road kill at any chance. She would scream at him and tell me he had had enough to eat. I argued that his body was obviously telling him otherwise.

 

[Shalista]

yeah he did mention its more of a balancing game for dogs and that it really shouldnt be done in cats. but if you bought kibble then in theroy its already all balanced out? (knowing how negligent i am in balancing baxs raw id never try to make my own vegan dog food)

 

[leashedForLife]

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Cats are quite different from dogs, in many ways.

Cats go entirely, multigenerationally feral in one generation. Dogs do not.
Mom is abandoned or escaped, gets preg, & her litter gets no human contact b4 they reach 7-WO. That’s all it takes - her grandkids, great-grand, & all their progeny will be feral, UNLESS someone nabs the kittens before they reach 49-DO / 7-WO, & provides plenty of happy, pleasant, nonscary interactions.
Puppies born feral who experience no human contact before 6-MO can be readily redomesticated, in strong contrast to 6-MO feral cats.

Cats can feed themselves - by predation alone. Dogs cannot.
Feral or abandoned cats have managed to breed & thrive on every continent save above the Arctic Circle, including Antarctica, where they lived on birds’ eggs, penguin chicks, & other animals’ droppings, gut piles, etc.
Dogs who live “feral” survive on the edge of human settlements or even among us, as pariah dogs do, around the world - eating our garbage, begging for handouts, stealing.

Cats are obligate carnivores - dogs are omnivores.
Dogs have coevolved with humans & shared our homes, and our lives, and our diets, for thousands of years. //. Dogs, like humans, can digest starch. Wolves cannot.

In their behavior, development, social lives, rearing habits, AND dietary needs, dogs aren’t cats, nor are cats “the same as” dogs, in very significant ways. They are both mammals; a long long way back, they have a mutual ancestor - but so do we, shared with dogs & cats, and all other mammals.
A queen can nurse a puppy, & a bitch can nurse a kitten, but as adults, those cross-reared animals will be quite different from their breast-feeding infant stage.


- terry

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[merlina]

As a veggie myself, though not vegan, I find this interesting. Certainly there's a lot of evidence that dogs have evolved to tolerate other food groups than just animal proteins. I do have a concern- not sure if it's ethical or just emotional really: our two LOVE raw proteins in meat, fish and eggs. And will 'eat out' when they come across recently deceased game. (Or not so recently deceased and yes we've had the occasional tummy trouble). So basically whoever finds the decapitated pigeon or run-over rabbit, eats it. What I'm saying is they get massive enjoyment from it and I wouldn't want to deprive them. So I feed some raw at home.

 

[excuseme]

Just a little information that may be interesting.
I can't copy it all by hand but it makes a lot of good sense.

Dogs have been domesticated so long that they have adapted to cooked diets.
Please read.
Myths About Raw: Have dogs adapted to cooked diets?

 

[Josie]

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Cats are quite different from dogs, in many ways.

Cats go entirely, multigenerationally feral in one generation. Dogs do not.
Mom is abandoned or escaped, gets preg, & her litter gets no human contact b4 they reach 7-WO. That’s all it takes - her grandkids, great-grand, & all their progeny will be feral, UNLESS someone nabs the kittens before they reach 49-DO / 7-WO, & provides plenty of happy, pleasant, nonscary interactions.
Puppies born feral who experience no human contact before 6-MO can be readily redomesticated, in strong contrast to 6-MO feral cats.

Cats can feed themselves - by predation alone. Dogs cannot.
Feral or abandoned cats have managed to breed & thrive on every continent save above the Arctic Circle, including Antarctica, where they lived on birds’ eggs, penguin chicks, & other animals’ droppings, gut piles, etc.
Dogs who live “feral” survive on the edge of human settlements or even among us, as pariah dogs do, around the world - eating our garbage, begging for handouts, stealing.

Cats are obligate carnivores - dogs are omnivores.
Dogs have coevolved with humans & shared our homes, and our lives, and our diets, for thousands of years. //. Dogs, like humans, can digest starch. Wolves cannot.

In their behavior, development, social lives, rearing habits, AND dietary needs, dogs aren’t cats, nor are cats “the same as” dogs, in very significant ways. They are both mammals; a long long way back, they have a mutual ancestor - but so do we, shared with dogs & cats, and all other mammals.
A queen can nurse a puppy, & a bitch can nurse a kitten, but as adults, those cross-reared animals will be quite different from their breast-feeding infant stage.


- terry

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Very interesting reading the difference between cats and dogs

 

[Drift's Owner]

Interesting to read. I read up on some reviews on vegan dog food that didn't have the greatest reviews. Anyone got any recommendations for good vegan dog food?

 

[Jack-Russell-Lover]

This is interesting and I did touch on this topic in my dissertation. Obviously a definite no no for cats and with dogs as it has been said can be very tricky and/or expensive!
I personally wouldn't risk it, plus it would feel morally wrong to me. I would feel really bad feeding my dog a meat or animal product free diet, I feel bad as it is feeding her dry food daily!!
@Mad Murphy's story about his neighbour is crazy, seems like the dog was craving meat!
Not to mention the difficulty of finding vegetarian/vegan treats/chews. I know it's probably growing in popularity and therefore the amount of products easily available may increase but as things are at the moment I like being able to go to my local pet shop (or in fact most shops) and being able to buy my dogs food and treats. Although I guess it's easy enough to order on the internet.
My view I guess is that I wouldn't go there but it's all about personal preference and what's right for the animal.

 

[leashedForLife]

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I wouldn’t say the dog eating roadkill had a “craving” -
all dogs are opportunistic eaters, if something edible is around, THEY EAT IT.

And they aren’t picky - things we consider trash or garbage or destined for the compost pile or even to be burned or buried, dogs perceive as “food”. A pigeon dead 3 days in the heat of summer, crawling with small maggots, is a delicacy, to a dog — We look at it or get downwind & smell it, & feel nauseous. They smell it, & think, “yummy!”


Any dead animal is either food, or perfume, to 99% of dogs. // Yecch.

- terry

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[Mad Murphy]

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I wouldn’t say the dog eating roadkill had a “craving” -
all dogs are opportunistic eaters, if something edible is around, THEY EAT IT.

And they aren’t picky - things we consider trash or garbage or destined for the compost pile or even to be burned or buried, dogs perceive as “food”. A pigeon dead 3 days in the heat of summer, crawling with small maggots, is a delicacy, to a dog — We look at it or get downwind & smell it, & feel nauseous. They smell it, & think, “yummy!”


Any dead animal is either food, or perfume, to 99% of dogs. // Yecch.

- terry

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I have to disagree with your statement that all dogs are opportunistic eaters. Max wouldnt touch anything unless we gave it to him and Benny was very fastidious about his food..Although he tracked food smells he wouldnt touch anything dead wouldnt even go near it...
Tommy , the dog in question had lived for 5 years on a normal dog food diet and had not previously shown a liking for road kill it was only after starting the daft veggie diet ( and it was a daft idea, 25 years ago there just wasnt the investment or input into dog food there is now) that he showed such interest in the road kill diet

 

[leashedForLife]

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@Mad Murphy ,
not everything must be dead for a dog to opportunistically gobble it down, LOL.

If I leave my dog, or my client’s dog, or my neighbor’s dog, alone in the room with my dinner on a plate on the coffee-table, as I get up to answer the phone or go to the toilet, I should not be surprised if the plate is not only empty, but polished clean when I come back.


That’s another example of opportunistic eating:
the food is there, it’s reachable, & to the dog, it belongs to no one. Dogs have no pockets to carry things; possession for dogs *is* ownership. It defines ownership.

If no one is there to “own” it, then to a dog, it is up for grabs - it’s available. In their minds, this is not theft; if someone wanted it, they wouldn’t leave it behind. It’s been abandoned, so by definition, to a dog, it is not owned.

Opportunistic eating includes eating when not hungry, just b/c food is offered or is present; eating discards or scraps; scavenging in trashcans; snacking on small critters in the tide-wrack on the beach; finding popcorn in the sofa crevices, or cracker crumbs on the car seat; picking up the bones that folks pitch alongside the pavement while eating fried chicken from a take-out box; & any similar scenarios, where the dog was not looking for food UNTIL it appeared, & when it appeared, s/he ate it.

I do my best to avoid leaving any bits of food around the house, not only to avoid temptations for visiting dogs, but to starve any hopeful insects who wander over from other apts.
The vacuum is my best friend, LOL.

- terry

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[JudyN]

Certainly Jasper matches LfL's description of an opportunistic eater, but Mad Murphy's post shows that not all dogs are. Even without training, some dogs won't pinch whatever food they find lying around, whether in the house or outside. The interesting thing - and the point of MM's post - is that Tommy only turned to eating roadkill after being on a veggie diet.

Given that guidance for healthy human diets changes all the time, I don't think we yet have the knowledge to say whether a veggie/vegan diet can be healthy for dogs.

 

[Mad Murphy]

@JudyN ... thankyou

 

[Shalista]

I'm ordering a bag of vegan kibble soon so i'll let you know how it turns out!

 

[leashedForLife]

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I’ve never met one of those k9 saints, @JudyN , who would never dream of eating anything they were not specifically “invited” & actually intended to eat.

All of my own dogs needed to be taught to “leave it”, & they were also taught good manners in public around food, so that they would not beg, snatch, poach food when someone walked away from their portion, and most important, such that if some well-intentioned numskull offered my dog food, I could thank the person while at the same time, signaling my dog to avoid the “treat”.

None of my clients’ dogs have qualified for k9 beatification, either.
Most of ‘em would sneak a lick from the dripping end of an ice-cream cone as U were eating from the other end, any day of the week, & look all injured innocence when U scolded them.

For the record, I can confidently state that any “innately polite” dogs who would only eat the food that was INTENDED for them, if they were deliberately abandoned or accidentally lost, would either quickly die of starvation (& fail to pass on those warped behaviors), or would even more quickly, change their oh-so-polite ways for traditional eat-it-whenever-U-can-get-it dog habits.
Street dogs are very well-known for stealing, begging, & scavenging anything remotely edible, & getting it inside U before another dog gets it, is kinda key.

Street dogs in Moscow have perfected a trick for stealing food from ppl who buy a hot sandwich or a meal from a street vendor - the dog comes up behind the buyer, waits till they take possession of the plate from the vendor, & then they bark! sharply, which startles the person, their plate goes flying, the food falls to the ground, & the dog eats it.

Works like a charm - there are multiple clips on UTube of the Moscow street dogs mugging commuters for their food, & there are also clips of stray dogs in Russia, assaulting or chasing ppl who are carrying BAGS, to force them to drop their packages — in the hope that some of the contents are groceries.

- terry


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[Shalista]

for the record, can confirm Bax is a scavenger to the core BEFORE we started this lil experiment so that wont exactly be a tell of any missing nutrients.

 

[leashedForLife]

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He’s not alone, @Shalista - in fact, he’s prototypical.

Dogs are described as opportunistic eaters in many texts, & owners often don’t understand that, for a dog, “property” in the sense of being owned only exists so long as the owner retains possession of the object.

Dogs don’t have deeds or receipts - they own anything that is in their mouth or under their immediate control, such as the chewie under their paw, the food in the bowl in front of them, the bone lying beside them, & so on.
No dog would dream of taking an object from another dog that was clearly in that dog’s possession, unless s/he was willing to fight for control of that item. It’s gotta be worth the exertion & possible injury. // That’s why a 6-WO pup can be gnawing on a bone, a hungry adult goes by, the puppy may pause & growl, & the grownup keeps moving. STEALING even from a smaller, younger, or elderly person is very rude, among dogs.

That’s why dogs get so angry & defensive when ppl decide to “become dominant” & mess with the food they are trying to eat - this is shockingly rude, intrusive, never acceptable behavior, under dog rules. It leads to a lot of needless confrontation & misunderstanding.

“Don’t steal” does not apply to manipulating events so that another dog abandons the thing U want... a cunning plan that makes them drop or walk away from a coveted item puts it back in play, it’s no longer owned.
Friends of mine, many years ago, had a Dachshund & 4 Dobes. The aging Dachsie was the senior, & all the younger dogs deferred to her; as she got older, she gained wt, & her vet put her on a diet, with a special formula - which of course she hated.
She was however eating it... until she began mysteriously leaving more & more in the bowl.

Her owners were puzzled, knowing her greedy nature, & set up a CC-TV camera to see what was going on. // All the dogs were fed, everyone was eating, the owners left the room, & a few seconds later, the Dachs burst into furious barking & ran for the front door.
This was a frequent occurrence, she always led the charge to defend the home & hearth, & the Dobies were backup.
Her housemates flew after her, also barking, to find nothing... meanwhile, Greedy Gertie was in the kitchen, running from one bowl to another, taking a few mouthfuls from each, until their owners returned, puzzled, to go back to eating their meals.

They had to crate her & feed her separately. Foiled again! —- curse U, Red Baron!...


- terry

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