"... pets that never skip a probiotic or vitamin C supplement. Some owners whip up special menus at home, while others shop for the growing number of products tailored to these diets.... As human birthrates have steadily declined in the United States, many people have come to think of pet ownership as a kind of parenthood. 'It is a flex to say, "My dog eats as well as a human,"' said Sean MacDonald, 30, a Toronto chef who prepares elaborate meals of primarily raw food for his chocolate Labrador, Hazelnut, on his TikTok account.... [Meanwhile, American Kennel Club exec says] 'Dogs will eat anything you put in front of them, but it is not necessarily in their best interests.'"
From the comments: "We fed our pugs home cooked chicken, brown rice and sweet potato for years. They were always having stomach issues, making messes in the house, gassy. The vet finally put her foot down, and we switched to kibble. No more digestive problems, or surprises on the floor. I don’t eat kibble myself, however."
So the question is what's in the human's best interest, right?
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64 comments:
Obligatory Futurama clip.
https://youtu.be/6sM8pDH-HMc
It seems like many people that have pets shouldn't have pets.
If you feed a dog or a cat a vegetable based diet you are awful.
What's in the human's best interest?
Solving First World Problems, obviously.
I laugh when I see "vegetarian-fed" eggs at the store.
Chickens aren't vegetarians. You're probably actually making the eggs less healthy than if you fed them a diet entirely of insects.
"So the question is what's in the human's best interest, right?"
Feeding their own self-regard.
Our dog assiduously ignores any vegetable matter in his food, except to leave it behind.
Feeding a dog (or a cat) a vegan diet is just about the stupidest thing a person can do, at least in the realm of pet-ownership
My vet has a huge sign in her office that states, grain free diets make pets sick. She always asks what are you feeding the pet when you come in for an appointment. She says designer pet foods are dangerous because you don't know who actually manufactures the food and when did Rachael Ray get a degree in pet dietary requirements. Trust the companies that have been making pet food for decades. She trusts Purina products over designer pet foods. Purina has not been in business for decades by putting out bad product.
One of the cases we had in business school was, I believe, about Purina and marketing dog food. The conclusion was that marketing dog food had nothing to do with what was good for the canines, but how the marketing appealed to owners. Pretty obvious if you give it a moment's thought.
The dachshund just weighed in at 19 lbs 7 oz. Fat sausage. Fettewurst. No more very bottom of the ice cream cone for her, much to her dismay. And no more scraps or leaving the other dog's food bowl down. Dried kibble, and only 1/2 cup twice per day. Life's about to suck for her.
Will Cate said...
Feeding a dog (or a cat) a vegan diet is just about the stupidest thing a person can do, at least in the realm of pet-ownership
Not stupid.
Evil.
Our dog, Sadie, gets a mix of food. She gets freeze-dried lamb, canned food and kibble. All of it grain free.
On our 2nd dog. First one, a golden retriever, lived to 14 and ate Purina dog food.
Never got her teeth brushed-ever! Gave her those dental stick treats as her dental care.
On our 2nd dog,a bichon. Sheis now 14 1/2 and she’s eating Purina dog food, too!
She also gets a daily dental stick & has never had her teeth brushed.
February is dog dental hygiene month where she could have gotten her teeth brushed for the “sale price” of $195.00.
I think we’re giving great care to our dogs!
Our dog gets what the owner of the pet store/director of the humane society shelter recommended. It's kibble--plus some fancy wet dog food--and a dollop of goat milk on the kibble at night to keep her coat shiny. That plus a Prozac a day (dog is highly reactive).
It's nice that people care about what they feed a dog who, when opportunity presents, will roll in shit.
Our dog is a farm dog. A farm dog that lives outside, sleeps in the hay in the barn. She gets to eat dog food that comes out of a Fleet Farm 40 lb. bag. Dog treats that are supposed to clean teeth. If she's lucky, she gets leftover meat/fat scraps from the table. This is how we've always treated our farm dogs. BTW, she is what used to be called a mutt. (Maybe 1/2 black lab and 1/2 Tennessee treeing hound.)
Our kids have dogs that live inside with them. Purebreds. Get a gazillion shots for whatever they might catch at doggy care. Extra special (expensive) dog food. Special toys, etc.
Our dog(s) have lived comparable life spans compared to their dogs. (With fewer ailments, I might add.) The difference is that our dogs had/have a "job."
They like to call their dogs our "granddogs." Drives me nuts, but what can I say? They're still nice dogs.
It's nice that people care about what they feed a dog who, when opportunity presents, will roll in shit.
No way you want to know what I've seen our dog roll in, LOL!! (Or eat, for that matter.)
Gave a ride to a guy who later dawned on me, pitched me the idea of switching from riding people to riding pets. Told me I could more money by taking a pet from NY to Florida than what I could do in a couple of days with ride-shares. Pet rides is where is at right now, he told me.
We recently switched our dogs to Hill's Science Diet and they like it better than any of the other brands we've tried, and their digestive systems are much more stable as well. We haven't been feeding it to them long enough to see what if any weight results there are.
A relative, who usually has multiple dogs at a time, used to feed her goldens and Irish setters swordfish, salmon and other fish, but the dogs tended to die early. I think she stopped when she could no longer afford it. However, she now only takes dogs to holistic vets, which
sounds like a new age scam to me.
I feed my dog the exact same thing every day.
And every day she seems really excited to get it.
There is no sense of boredom whatsoever.
Go with what works.
We usually buy Kibbles and Bits, sometimes Come and Get It!, for our dog. He eats that, leftovers from out plates, veggies and all, and whatever bread he can get. We can't leave a loaf anywhere he can reach up to- he'll drag it down and eat it. Rip open the package and go to town. He also eats the occasional small pest he catches outside. Followed a day or two later by really messy bowel movements... He's 13- his brothers and sister's have already died of old age, and he's still going along. Average lifespan of a basset hound is 10-12 years. He sleeps almost as much as our cat. Maybe more. He's the first purebred we've owned- a gift from one of our children.
Our cat doesn't eat anything but dry cat food. If we put down some canned stuff- she'll lick the gravy off the top, if there is any, and leave the rest. Will take a few licks at a bowl of tuna water before leaving the rest for the dog. Turns her nose up at milk. I'd worry about eating just the dry food since cats are known for urinary issues because they don't drink enough- but- she drinks more water than any other cat we've ever owned.
Look up "Monkey Chow Diary" on google or youtube. Monkey chow provides complete nutrition for primates, and a guy decided to eat nothing but monkey chow. It is probably a healthier diet than what we normally eat. You can also buy monkey chow on Amazon and try it yourself.
When my husband brought our golden retriever to the vet (he had chewed up and eaten the insides of our daughter’s doll) the vet’s assistant asked husband what the dog was being fed. My husband proceeded to tell her the recipe for the food he prepared each week for the dog. After listening and writing down the recipe, she looked at my husband and said “your dog is eating better than my kids.” Dog died of old age…or as the vet told me “he had lost the will to live.”
American pets eat better and have better medical care than most kids in the third world. And many of the pets owned by the laptop class eat better and have better medical care than many kids of the working class.
That tells us what the laptop class truly cares about. And whom.
Your pet is a class marker.
We have two small-animal veterinarians in the family. They roll their eyes in exasperation at all the designer foods and special diets that people like to give their dogs, calling them unnecessary at best and downright dangerous at worst unless there's actually a veterinarian-prescribed medical reason for a particular diet. Their own animals, who are notably healthy and long-lived, get kibble.
Our dogs get boiled chicken thighs (easy to strip), no skin or fat, broth, mixed veggies, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, brown rice, shredded cheese, full-milk yogurt. They snack on high-quality kibble. No farts, no messes, beautiful coats, fit & trim. It takes less time than you think and it's a whole lot cheaper than buying canned food.
There are, orders of magnitude, more spent on animal nutrition than human nutrition.
After 2+ years of people mouthing "follow the science" a very few understand science.
The Purina's (now owned by Cenex Harvest States) Kent's, Cargill's, and ADM's of the world spend endlessly on nutrition, and how best to feed the animals we are caring for. But people will listen to some woman at church, who has always been a realtor, about how to feed Fido. Science be damned.
We recently switched our dogs to Hill's Science Diet and they like it better than any of the other brands we've tried,
I don't know anything about their ingredients, but I do know from starter feed for piglets, the key to making feed tasty, is animal fat and sugar. Something all mammals crave...for a reason.
Dog will eat anything put in front of her. Seems glad to have anything. Cat is finiky. Favorites are Tuna and shrimp.
Q. "So the question is what's in the human's best interest, right?"
A. How about not having a big steaming brown pile on the floor (whether carpeted or not) right where you will step when you open the front door carrying a grocery bag.
Our dackel eats a pouch or two of Pedigree, and/or a portion of a Beneful tub, and/or licks all plates, cups, and containers that we are done with (except the obvious don't-feeds like onions) every day.
Since my wife and I both eat fairly healthily, and have learned to limit our own intake, he gets a variety of tastes and smells in small portions. He is 12-14 years old, trim, active (for an old dog), and has a beautiful pelt. (A celebrated pooper in the great outdoors, too.)
Doesn't see or hear as well as he used to, but then who does?
Our neighbors fed their two big mutts with raw chicken for a few months, but didn't find it worthwhile, for whatever reason.
My old German Shepherd gets kibble with boiled chicken or ground beef and a dollop of vegetables mixed in. Looks pretty good. He's almost 13 now and having some control issues. He stood transfixed as my sister sliced a Christmas ham into an 8-inch stack of pork. Peed on her rug, whether from exhaustion or excitement I don't know.
"They like to call their dogs our "granddogs." Drives me nuts, but what can I say? They're still nice dogs."
My dad used to refer to me as his dog's brother. I have friends that call their dogs "fur babies."
Sheez
"Fur babies." Grates my ears, for sure.
Our dackel is a 'tweeny'--neither a full standard (which we have had before) nor a mini. His weight stays right around 20 lbs.
We're down to one dog. He eats Pedigree or Purina dry food, milkbone type snacks and very occasionally some table scraps and of course bones. The two who preceded him had the same diet, never had health issues (zero) except our 80lb shepherd/malinois mix had a few seizures, that we didn't medicate for, and they stopped after a couple of years. He lived until 15 or 16 (we were told he was 3 or 4 when we got him so we don't know for sure). Our other, a 60lb mutt, lived till just shy of 17.
Related. I'm not usually a dick but whenever someone tells me their dog is their kid I can't help but remind them that if their kid has kids they'll likely sell or give them away to strangers whereas if my kids have kids they'll be my grandkids.
Purina makes all kinds of "chow". I used to buy Trout Chow from Purina.
I knew an old farmer in Ireland whose sheepdogs (and he) ate potatoes, soda bread, mutton, carrots, onions, eggs, milk and butter. They all lived long and healthy lives.
feeding multiple pets is agony. I've tired everything. They barf!
These paleo dieters amuse me almost as much as vegans. So what does paleo dog chow consist of? Raw mastodon?
Talk to any vegan about the use of animals as what amounts to laboratory apparatus. They're enraged by the very idea, and anyone connected to such practices is worse than Josef Mengele, except Tony Fauci, who is a saint and a super-genius. Yet they do not condemn themselves for feeding a toy poodle on tofu/kale smoothies.
I've cooked part time for almost 40 years in a tiny, garden-to-table inn in California wine country. The increase in special diet requests over the last ten years got so out of hand that I've finally weaseled my way out of that obligation. For one cook to make 12+ breakfasts, each with a list of several dietary needs was more than I could deal with. I suspect these are the same people that feed these diets to their pets.
To quote my old finance professor, "Pet Food is the triumph of marketing over logic - and a huge money maker".
My dog gets brown rice, peas and chicken for lunch when I have it. Kibble breakfast and dinner. Most human stuff isn't good for dogs - too many dog-toxic spices on top of stuff like okay but interferes with the absorption of calcium etc.
Dry dog food comes from rendering plants. The "byproducts" are the most nutritious fraction (organ meat) and the meat fraction is the least nutrition. You're better off buying the cheaper kibble that is mostly byproducts.
My basset hound, which was the biggest basset the vet had ever seen, was fed hamburger from puppy hood to old age. Of course, post Biden, hamburger is getting pretty expensive. Our present basset gets hamburger and cooked chicken.
Our dogs get kibble only. They munch on plant stalks to make themselves barf up the kibble. Then they eat the kibble again.
If they are out running around by the boat launch and they find a dried out fish that's been run over a few times...heaven!
Yum.
I hear rumors of a Petoton.
@Will Cate,
Feeding a dog (or a cat) a vegan diet is just about the stupidest thing a person can do, at least in the realm of pet-ownership
If some one attempts to feed a cat a vegetarian diet, the cat will die.
Cats are "obligatory carnivores" and can only process key proteins from meat.
“Dog will eat anything put in front of her. Seems glad to have anything. Cat is finiky. Favorites are Tuna and shrimp.”
No shrimp, because my partner is allergic to anything that walks on the bottom of the sea. Sardines or clams instead. Both are about 3 and about the same size. We’ve had the cat since he was maybe 4 weeks old, and being part Siamese, doesn’t share well. He needs a companion, of sorts, but another cat was going to be an issue, because, as I said, they don’t share very well. So partner’s daughter brought over a mini Pinscher in mid December. Maybe a third time rescue dog. Last family had a bunch of big dogs, and small kids. Pretty skittish, esp with men, for awhile. But she has warmed up to me a huge amount taking her out twice a day for walks.
In any case, we have a really nice pet food store in N Scottsdale. Location should explain everything. They were out of the $10 a small bag cat food, so I bought a $25 bigger bag of more expensive stuff. Then, we got the dog, and she was eating Perina small breed hard dog food. I bought a bag, we put it out, and the cat immediately switched over to it. Yes, he eats a little of the $25 a bag cat food, when he is closed in with me at night, but prefers the dog food. What’s wrong with feeding cats dog food? They get fat. Not the dog, of course, because he has to trot pretty quickly to keep up with me on our walks. The cat just moves around, from favorite sleeping spot to favorite sleeping spot. Sunning in the window. Under the covers. Behind my partner’s neck on the sofa. Round and round.
We think that the cat eating the dog’s food is territorial. She shits in his litter box. Cat used to be pretty finicky, but now, with the dog vacuuming up anything left behind, he is much less so. We still though have to separate them when we feed them table scraps, because she Hoovers it up, while he is still playing with it. Oh, and we had Italian the other night. The cat likes spaghetti. The dog inhales faster than I have seen anyone eat it. I swear, I could drop a long noodle, and she would have it slurped up by the time it hit the floor.
The PBS TV station is airing the new version of the UK's "All Creatures Great and Small" about a country veterinarian during the 1930s. (The previous TV version was better, and the books were MUCH better still.)
There is a character, Mrs Pumfrey, with a spoiled Pekinese dog, "Tricki-Woo".
One tale goes that Triki had gotten so fat and afflicted with gout that he was near death, so the vet took the little dog into his own household, to run and wrestle and compete for food (kibble) with five other big dogs. Proper food, lots of exercise, and little attention from people.
A week of life in the pack and the Peke was back in prime form.
This is a contender for the most useful and true to life story I've ever watched on PBS.
My concern is not so much what my dogs eat but how much they eat and how much exercise they get.
Genuinely enraged at these asshole pet nazis who'd presume that their idiotic diet/nutrition/eating fad is correct for a canine.
From genetic studies it appears that we have had very little impact on the cat genome.
From being fundamentally useless no one has bothered to breed cats for anything useful since the "don't stalk and kill human children" breeding program concluded circa 6000 BC.
Our 8 year old half weiner half beagle half mutt will eat anything and everything, except lettuce, apples and oranges. She once got up on the table and ate a half roast of tenderloin. She was miserably happy for two days - stuffed, never got sick. Ate a whole chocolate easter bunny - the solid kind, never got sick. She will eat anything and everything and any kind of dog food. Our 2 year old half heeler half pit bull will ate lettuce, oranges, anything. And get sick as, well, a dog. The only dog food we have found that doesn't make his belly red and skin itch - and his stool an unholy mess is Hill's Science Sensitive Skin and Stomach.
Our boxer is fed Science Diet but loves bread. She once ate a whole loaf of bread in the back seat, while on a car trip. We didn't know it till later. This week she stole two packages of flour tortillas from the shelf and ate 16 of them.
Plain old Iams dry dog food for my dogs for years with no problems.
One of my cats had gotten very sick, in and out of the vet's - vomiting, diarrhea, lost weight to the point I thought she'd die. Tested for everything, all negative so best bet was IBS.
Even prescription cat food wasn't working.
In desperation I researched like crazy and found a raw chicken cat food recipe online.
I'm now 6 years later, cat recovered, gained weight, fur came back and she'll be 16 y/o in May.
Unexpected side benefit -- no more smelly litter box - urine and feces have almost no scent now.
Purina Pro Plan + whatever is left over in the cat's bowl. Cat gets a can of wet food - usually determined by what's on sale - and cheap kibble. Plus Cat likes to catch moles and eat their heads, bringing me the leftovers.
All seem to be doing just fine.
Have a lab & a dachshund who are fed kibbles & love all fruits & veggies including carrot peelings. I was peeling carrots, they sat next to me while I was peeling, begging. Gave each one peeling which they gobbled down & looked for more. Lab also eats the shrimp bait when she goes fishing with husband.
Green beans from the can are healthy treats too. Our little guy likes banana, carrot, sometimes apple in small doses, and of course scarfs up 'sidewalk selections' on his walks--certain yardworms, discarded fast food remnants, and best of all, catpoop.
Got to keep a sharp eye out.
My bet is that those pugs never complained about eating the HUMAN food!
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