Dog Owner Chat V. 5

[juliall]

I'm not saying it's great, but it's not awful. If that's what you can afford then that's what you can afford. I do work at a clinic with a lot of low-income clients..my vet says as long as it isn't store brand or Ol' Roy then he's fine with it.

[fishstix.]

I'm super curious to know what makes you say they're omnivores when everything about their physiology points to their being carnivores? Not trying to challenge you, I'm just curious.

As for your dog's kibble, what brand were you feeding? Kibble for the most part does contain everything nutritionally that a dog needs. It may not be the best quality of food, but it will be balanced.

Wolves are obviously carnivores and my guess is that since dogs descended from wolves they have the carnivore teeth and physiology but since dogs were raised by humans, they have been eating more non-meat things
I don't really think a dog would classify as an omnivore, but from personal experience I know that my dog will undoubtedly want to eat whatever I am eating and it usually isn't meat (he also really likes eggs and pears). Dogs also commonly eat grass if they get the chance, knowing it's good for their stomach, and even though it's not a meal it does count as a plant that the dogs are eating

[ᴇᴜᴛᴏɴʏ]

My dog has to eat raw lamb stuff and carrots or kale. They said that her diet wasn't very good seeming she is a labrador and that it would help her fur. Her fur was molting very badly so you could see her neck skin where she had been scratching. It was bad. Like her whole chest was sunburnt.

[Skysong]

Pinnacle Peak has been the absolute best brand for my dogs, again, I’ve got 5 dogs in the house. I can’t afford a $50 bag of dog food. We’ve got 5 dogs as well as 6-ish people, four of whom don’t have any jobs so everyone is suffering trying to feed everyone. We aren’t overwhelmed with dogs and we give them the best when we can, but the last couple of months haven’t been the best financially.

They frequently swap foods between Purina and Pinnacle Peak.
Nutritionally they aren’t getting everything from Purina, but it’s what we could afford at the time we purchased kibble and it’s something we knew all of the dogs would eat.

[Taiger Lilly]

I'm super curious to know what makes you say they're omnivores when everything about their physiology points to their being carnivores? Not trying to challenge you, I'm just curious.

As for your dog's kibble, what brand were you feeding? Kibble for the most part does contain everything nutritionally that a dog needs. It may not be the best quality of food, but it will be balanced.

First of all, not everything fits into the neat little boxes that scientists like to use to categorize things. Nature/Evolution does its own thing and sometimes bends our rules. For example, Giant Panadas don't appear well adapted to their natural diet at all and certainly do not fit with most characteristics we would expect to find in a herbivore, because they are constrained by their evolutionary history and are working with what they have.

Evolution doesn't necessarily result in a perfectly optimized organism, it seems to mostly drive species to "good enough" until the next selection pressure comes along. I would argue this is also the situation for dogs.

Wolves are carnivores, and they are the base we started with for dogs, so of course their features are going to tend towards carnivore, many specialized mutations have occured. But that doesn't mean that dogs are not wolves.

As for everything in their physiology pointing towards carnivore, I disagree. Dogs have several mutations compared to wolves and many of those tend towards better digestion of carbs. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/01/ ... estication
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11837

I think I've said it on this thread before too, but dogs aren't going to evolve the teeth of cows or horses or goats. For that to happen we would be making them eat completely unprocessed grasses etc. Due to the way most dogs are fed (human scraps, or kibble) there really is no need or selection pressure to develop many of the characteristics we associate with herbivores.

[Nyxeva]

Wouldn't their ability to better handle carbs and starches just lend more credence to their classification as faculative carnivores though? Also, dogs did not evolve from wolves. Both actually evolved from a now extinct common ancestor!

As for dogs not having the teeth of an herbivore, of course they won't? I didn't claim that they should, especially since the point brought up is that they're omnivores, not herbivores. Comparing their teeth to that of a bear would be a better analogy.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this is all. You believe dogs are omnivores, I think they're faculative carnivores. As long as it's not vegan and it's balanced, I don't really care what someone feeds their dog. At least they're feeding them, you know?

[skorch]

hello! i have a seven month old puppy, and he is perfectly healthy: he refuses to eat his dog food.
he's perfectly fine with it usually, just recently he won't eat it without toppings such as small bunches of vegetables or rice over it. we have stopped giving him toppings, also switched from his metal bowl to a porcelain/clay-type bowl. he refuses to eat and begs for treats all other times. could i get some advice? thank youu!

also this is off topic than the current topic on this thread, sorry for disrupting any conversation anyone was happening!

[theupsidedown]

I'm super curious to know what makes you say they're omnivores when everything about their physiology points to their being carnivores? Not trying to challenge you, I'm just curious.

As for your dog's kibble, what brand were you feeding? Kibble for the most part does contain everything nutritionally that a dog needs. It may not be the best quality of food, but it will be balanced.

I own 4 dogs that are very healthy and they eat carrots, sometimes avocado, and rice. They don’t get fed store bought kibble very often, there’s usually just a bowl sitting out and every day they eat carrots with rice and ground beef so I’m going to say that my dogs are omnivores since they eat meat as well as veggies and starches. C:

[Imzadi83]

hello! i have a seven month old puppy, and he is perfectly healthy: he refuses to eat his dog food.
he's perfectly fine with it usually, just recently he won't eat it without toppings such as small bunches of vegetables or rice over it. we have stopped giving him toppings, also switched from his metal bowl to a porcelain/clay-type bowl. he refuses to eat and begs for treats all other times. could i get some advice? thank youu!

also this is off topic than the current topic on this thread, sorry for disrupting any conversation anyone was happening!

Try giving him his food in puzzle toys and giving it out through training instead of in a bowl. If he wants a treat, give him some of his food and nothing else for awhile till you can break the habit of him needing a topper. If you're free feeding I'd recommend stopping that and going to scheduled mealtimes.

[Taiger Lilly]

Wouldn't their ability to better handle carbs and starches just lend more credence to their classification as faculative carnivores though?

I'm not the one who said they were omnivores, my personal opinion is that they are in a grey area due to their relatively unique relationship with humans and artificial selection. I don't really mind what people class them as because from what I've read some breeds/dogs tend to being more carnivorous than others(dogs having 4-30 copies of amylase vs wolves with 2 etc) which would explain why some dogs thrive on a pure meat (+bones +organs etc) diet while others thrive on a diet with more plant ingredients.

Also, dogs did not evolve from wolves. Both actually evolved from a now extinct common ancestor!

They didn't evolve from modern wolves, but their last common ancestor was still a wolf.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6290/1228
Unless you have a more recent source on that?

As for dogs not having the teeth of an herbivore, of course they won't? I didn't claim that they should, especially since the point brought up is that they're omnivores, not herbivores. Comparing their teeth to that of a bear would be a better analogy.

Comparing them to, or expecting them to have teeth like a bear if they are omnivores still doesn't make sense though. Why would their teeth change? They aren't subject to very much pressure when they rely on humans for food. The herbivore reference was to exaggerate the concept (not gonna evolve different teeth if they are just getting their food mostly handed to them) and also because some say an omnivores teeth are a blend between a herbivores and a carnivores. The bigger point being that dogs just arent gonna show as many "omnivore" traits due to how they live.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this is all. You believe dogs are omnivores, I think they're faculative carnivores. As long as it's not vegan and it's balanced, I don't really care what someone feeds their dog. At least they're feeding them, you know?

I agree it's not the biggest issue ever. It just seems like the "dogs are carnivores!!!" thing is used by people to act like grains are the worst thing to feed a dog, or that veggies etc add no value at all to a dogs diet.