Your Dog and Leftovers

 

Gentlemen,  

I’m starting this new thread because I wanted to comment on feeding leftovers to our dogs, but I didn’t want to hijack Mystmanpdx’s thread, "What Kind of Eater Were You".

 

In it I made a comment about giving leftovers to my dog. I do that almost daily but I am very careful what I give him. Here is why. I used to have the attitude that Parker (3-year-old male golden retriever) was a canine garbage disposal because he would eat just about anything I gave him and loved it. In the first year after my WLS I gave him a lot of "plate cleaning" to do. In early November 2006 when I took him to the vet for routine vaccinations he weighed 90 pounds. In early January, after the holidays, he weighed 99 pounds, looked fat and unhealthy. That is when I decided I had to be careful what and how much of my leftovers I gave him.

 

So guys, whether you have a little boot buffer or a big swamp collie, be careful with the treats from the table. Too many leftovers are not good for them. Definitely stay away from chocolate, onions, and grapes, as they can be a death sentence to a dog. Stick with good quality dog food and give them only the low carb/high protein leftovers (meat, some fat, bones, etc.) as treats. Put the leftover bread, potatoes, pasta, desserts, etc. in the garbage can. Your dog will still love you and be healthier for it.

well said, my dog no longer eats dog food, she never really did ...extremely picky.  So she's always eaten people food, I try to give her a good protein with some cut up veggies daily.  She also gets a few table spoons of my protein shake (vanilla shake with no artificial sweetners and I add peanut butter and ground flax seeds). Scott

From us, our dogs get dry dog food, soaked for 30 minutes before feeding.....PEROID! That is not to say though that when we have people over, that they don't feed the dogs scraps when we are not looking, people think it is cruel to not give dogs people food, it is NOT! When we take care of my parents dogs if they go away for a while, we feed them exactly the same as we do our dogs. My parents add all kinds of things to their food to get them to eat. We do not! We just give them the same food we give our dogs, on the same schedule as our dogs and if they don't eat it, they just don't eat. After a day or two, they loose their picky eating habits and eat when the food is offered. I also don't allow their dogs on the furniture, beds or other "human" places. They sleep in crates at night and my parents can't figure out why their dogs LOVE me so much. It is because I am the pack LEADER, showing LEADERSHIP to them and they respect it. Please don't give people food to dogs, the nutrition is all wrong for them.