Quote: Matt Lang

IMO, dogs are not omnivores.

More importantly though, my dad is a Biologist so I asked him, and he sent me this link and said the information is quite good:

http://www.rawfed.com/myths/omnivores.html

That was the one I meant when I said I disagreed with the web sites that dismiss the frequent ingestion of the entire gut of small prey as irrelevant. (It's a great site, though!)

I sent an email to them a few years ago with info from the Gray Wolf Project videos, asking what they concluded about the wolves' ingestion of what we call green tripe (loaded with green matter throughout the convoluted folds) from large prey, growing water-ferns, and ripe berries,* all in prey-plentiful times. Never got an answer.

Well, as I said, my opinion isn't universal.

And most of what that site says is very solid indeed. (Good one to print for some vets, as has been mentioned here, because of the authoritative citations.)

The dog is designed to take and eat prey. There is very little produce involved.

However, the wild canid does indeed regularly eat some, and I don't have better knowledge sufficient to take it on myself to withhold it when my dogs can't make instinctive corrections.

* all choices that bypass the canid's lack of salivary enzymes like amylase: ripe soft berries, tender young greens with little cellulose, and partly-digested produce in the prey's gut -- and all, of course, in very small relative amounts

 Quote: michael_wise

... But how can the small amount of produce that they do eat be totally disregarded?

Particularly when we now have video evidence that gray wolves choose to eat a small amount in prey-plentiful times. They ate the "green tripe," the ripe berries, etc., when they didn't need to (as well as when prey was scarce -- then they ate the green tripe in its entirety).

OTOH, I sure do understand the POV that presents extreme opinions; I sure wouldn't want anything I ever said or wrote to lead anyone to think they should give their dogs vegetarian diets, or grain diets, or, in fact, 90% of what they actually DO give dogs.

To me, it's more a matter of what an omnivore is. Like Connie, I think that dogs need/prefer a small amount of vege matter in their diet; however, I don't think that makes them an "omnivore". They don't get a significant portion of their daily calories from plants, nor do they have the ability to even digest them unless they've been altered first. Ingesting a small amount of plant matter doesn't make them an omnivore any more than feeding animal protein to cows makes them omnivores. They are carnivores that like a caloricly insignificant amount of veges.

We can test it. We can get a big forest and clear out all the animals and then turn a dog loose and see how long he can survive eating plants and digging up roots. Then we can put true omnivores like a bear, a raccoon, a human, etc, out there and see how they do. My guess is that the true omnivores will do a lot better than the dog.

 Quote: matt lang

We can test it. We can get a big forest and clear out all the animals and then turn a dog loose and see how long he can survive eating plants and digging up roots. Then we can put true omnivores like a bear, a raccoon, a human, etc, out there and see how they do. My guess is that the true omnivores will do a lot better than the dog.

Read any ingredient labels of some "Economy" foods; lots of dogs do fine on that slop. The roots and plants would be an improvement.

Thanks to Natalya; I may have an in to some green tripe. I asked tongue in cheek if grass could be considered produce.....maybe it can.

Fun Bowel Movement info: (the crowd goes wild) the grass always comes out whole however; water reeds are never detected....could they be digestible?

And as far as leftover dinner veggies no luck. Don't try this at home but I even painted a tiny bit of broccoli with bacon grease and he licked it off and left the broccoli. But grass and water reeds....good stuff.

 Quote: Matt Lang

To me, it's more a matter of what an omnivore is.

That's a great point.

Opinions on this run the gamut, despite the carnivora designation. I guess the dog's ability to survive (although not thrive) with no meat and his scavenger nature must cloud his obvious meat/bone body system. (Those teeth and that digestive system should be obvious, anyway!)

If I had a good supply, almost all of my dogs' produce would be in the form of green tripe (even though two of them have a pronounced affection for certain produce items).

 Quote: Matt Lang

..... Then we can put true omnivores like a bear, a raccoon, a human, etc, out there and see how they do. My guess is that the true omnivores will do a lot better than the dog.

Depends. What if the dog eats one of the true omnivores?

Sheila,

Have you tried putting some pureed vegetable stuff in some ground meat and mixing it up really well?

I feel for you. My GSD loved vegetables, especially squash, cauliflower, broccoli, red peppers...and she went totally ape s*** over cabbage<g>. When I'd get a head of cabbage out and sit it on the counter before preparing it, she'd sit there below it and stare at it, then me, then it, then me, just to make sure I knew it was up there.

leih

LOVE the link, Michael (5 stars)! I'll send it to my vet. Her argument was that wolves and dogs (while genetically near identical) are different creatures regarding food needs. I read the link about myths regarding the difference between them, and will send that along as well. I'll report back her response. For the record, she supports me feeding raw, just suggests the meat should be very clean and fresh.

Therein lies the rub. When I feed raw meat (particularly chicken) in large bags, it usually gets to a point I wouldn't dare cook and eat it. To date, the dogs have never had an issue with the meat that has a whitish juice and slightly "tart" (though not at all rancid) smell. Honestly, they seem to like it better than the first chicken leg, etc. out of the bag. At what point would you throw meat away? I usually get ten pound bags of leg quarters, which don't get awful by the end, but I'd hate to make my girls sick through my own carelessness. I could easily freeze half, but I swear they do seem to prefer it!