A question for vegetarians who have dogs?!
Answers: How do you feel about buying meat for your dog? I've always wanted to adopt a dog, but I just haven't seen it as something that I can do. To my understanding, meat is a very important part of a dog's diet, and by buying the large amounts of meat that a dog needs to remain healthy, I would be supporting the disgusting murder/meat industry. How do you feel about this? Also, I've always wished that one day the world would be completely free of the uneccessary cruelty that humans inflict upon animals, meaning that there would be universal vegetarianism. However, there are so many new breeds of dogs that have been engineered by humans that would be unable to survive on their own in the wild, which means that in this idealistic world humans would still have dogs of pets. What would we do about the meat?
Well your in luck because dogs without a doubt can be healthy vegans. I have been feeding my dog (100 pound husky) vegan dog food for years and he is healthier now than when he was eating meat. In fact the oldest living dog in the world is vegan. Last time I looked she was nearing 30 years of age (189 in dog years).
http://dogsinthenews.com/issues/0209/art...
Most dog food is from the scraps of the slaughter house and is often diseased or contaminated. So at any rate unless you are buying your dog premium dog food from a reputable source you will be doing him or her a huge favor by feeding them vegan dog food.
Here are a couple of brands I have been buying.
http://www.v-dogfood.com/
V-dog is great dog food. I even tried it myself and wanted more. It however is expensive especially with shipping involved.
http://www.amazon.com/Natures-Recipe-All...
This second dog food is very good as well and is much more economical. It will cost you about 1 dollar a pound if you buy it direct from Petco. If you buy ten bags in a year they will give you the 11th for free (with their card) making the cost even less than a dollar per pound. For vegan dog food this is a fantastic price. I used to have it shipped from Amazon.com but the shipping was murdering my pocket book.
You can also make your own dog food as well and may indeed be the cheapest if not the most healthy way to go. When I have ran out of dog food in the past I would feed my dog rice and beans and other left overs. He did and is doing just fine. He is spry and his coat is shiner than I have ever seen it.
http://www.vegetariandogs.com/
I actually bought the book from this site. It gives some good recipes and suggestions.
it isnt bad just hard to watch them eat it
well i guess all i have to say is that you can change your pets or dog food so you do not have to see any meat and yeah
I know that there is meat product in the food I have to feed them, and I don't like that so much, but they have to eat. I never actually buy raw meat and cook it up for them.
On the other hand, both of my dogs love to be in the kitchen with me when I cook for myself and actually think little slices of veggies are treats! They love zucchini, broccoli, green peppers and especially tomatos.
VegeterianDogs.com
They have this book you can buy that teaches you how to keep them really healthy and what not without eating meat.
They also have some food from their website you can order for your dog that's meat-free.
Plus, they sell some powder supplements with all the necessary vitamins and minerals for you doggy.
:)
I'm a vegan and I have two very healthy vegetarian dogs. We have dogs for pets because they are not wild animals, if they are not under the care of a human chances are they will die of starvation because they are not hunters. People say meat is an important part of a dog's diet, some people also say that meat is an important part of a person's diet. Both are untrue, vegetarianism is a healthy way of life that is very beneficial. Many vegetarians and vegans have vegetarian dogs. Slowly, every day people come to their senses and change into being a vegetarian or vegan. If they just educate themselves, surely they (as I have) will come to the lighter side and lead a cruelty free lifestyle. The more people that switch, the more demand there is. 50 years ago I'm sure there wasn't all these veggie/vegan restaurants. But, as time changes, the people do too and so does the world. It's up to us to help the animals. Hopefully in time puppy mills will no longer exist (Oprah just did a show on it and brought a lot of much needed attention to the horror of puppy mills) and when those go out, people will adopt from shelters and still care for dogs as pets, dogs more than likely cannot survive in the wild on their own. But, if we can just keep the population under control and spay and neuter our pets then we wouldn't have to worry about so many precious animals having to suffer. I doubt there will be wild dogs running around, but if there ever will be I'm sure some good people will help them or they will learn to adapt.
*I use the Vegetarian Formula from Natural Balance which I buy from Petco, they have a website. They don't do animal testing and it's vegetarian suitable.
In my country we rarly or never give them meat (for most people meat costs a lot). Bread (they like a lot especially when it's warm) and the remains of cooked food without meat(the food that you eat) and they are very healthy especially because they exercise a lot by running and playing ... the important thing is to have lots of space though (like big gardens)
Some animals cannot live on a vegetarian diet. Humans can. Now, I know this does not apply to dogs, but I have a cat, and I don't have a problem giving her food with meat in it. I see vegetarianism as doing the best you can to eliminate animal suffering. Some things you can't help.
I buy dog food for my dog because he is a carnivore.
Most people who have pets feed them bagged crap, they aren't getting "large amounts of meat." And people who buy their pets bagged crap really don't put much thought into their animal being healthy.
That said, I'm not the average person and my pets are raw fed real meat from local pasture-raising farms.
My beef (no pun intended) is with factory farming, not carnivorous animals eating animals. I'm still not supporting factory farming.
I feed my dog and cat commercial meat-based pet foods from Whole Foods, called "Pet Promise." They are environmentally conscious, obtain meat from family farms, and use no by-products, hormones or antibiotics.
I would buy them meat because they aare the animals if they whant to eat it why not but i dont believe people should eat meat. its the animals choice..
or you can buy dog food that says veggies and make you dog a vegetrian. Buy them beans and soy products.
I don't think there's anything wrong with giving them meat. We humans hold ourselves to a higher moral standard because we have choices. Dogs don't. They eat meat in the wild, and they need to eat meat domestically. Remember that most dog food meat is just by-product of the meat that was killed for human consumption, so it's not like they slaughter any extra animals to make dog food.
Well, I don't have a dog yet, but I'm getting one in August. I plant on feeding it vegan like me. They have vegan dog food and treats so you don't have to feed it meat.
Here is a site where you can buy it
http://www.v-dogfood.com/