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What do dogs eat?
I'm writing a story in which a homeless man is befriended by a stray dog.
Can the dog-owners among you tell me, please, is there anything a dog won't eat if he's starving?
If he sniffed through rubbish bags for food, is there anything he'd bypass?
And what food would make him ill if he ate it?
I've only had cats and they're fussy as hell but I don't know about dogs.
Can the dog-owners among you tell me, please, is there anything a dog won't eat if he's starving?
If he sniffed through rubbish bags for food, is there anything he'd bypass?
And what food would make him ill if he ate it?
I've only had cats and they're fussy as hell but I don't know about dogs.
Comments
If a starving dog were to wolf down lots of something fatty he'd very likely be sick straight away.
This might help http://pets.webmd.com/dogs/ss/slideshow-foods-your-dog-should-never-eat
Looking on the web:
For a 30kg dog (like a Labrador):
200g milk chocolate or 70g of dark chocolate is likely to cause vomiting and diarrhoea.
750g milk chocolate or 250g of dark chocolate is likely to cause seizures and cardiovascular problems.
Only 500g of milk chocolate is likely to be fatal, but I'm not sure of the timescale.
http://www.vets-now.com/pet-owners/dog-care-advice/dog-eaten-chocolate/
As to what they wouldn't eat:
I'm new to dog ownership and my pup, it seams, will eat anything. The stinkier the better. Many dogs enjoy eating faeces, even their own. The only thing I've seen our pup less than enthusiastic about was dry dog food.
She phoned the vet who told her there was nothing to be done but wait and see from whom it was pooped. Apparently they hit the ground more or less as they entered the biggest Lab - he'd just gulped them down.
Royal Canin, Hill's, all those supposedly good quality kibbles are just the very poorest meat slush spun off bones after all the good stuff is gone, and it is heat treated to make it dry, and at such high temps the flavour goes. So they then have to be coated in oil with flavouring added. Some of the protein sources for the kibble is questionable in the extreme - Hill's even uses 'feather' protein and the first proteins are maize and grain based which is not natural for a dog.
So if you want your dog to eat their own or other dogs' faeces, it would probably be on one of the above.
Most dogs eat cow faeces and it is thought by some to regulate their digestion by adding bacteria much as we would eat bacteria after a stomach upset.
But yes, it's not always the case.
I used to work for a vet when I was young, for about 5 years. There were more kibbles coming on to the market and every time a dog was brought in the vet I worked with asked what it was fed. New kibbles were virtually always implicated in the vast rise of allergies and eating faeces the vet I was with was seeing, according to him. And research has proved him correct.
http://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/kibble-never-a-good-option/
Thank you all.
I have decided my fictional dog Perry prefers meat but will eat almost anything his new friend prepares from the scraps they find together. The only exception being when some chocolate mousse gets into the mix by mistake. =;
It'd be hard to believe in a hungry stray turning his nose up at chocolate mousse.
My little dog, described as 'small, scruffy and flea-ridden, with huge eyes', is now called Pepe - this story is set in Tenerife, after all - and, having lived through his dumpster-diving days, is now enjoying a life of luxury in a seafront cafe.
His diet is still varied but less hit-and-miss, but he still doesn't like chocolate mousse. Even a stray mutt can have his idiosyncracies.
There was a woman at John Lewis today who said she left their little dog being very sick, but it was ok 'because he only ate a dark chocolate, and it's the sugar in the milk chocolate that harms them'.
We persuaded her to phone home and get the dog to the vet straight away.
One friend lost her (labrador) dog to a pack of milk chocolate coins at Christmas.
Friend who is a dog trainer nearly lost two of her three collie dogs who ate the very few (milk) buttons in the bottom of a pack one of her sons had put down. Very, very nearly died. You just don't know how sensitive the dog will be, doesn't matter if they are big or small. Some can tolerate a bit of milk.
If that's wrong ti's too late because I've sent the story off today.
I like some dogs - Alfie and Molly who belong to a pub friend are nice, curly-haired mutts of indeterminate breed. An Irish/Basque neighbour called Javier has a brindle bull terrier who is okay too, though she could knock me over with no trouble at all, and Lola is obviously unique.
But.
The yappy little dogs upstairs could perish without a tear from me, as could the savage Alsatian over the way, and all the dogs that crap on the pavements.
Dog lover? No.
Dog hater? Not that either - just descriminating.
I'm the same with children - some are lovely, some are ... not.
Children are the same... parents not able to modify behaviour, but on the other hand, some of the exasperating children of my children's childhood have turned out VERY clever and wonderful people.
Loathe yappy dogs, but loathe ill-behaved children more, but you never know if they have some sort of syndrome when you are out, if you don't know them.
I too am guilty of making all the excuses under the sun for the little perishers, whether human or canine, but I reserve the right to moan to friends. I assure you I don't beat them up on sight - not often, anyway!
There's a lot on our pavement recently from a dog that has to be the size of a small dinosaur.
Moaning is good. It lets off steam.
The only bright spot in this is that the wind also blew down a towel they had hung over their ballcony rail, so before I put it on the wall for them to collect I wiped up their dogs' wee with it. Small acts of revenge help a little - not much, but some.
:-L
And to her mother who owns the apartment.
And to her father who said he would speak to her that very day and either didn't or wasn't listenend to.
And to the community administrators who tell me they've sent letters.
So now when their dogs yap at me I shoot them with a huge water pistol.
And I know that's considered awful and that I'm viewed as a crabby old woman but one reaches a point where one just snaps.
I am pretty much the same if other people's cats come into my garden. They get a good seeing off and tend not to hang around when I fly at them hissing and waving a tea towel.
Tbh, the majority seem to understand cats are not welcome in my birdie garden and stay away.
I suppose the idea was that they'd take one sniff and think "Feck me, that's a biggun!" and scuttle off sharpish. Can't remember now if it worked or not.
We have a cat, and she sees off visitors. Everyone round says they never see her, and certainly she goes to the loo in our garden.
We have birds, but she has an alarm and a bell. And round the bird feeders we have a big cage, rather like a playpen. They can go on the ground in there in safety and soon learn this.
He loves ginger biscuits, the only thing he won't eat is fisherman's friends, he spat it straight back out
When I was twelve there was nothing funnier than watching him chew on them. In hindsight I'm surprised he had any teeth left.
Dad's previous dog was a German Shepherd who used to jump up to snatch the apples off the tree at the bottom of the garden. He once nicked a kilogram bar of Galaxy from the dining table and scoffed the lot, including most of the foil. Dad was very worried but apart from an upset stomach it didn't seem to do the dog any harm, thankfully.