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Post by rarnold18 on Sept 28, 2010 16:54:28 GMT -5
I was surfing CL, the evil website it is and came across this "Looking for a Vegan Home for a Vegan dog" ARE YOU F'N KIDDING ME?!?!?! (http://orlando.craigslist.org/pet/1978113757.html)
I'm all for feeding our animals naturally and keeping them healthy, I feed my dogs and ferrets BARF and have tried many times to switch the cats with no success. But a vegan diet, that means no animal protien right? That food....Aveoderm? I think it's called, where the protien is from Avacados?? I really can't see how over a long period of time that it can be benificial to any dog or cat! Unless they are going for regular scalings, their teeth must be horrible... what about taurine? It comes from animal hearts (right?) and even if it's added to the food just as taurine wouldn't that mean the "vegan" animal is realisticly getting animal products making it not so vegan? I'm stunned! Please someone explain to me how a vegan diet can be healthy for a dog, cat, ferret, or other carnivor!
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Post by 1 on Sept 28, 2010 17:24:15 GMT -5
Just gessing, I think their anty pet people and the point is to kill them!
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Post by bluecoyote on Sept 28, 2010 19:49:16 GMT -5
my bulldog's first home was supposedly like that. the lady i got him from said his first home only fed him veggie type foods. she tried to give him a hamburger patty once and he wouldnt even sniff it..... but he only lived with them for about six months before being given to another person who gave him to another person. i'm his third or fourth home and he's been with us for four years - he's also fed nothing but raw and looks better than ever. and i dont really understand the vegan lifestyle. what little i have been told(i never researched it myself but have seen some vegan comments) .... i dont really understand why they own pets to begin with. that is JUST based on some vegan comments/what i've been told. but i admit.. now i'm curious too..... i would imagine a diet like that could potentially shorten a lifespan and cause a very painful death due to lack of proper nutrition?
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Post by bluemoose on Sept 28, 2010 20:08:57 GMT -5
Well judging by what I've read on Y!A, some people believe dogs to be omnivores. So they take that misguided belief and figure, if people are omnivores and we can be vegetarian/vegan, so can dogs. Dogs can of course do somewhat better on vegan diet than cats/ferrets because dogs are not obligate carnivores and can produce their own taurine. But if their diet is lacking in certain nutrients over a long enough time, they can stop producing it and end up with a taurine deficiency.
So even for dogs, a vegan diet is not healthy or advisable. I have a real problem with people who force their personal lifestyle choices onto an animal that was never designed to live in that fashion. So to answer your question, it can't be health for a carnivore, obligate or not, to eat a vegan diet. Some people just don't understand that many animals have stricter dietary requirements than people. That or they just don't care because they are dead set against the consumption of animals/animal products.
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Post by 1 on Sept 28, 2010 20:15:58 GMT -5
my bulldog's first home was supposedly like that. the lady i got him from said his first home only fed him veggie type foods. she tried to give him a hamburger patty once and he wouldnt even sniff it..... but he only lived with them for about six months before being given to another person who gave him to another person. i'm his third or fourth home and he's been with us for four years - he's also fed nothing but raw and looks better than ever. and i dont really understand the vegan lifestyle. what little i have been told(i never researched it myself but have seen some vegan comments) .... i dont really understand why they own pets to begin with. that is JUST based on some vegan comments/what i've been told. but i admit.. now i'm curious too..... i would imagine a diet like that could potentially shorten a lifespan and cause a very painful death due to lack of proper nutrition? but i admit.. now i'm curious too..... i would imagine a diet like that could potentially shorten a lifespan and cause a very painful death due to lack of proper nutrition? From what I remember of the list, lose of fur, underweight, lose of flesh due to lack of meat, ya, their body's eating them selves, nightmares, mental issues, not knowing what is food,sever lack of stranght, I'd go on but this is as far as I remember, oh ya, and extremely painful death!!!!!! I bet some of you thought I was joking?!?!? NOPE!!!
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Post by bluecoyote on Sept 28, 2010 20:46:17 GMT -5
i think the thing people fail to acknowledge about a diet is... the first three letters spell DIE for a reason. a GOOD diet is important!!!
i mean with my own... i already know i'd die on a vegan diet. i'm not quite a ferret but almost there lol and some foods simply make me sick and sometimes i just crave certain things.
And subjecting an animal to personal beliefs .... lol well i dont know.... an animal, especially a dog, is going to eat when it gets hungry.. and they are not going to care if their dinner was cruelty free or not... then again I had dogs that would eat carrots and water melon! i even had a bulldog that would eat grapes right off the vine! every morning when she was let outside she would make a bee line for the grape vine and eat what ever was in reach. and if we were out there eating grapes too she would sit up pretty and beg for them. No, at the time we didnt know that grapes could be toxic. Thank God we never had a medical issue from them... this dog would gorge herself on them so i dont know why we didnt have problems!
since learning about that however i have two opinions on the matter...1 not all dogs are gonna get sick. 2 better safe than sorry!
but .... after looking at a list of what is toxic to a dog or causes allergy issues... i'd say a vegan diet is borderline cruelty.... this person SAYS their dog is healthy... so maybe it works for her.... still.. i dont know without seeing it for myself.
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Post by bluemoose on Sept 28, 2010 20:52:24 GMT -5
Dogs are very opportunistic. Most will eat just about anything if they're hungry enough and some dogs really do enjoy fruits/vegetables. Heck my dog eats grass. Not because he's sick and needs to throw up, he just likes grass. And they both love eating avocados off the trees. But regardless of how the dog feels about a vegan diet, it's not a healthy choice. The dog may be (or appear to be) healthy now but kept on a vegan diet long enough, health problems will almost certainly develop eventually.
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Post by bluecoyote on Sept 28, 2010 21:00:00 GMT -5
tis true, they will grab about anything that looks like food..... we rescued a little dog some dumped in our neighbourhood and she went above and beyond eating anything.... she would literally eat.ANYTHING. if it wasnt nailed down she'd carry it off and if it was nailed down... she'd chew it. i caught her one day chewing the cap on our septic tank husband left his cell phone in reach and she chomped on it... she was a sweet little dog but i was happy to see her finally find a home. i warned them about her nasty little habit. i just hope they had her stomach X-rayed!
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Post by Heather on Sept 28, 2010 22:46:43 GMT -5
I wrote one time about meeting a well meaning couple who killed their ferret. They fed it the best food money could buy. The poor thing starved to death before it was 9 months of age. The little fellow had the best organic fruits and veggies money could buy. The horrible thing, the vet who treated this little soul never once told this couple that they were ultimately responsible for the little ones death. They had spent close to $3,000 dollars in investigative blood work and surgery, the vet managed to tell them the results pointed to no specific problem other than multiple organ failure. I've seen starving ferrets, you can't tell me that a vet cannot figure something like that out (the surgery was for a blockage, when the vet found nothing a exploratory was done). The little fellow didn't survive. I saw the report, it read findings inconclusive. I spoke with the couple for a long time, they informed me that they were vegans and that they would have never taken on a carnivorous animal. The people at the pet store had told them to feed the little fellow a vegetarian kibble but they thought they would give him a better diet by feeding him natural food. The world of misinformation... ciao
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Post by bluecoyote on Sept 29, 2010 10:22:41 GMT -5
OMG Heather! that is horrible!! I dont think i would be able to look that vet in the eye again. how could he NOT know?? i mean.... gah! thats disgusting! the poor ferret and i feel bad for his owners too because they didnt know.... then again...... i admit before i got mine i thought they were omnivores and was told by a few people they could just eat cat food.. but something wasnt jiving with that knowledge. not with UK ferrets working in the field, eating wild game and living longer than house ferrets in the US.... it took some digging but i did find the right info, which ultimately lead me here. so.... if i can do it, i know others can too. if they want to. a vet should be ashamed.... still, thats just sad
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Post by Chelsea on Oct 8, 2010 8:08:19 GMT -5
Dogs ARE omnivores, sort of. They certainly aren't obligate carnivores like cats and ferrets, but they're absolutly not designed to be vegetarians. Yes, some veggies(cooked) in a raw diet is good for dogs... but a total vegetarian diet? Uhg
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xeopse
Cageless and Roamin' Free
Raw Feeder
Posts: 235
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Post by xeopse on Oct 25, 2010 20:16:06 GMT -5
I personally look at dogs as scavengers, neither omnivore nor carnivore - most certainly not an herbivore. They eat what is in front of them - if you put a quail in front of my dog she will take that over broccoli any day of the week even though she loves veggies and fruits. If I'm eating some, I'll give her some too - she especially loves bananas. But they were designed for meat with a lot of leniency for other food sources. I find that feeding them is sooo much easier because of this - she once at a whole pound of potatoes without too much ill effects other than a stuffed belly, and TWO pounds of Twizzlers which gave her red poop for a day. Millions of dogs get by scounging nothing but trashcans and what's thrown out of cars all over the world and manage to get by with little health defects (more so broken legs, other animal bites, etc) - but just because they can doesn't mean they should McDonald's leftovers every day but they get by on it just the same. Hopefully there's enough road kill and unprocessed proteins in other animal feces, and other left overs to sustain them in the long run.
Anyways, just my two cents. After working with the feral dog population, domesticated dogs are scavengers - nothing more, nothing less. Often times they don't have much prey drive, or know enough to kill what they eat so they won't. They feed off what society leaves for them, not true feral animals like cats can be. Wild dogs on the other hand are carnivores - they are hunters but will eat scavenged meals as they happen upon them.
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Post by Heather on Oct 25, 2010 23:04:15 GMT -5
I totally agree. Any of my dogs would have passed up the whole veggie thing if offered a steak. Dogs are opportunists. They can survive on vegetables but they cannot live on veggies....JMO of course. ciao
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Post by WTFerret on Oct 25, 2010 23:47:12 GMT -5
I've never understood these hippies and their vegan ways ... They all look sickly to me. Anyway this thread reminds me of the futurama where the hippies force a lion to live on tofu. Attachments:
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Post by bluemoose on Oct 26, 2010 0:00:46 GMT -5
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