21/08/2022
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We shared a post there two days ago about dogs nicking food. It was clearly very popular. Over 2600 of you liked it and 180 of you felt the need to comment with your own story. It's striking that virtually 100% of them are about the dog nicking meat - chickens, hams, sides of beef, sausages. They don't come back with brandishing carrots, or a bushel of wheat. They come back with meat.
If you opened the supermarket to them, that's where they'd go (and it's true they would go for the cooked stuff first, it's tastier to them too). Not to the veg or breakfast cereal and CERTAINLY not to the "pet food' section (you know, the one with the poisonous household chemicals on the other side of it).
Studies show truly feral dogs are highly carnivorous, with diets in excess of 90-95% "meat" (from insects to little mammals to birds to carcass etc).
However, when villages dogs, that is, dogs that tend to live with a family at nighttime but are permitted to roam during the day (usually poorer countries with lax roaming laws) are tracked we see that while they receive a very vegetarian breakfast from their family (poor folk don't waste animal protein on their pets) and then spend nearly 100% of their time searching out animal protein "to top up their failing protein reserves".
A preponderance of feed trials shows they choose animal protein over all else, they favour protein and fat over carbs, they will choose a small meat offering no matter how big the pile of dry is, they work harder and longer for meat rewards. On and on, with most of these studies conducted by the cereal-based pet food sector themselves. But still, beyond 4% bone meal or the likes, they refuse to give it to them as it costs more than weetabix.
Dogs are the perfect hunting machine. Classified as an opportunistic scavenging carnivore, they have big noses (olfaction is 25% of their brain!), eyes wired for movement, a hinged, muscled jaw that snaps closed, set with ferocious pierce-and-chop teeth, sleek, long-distance running bodies. Perfectly evolved to exploit a myriad of niches and anything with a face.
With all we know of them, isn't it ridiculous that we still have a pet food industry trying to convince us that this is not the case?!
Your dog (and cat) is surely healthiest fed meat.
Give them what they want. Give them what they NEED.
