I live in a rural area. The area in which I live is primarily cattle ranches, and forest. I have noticed that
my dogs are able to and will feast on carrion. It seems the more disgusting and smelly it is the more they like it. What is it about dogs that enable them to consume meat that would kill me, or at least make me very sick??
Thanks very much.
Unfortunately, I don’t know. But the title reminded me of the time my miniature-schnauzer (spelling?) swallowed a whole chicken wing (buffalo wing size). That thing got digested completely and came right out the other end no problems. I thought I’d have to take her to the animal hospital with punctured internals or something.
I’d be interested to hear about a dog’s digestive system. SOMEONE ANSWER THIS NOW!!! 
Dogs (and most other mammals) have things that help them digest stuff, which we poor humans don’t, such as stronger stomach acids and working apendixes. Us wussy humans, who go through all the trouble of cooking stuff, have lost these uber-digestive powers.
Don’t have a cite yet, but I will go and look for it. I have a beagle who, as a puppy, ate things like pine cones, glue sticks, boots, pencils, plastic toys. And I mean she actually ingested them, not just chewed on them. So I did some research on canine digestion.
What it all boils down to is that in comparison to people and pigs, dogs have a very short, inefficient digestive tract, so if they eat something noxious, it just comes right out the other end relatively quickly. Pigs and people have relatively long, leisurely digestive tracts, and are more likely to be poisoned by, say, carrion. (This accounts for the extreme stinkiness of pig poop–it’s thoroughly digested.)
The info on dog digestion I had also pointed out that for this reason it’s pointless to feed your dog a corn and wheat-based dog food. A dog’s digestive tract isn’t set up to deal with carbohydrates, so a dog can only utilize about 60% of the calories it gets from corn-based dog food, as opposed to 80% to 90% of the calories it gets from an animal-protein-based dog food.
http://www.pronetisp.net/~spo/canine.htm
http://www.natural-akita.com/naturalcanine/faq/faq_nutrition.html
My dog has digested raw chicken wings (by accident), and occasionally I’ll give her raw ground beef – she loves it! If a human ate raw beef, they probably wouldn’t be feeling too well right now.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of products that humans can eat with no problems, yet which are extremely toxic to dogs. Chocolate, for example.
Chocolate is toxic to dogs?
Have you got a reference for that?
My sister’s disgusting little rat-in-a-dog-suit lives on the stuff.
Yup, the food of the Gods is downright nasty for our little friends.
That’s wierd.
This little Chihuahua eats the garbage every day, is overweight and 8 years old, and quite healthy otherwise.
Good Lord, I hate reading threads like these.
Even if dogs can handle bacteria, parasites, and foriegn bodies better than people, bad things can and do happen from pets eating inappropriate things. I see it every night in my job. If you have a pet that regularly ingests things that are considered “bad”, and hasn’t had any problems, your pet has just been lucky thus far.
Stop giving the dog chocolate. Don’t let the dogs eat carrion. Don’t let your pets eat bones. Accidents happen but don’t GIVE bad things to your pets!
Michi
Thank you, Cyndar.
Dopers, if your dogs have been eating stuff like this and nothing has happened (so far), you’re very lucky. Most carnivores in the wild don’t get any older than five. Many wild animals die from intestinal perforations caused from bone fragments. Many more die from diseases picked up in part from carrion. Those animal shows on TV don’t often mention this stuff.
Also, NEVER feed your dog anything with onions in it. There’s a real good chance for internal hemorrhaging.
Why you should not give your dogs bones:
Imagine J. Average Bone. It is a calcium matrix made to stand up to a moderate amount of abuse before breaking, meaning it will only break if it is placed under enough stress to fragment. A dog’s jaws can handily provide that much stress. So the dog, eager to get as much of that delicious meat flavor it can, bites on the bone rather hard, shattering it into numerous tiny fragments. It swallows those fragments.
A dog’s intestine is not a very tough piece of meat, as animal tissue goes. It is only designed to get the nutrients out of food and ship the waste out the other end. The bone shards are passed through it like anything else the dog eats. To get an idea of the results, try shoving shards of glass through a length of rubber tubing. As you will observe, the tubing gets all cut up and punctured. When this happens in a dog, blood leaks out and parasites leak in. The dog can die from internal haemorraging (bleeding) or infection.
Bottom line: Don’t give dogs (or cats) bones!
but didn’t they do the exact same thing in the wild? I mean c’mon man, I am positive that my dog would not be eating grubs and berries out there. Squirrels and birds are the way to go.
jb
It was already pointed out by someone else that just cause dogs in the wild do that, doesn’t make it good for them. Many wild dogs die early deaths, from the types of things we are talking about in this thread.
jb, in the wild you would be fighting jackals for scraps of carrion. Does this make jackal-fighting a healthy pursuit? I should say not.
I doubt that dogs in the wild would eat all the twigs off a winter-bare azalea bush, which is what the beagle did once. I blamed the kids at first, for wrecking Mommy’s bush with the pruning snippers, but their tearful and repeated protestations of innocence, coupled with a close analysis of somebody’s droppings, led us to the difficult-to-believe truth.
Cyndar, you will be pleased to hear that she eventually grew out of the habit of eating things, although she has been known to chew up a dish towel every so often, just to keep her hand in, I think.
Something that I find completely hilarious is the addition of chicory (not to mention peas and carrots and other vegetables) to dog food. Right, like in “the wild” dogs dig up and consume carrots and chicory root all the time. :rolleyes: I get a kind of Beatrix Potter mental image of a dog in a gardener’s apron, trotting up and down the rows of early peas with a Martha Stewart garden trug.
How does this square with the fact that so many commercial dog foods are grain based?
By the way, my in-laws cook lamb and rice everyday for their dog!?!
First: Welcome to the SDMB BiggestDog99.
Second: I have another question on this topic. Why do dogs vomit following the consumption of grass? My dogs will do this one to three times per year. They’ll eat something they don’t like, then eat some grass and vomit. Would this apply to other greens (lettuce, etc.)?
i have heard that dogs that eat greens because of
a folic acid deficiency.
A note on the “but he’s always eaten it and been fine” posts.
One of my dogs is a 4 year old Sheltie who, at 12 weeks old, found and ate 1/2 lb. of chocolate fudge. He was fine. Now I know chocolate is toxic to dogs, and my other dog has never been given any, but this dog has an iron stomach and will eat * anything *. Over the years we have occasionally given him Smarties or chocolate chip cookies as treats if we are eating them.
A week before Christmas as I was putting hubby’s stocking together I opened one of those little tin foil wrapped chocolate balls. I bit it in half and the other half hit the floor. The dog grabbed it and ate it. It never occured to me to worry about it or think twice about the fact that he ate it as he has been eating chocolate for years.
About 4 hours later he started hacking, his eyes rolled up into his head, he fell over sideways and started to convulse. A few hours later he did it again.
After a trip to the vet and a lecture he is now fine and he will never-ever-as-long-as-I-live-cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-swear-on-my-grandma’s-grave-please-don’t-smack-me-**Cyndar ** going to get chocolate again.
Just because they’ve “always eaten it and been fine” does not mean they ** can ** always eat it and be fine.
Jawofech