it just amazes the heck out of me. as a kid, my mother’s friend had a sheltie who was crazy about carrots. i had dogs all my life until about 10 years ago and none of them ever touched stuff like that.
now, years later, the dive master has four dogs that are equally nuts about fruits and vegetables.
rontue, the elder husky, will sit and stare holes in you until you are done with your apple. i am not kidding. he eats whatever is left - core and all. we have to distribute pieces to the other three or there is hell to pay. all four also love carrots and any nuts they can get their paws on.
the two boys inhale green grapes, the two girls will eat tomatoes like there’s no tomorrow. if they know the macaw has grapes or nuts up on her cage, they’ll lurk below, waiting for her to throw stuff at them - and she does. very little of it ever makes it to the floor.
am i alone in this weirdness or is it more common than i realize?
I had a Britney Spaniel that loved red grapes. Fun to play with and great to eat.
She also had a thing for baked potatoes. She liked her potatoes with butter and sour cream, but would eat them plain in a pinch. She would also swipe your french fries if you didn’t keep a sharp eye on them.
Unfortunately, grapes are toxic to dogs. Snopes said so.
That said, I have a black lab who once ate a half a pound of grapes when I accidentally left them in reach. He crapped whole grapes and grape-stems for a week afterward, but other than that he seem to suffer no adverse effects.
Then again, my dog eats foot lotion, plush animal stuffing, toenail clippings, a box of condoms, etc. The only thing he has ever turned his nose up at was cucumber slices.
I went to a dog show and asked a representative of a dog food company about dogs eating carrots. He said they are a main ingredient in most dog foods.
My old German Shepard “Gonzo” would drop a carrot when I handed it to him. Then when I gave him a second he would pick them both up and go off and eat them. We bought them in 30 pound bags because my beagle also ate them.
Our dogs adore fruits and veggies. They beg every morning for our breakfast apples, and Mr. S usually tosses them a bite. They also get veggies chunks when we’re chopping for dinner: carrots, potatoes, beans, celery, tomato, etc. My page-a-day dog calendar just had a pic the other day of a dog chewing on a carrot like a bone.
Oh, and our pups love to go berry picking in the summer. Once they figured out that there were free sweet eats in the bushes, we could hardly keep them out of there!
My dogs love carrots and raw potatoes (everyone loves fried potatoes, so that doesn’t really count). They hear me peeling potatoes in the kitchen and trip over each other to get in there to catch the peels I’ll toss their way.
My Belgian Sheepdog, Ike, loves tangerines, apples, oranges, and most veggies. He went to the store one day, and a staffer offered him some puppy biscuit that we keep on hand for our canine customers. He declined it politely. When I turned around again, he and the staffer were sharing her apple.
My Dolly loves carrots, apples, melons, pears and occasionally oranges. Sometimes she gives me the “sniff but won’t eat” treatment when I give her something healthy, until I take a bite and give her the rest.
I have 4 huge pear trees in my yard. In the summer she eats as many pears as she can steal from the bees!
Her most favoritest veggie of all time, though…is canned, unsalted green beans. Her vet recommended I cut down on her food and supplement with a nighttime snack of a can of green beans. I’ve been doing this for a couple years, every night, and she gobbles them up like nothing!
I’ve also given her canned pumpkin on occasion, just for something different. She digs that too.
Our two dogs, a yellow lab and a golden retriever, live for green beans. They absolutely adore them. Carrots are okay, potatoes are to die for wonderful, but the very best ever is green beans.
They don’t like citrus, though; we’ve tried several varieties, and they turn their noses up. I haven’t tried apples or pears; I’ll have to sometime to see how they react.
I’ve heard that canned pumpkin is a great way to stretch your dog’s food if you want them to diet a bit – mix it in with their kibble, and it’s got lots of good fiber but very few calories, plus the taste is very popular. I’ve not tried it because our guys’ weight has been pretty easily maintained through exercise, but as they get older, it’s something I’ve kept in mind.
My dad used to snack on raw cabbage when he was trying to lose weight and they had a dog that would beg for it. All the dogs I’ve known love apples, too.
My dog Simon loved fruit of any kind. I would eat an orange most nights, and he’d sit beside me drooling until he got the last slice. If I brought peaches or pears in, they’d have to be put where he couldn’t reach them, or there’d be none left for me. My neighbor grew tomatoes and cantaloupes in his garden, and any that came on our side of the fence were snarfed down by Simon. Piggy boy.
StGermain that reminds me of a funny clip from a nature show about wild dogs. It showed a wild dog that had been eating small melons in a patch somewhere when it got alarmed by something. It wanted to leave, but it also wanted to take a melon with it. In fact, it really really want to take two melons, but it could only carry one in its mouth. So it would pick up one melon, then see the other one lying on the ground, put down the first melon, pick up the second melon, then see the other one lying on the ground…
Our beagle loves tomatoes almost more than meat… almost. She is down right indignant if we don’t at least toss her the cores when we’re cutting one up.
Our bichon will eat almost anything she thinks is human food. Raw potatoes, carrots, apples, really anything that she thinks is for humans, but especially cheese. She can hear cheese being unwrapped from the other end of the house. I’m not kidding. Perhaps it’s the cheese drawer in the fridge, I don’t know, but only the door bell gets her attention faster than cheese being unwrapped.
Our dogs regularly eat onions, green onions, celery, carrots. They have a thing for lettuce and spinach salads, too. They eat the salad plain or with oil & vinegar, but sometimes I’ll toss in some Ranch, Bleu Cheese or French dressing instead. They love the stuff.
Edit: After seeing the above post about tomatoes, yes, they adore tomatoes more than anything! I had totally forgotten about that.
My dog loves the peels from potatoes, carrots, white asparagus, zucchini, etc.
I bring my dog to work every day. So do two of my employees. They play pretty much non-stop every day. What a life. They compete over treats, however. So much, that we offered them all green olives. You could tell that they did not in any way, shape, or form consider them tasty. Yet, each dog ate theirs, just very slowly.
We have a little apple tree in the backyard…actually, it is a pretty normal sized apple tree that bears little apples. Little sour apples. But the dogs LOOOOOOVE those apples. They will stand up and jump and pick all the ones they can reach. Every time they go outside they will inspect under the tree to see if any have fallen. They will ask the people to pick them an apple when all the ones within doggie reach are gone. One dog starts staring and inspecting for apples about the time the leaves come on in the spring.
Both my girls love everything we toss at them. They especially love broccoli stems, and seemed very fond of pumpkin rind when we cleaned and roasted seeds after halloween. Though they both drool non-stop when the cheese comes out. Our littlest stupid likes jalepenos and other various peppers. This is the same dog that will eat horseradish, wasabi and pickled ginger.