And birds - chocolate is toxic to pet birds as well. This frustrates our conure, who really really really wants to eat whatever the people are eating. Sorry, sweetie - no alcohol, no avocado, no chocolate for you!
People have a significantly higher tolerance for theobromine than almost anything else. Why? I don’t know. I’m just glad they never had to test it on rats before people. If they had, it might not be considered a food at all, and that would be a terrible loss to humanity.
It’s the baker’s chocolate and the dark chocolate that’s the worst offender - that’s why dogs have survived chowing down on milk chocolate, they have to consume a much greater amount of it than dark chocolate to get a fatal dose.
The only LD50 number I could find for human beings for theobromine was 1,000 mg/kg, or 1 gram per kilogram bodyweight. That’s theobromine, not actual chocolate which is far from pure theobromine. Actually, I think milk chocolate is 1.3% theobromine, so you’d need a LOT of chocolate. So… 16-17 kg of chocolate is a lethal dose to half of people of average bodyweight. Or about 35-38 POUNDS of chocolate in one sitting.
I don’t think I’m physically capable of eating 35 pounds of ANYTHING at one sitting, how about you? Which is why chocolate is considered more or less non-hazardous to humans, though obviously if you had 100% pure theobromine you might be able to ingest a lethal dose.
Dogs on the other hand…a couple pounds of chocolate can (though does not always) kill the small to average sized dog, and we all know dogs can suck down a couple pounds of stuff at one go.
So, one of the reasons I usually heard for why dry dog food was better for dogs was because it was better for their teeth (it helped scrape any gunk off while they chewed, the act of chewing was probably good for the jaw muscles anyways). Assuming that’s true, what do you do for dental health if the dog eats only raw meat or canned food? Does he get the same benefit from a bone or a one of those rawhide chews?
nobody said dry food was bad. we’re talking about the rubbish sold at supermarkets and pet stores that’s mostly grain-based. there are plenty of dry dog foods out there that have little or no grains or fillers in them, but most people’s Wal-mart mentality means they can’t be arsed to pay a couple bucks more a bag.
for example, here’s the crap you can buy in most stores (hey, it’s got “Science” in the name so it must be great, right?"
Mostly corn meal, hardly any meat at all. So yeah, if your dog subsists on this crap then it might have problems with eating something fatty. You know, just like a human whose normal diet is donuts and a gallon of soda a day.
contrast that with something like Wellness (what we feed our dogs:)
strangely enough, once they transitioned over to this food, their chronic elevated liver function went away. Hmm…
They also poop less, because they digest more of it. And you don’t have to feed as much. My dog eats Wellness because of his skin, and also because he poops enough already.
No particular expertise here, but it makes evolutionary sense that dogs might not be able to handle a lot of fat. Look at standard large and small game animals, like deer and rabbits–they’re so lean that modern humans like to add lots of additional fat. Waterfowl often are a bit fatty, but I wonder how often wild canids ate them. Occasionally, but not regularly, I’d think. Unless you’re a polar bear eating lots of seals, being a predator or scavenger shouldn’t imply getting lots of fat.
We buy Royal Canin for the cat, which I’ve never seen in a store. We also weaned her off the pink salmon and she now eats canned chicken for her wet food. Not canned ‘chicken flavored’ cat food, but actual canned chicken that humans eat.
My dogs and cats have been eating nothing but raw animal parts for 5 years, they seem fine so far. She might have loose stool - if you feed her dog food, her system isn’t used to that much fat and protein in one go. Dogs have digestive systems equipped to deal not only with raw meat, but with carrion. Food poisoning is rarely a concern, their stomach acid kills most pathogens they ingest.
Raguleader, my pets have zero scale on their teeth because they chew on raw bones at least twice a day. They also have healthy gums and fresh breath. Back when I fed my old dogs dry food, they had bad gum disease (leading to tooth loss in my oldest dog), bad breath, and lots of scale that required professional cleaning, even though I brushed their teeth - all the sugars in the grain-based food did a number on their whole mouth.
ETA: Oh, and I think canine pancreatitis being ‘caused’ by dietary fat is a load of hooey, although I don’t have a ton of cites to back up my opinion. Certainly after the pancreas has been destroyed by years of improper (meaning carbohydrate-based) diet, the animal has a reduced capacity to process fat. My pets eat plenty of fat from chicken skin, mutton, beef, liver and other organs - and they are never ill and have no chronic conditions. My dogs will be 14 and 11 this year and my vet is very impressed with their health, although they still think I’m a nut to feed them how I do. And before I started raw feeding they were in pretty bad shape, it’s been a huge turnaround.
Really? Do you order it online, or what? I’m almost positive I’ve seen Royal Canin in PetSmart around here. Definitely at a number ofbetter quality pet stores; I’m sure you must have similar stores around.
We feed our cat Orijen and we’ve been very happy with it. We originally started out with Innova EVO, but it made his poop icky. Also, Innova was recently acquired by Proctor & Gamble, which made us slightly uncomfortable because supposedly (I admit I haven’t done deep research on this), they’ve in the past bought pet food brands and changed the formulas to cheaper ingredients. We mostly try to avoid any foods made by the massive corporations when we can. Not sure if that really makes a difference, but I feel better buying food from a company that just makes pet food rather than one that also makes cleaning products, candy bars, batteries, diapers and cologne.
FWIW, Iams, Eukanuba, Innova etc. are Proctor and Gamble. Science Diet is Colgate Palmolive. Royal Canin and Nutro are Mars.
Not to enter the debate lightly, but I’m having trouble grokking the fat -> pancreatitis thing, myself. Now, I’ve only studied it in humans, but fat isn’t a primary cause of pancreatitis in humans, although it can kinda sorta be an secondary (or rather, tertiary) contributing factor. That is, the most common cause of pancreatitis after idiopathic (“we dunno”) is from gallstones blocking the common bile duct and causing the pancreatic enzymes to digest the pancreas. Ew, I know.
Anyhow, a *regular *high fat diet can contribute to cholelithiasis (gallstones), and one of the stones from that could lead to pancreatitis, but it’s not nearly a direct route, and it doesn’t happen from a one time ingestion of a large amount of fat, but a constant diet high in fat.
It doesn’t seem reasonable to me because while the proportion of fat any wild canid eating a natural diet is/was consuming is debatable - dogs have only had grains as any significant portion of their daily diet in the last 10,000 years if that (same as humans). They’ve remained essentially unchanged when it comes to their entirely carnivorous teeth and internal digestive system (IIRC their long intestines are a bit longer than wolves, the better to eke the last bit of nutrition from human-sourced trash). Vegetation, seeds and nuts will be passed whole.
Their teeth, short digestive tracts, and way of eating (no grinding molars, crush or tear into swallow-able pieces) are only equipped to handle protein, bone, and fat. Therefore I assume that most digestive abnormalities are caused by the excessive carbohydrate consumption of modern pet dogs. Before the advent of processed, preserved, grain-based dog foods - only 60 years ago or so - fresh meat was rightly considered the most important part of a pet dog’s diet, and most dogs ran loose and many caught a good proportion of their own food (rodents). And we didn’t see pancreatitis like we do now (rates have skyrocketed in the last decade), not to mention the ever-increasing rates diabetes, cancer, heart disease - and obesity. Funny how American pets have the same health issues American people do.
And of course there is little actual evidence that a long-term high-fat diet in dogs leads to any health problems at all. The only example I can think of are sled dogs which are fed 60% fat or more and are exceptionally healthy animals.
We buy it at the vet’s office. My wife won’t go to pet product box stores for some reason, so we pay about $40/bag.
I’ve only seen dogs in distress twice from what they ate. Once was from an entire bag of catnip, which gave my dog the trots something awful. The other was a friend’s dog who ate an entire batch of bread dough, which rose in his gut and put him into severe gastric distress. The vet gave him a laxative for it, but said he would have to operate if that didn’t work.
When we butcher deer, our dogs sit and watch us like hawks. We toss them a good portion of scraps every year, and they’re fine of course. They probably should be eating deer. In the wild, canines will eat the offal first, and they’re not picky about what’s in those intestines.
Once every blue moon, we’ll pour bacon grease over their dry dog food. They lap it up, and have gone on to live full lives.
This also made me laugh, because I’ve never used the word ‘hoarked’ except as a description of egress, not intake, but the image of him snarfing the whole plate in one gulp is funny!
I think I am morning-drunk from ginger-beer yesterday. <no booze, but am still burping up ginger! And am easily amused this morning>
Correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that all of the dry pet foods named above are manufactured in the same factory from the same ingredients, and then rebranded.
I also understand that these “premium” brands were all implicated in the pet poisoning scandal of a year or two ago in which they were shown to cause the death of thousands of dogs and cats through induced kidney and liver damage.
This fatal damage was caused by Melamine having been added to the food in an effort to boost the apparent protein content of the food.
When the scandal broke in the USA, these products apparently had their formulation changed.
However, I saw a recent news report which stated that these Melamine contaminated products are still sold in places like Australia and New Zealand where they routinely kill dogs and cats.
As an addendum to the above post, I have found the following link regarding a recall of Eukanuba pet foods in Australia.
Note that it says this pet food is manufactured in the USA; so why is it being recalled in Australia and not the USA?
Also, I note that they are not explicitly stating why the food is being recalled. Is it due to the Melamine contamination that has been reported in Australia?
If it is true that the “premium” brands are all really the same stuff, but rebranded, why is only Eukanuba being recalled?
Because it’s a conspiracy theory. If you don’t think it’s an urban legend, provide cites (from a reputable source) that there is a pet food conspiracy.
