I have a 2 1/2 month old puppy who has never eaten “people” food…we feed her only Puppy Chow. As I was cooking dinner last night, my SO commented that the dog was probably getting hungry from smelling the food. Which made me wonder: Since she has never tasted human food, does she know what it is? Would smelling it make her hungry?
And what about a human baby? If a baby has never tasted adult food, does smelling it make her/him hungry?
Your dog, just like a human baby, has hard-wired instincts to tell it what is food, and what might not be. It’s one reason wolves and humans are still around after a few odd million years. Just as you don’t have to “learn” not to drink spoiled milk (or eat feces for that matter) because of your instinctive, built-in smell-o-meter.
Some smells are naturally repellant to you to keep you from eating bad things—and some smells are naturally attractive to you to get you to eat good things.
Same deal with Fido.
Thank you, and Goodnight.
I think that your puppy knows what food smells like. If you droped some on the floor I am sure she would eat it.
But, not feeding the puppy people food is the right thing to do. It will keep the dog healthier and keep her from begging.
I once had a dog trainer tell me that I SHOULD feed my dog people food (healthy people food, that is.) Her explanation was that even though the dog food bag may tout that it is nutritionally complete it is not. Dog food, she said, is the equivelent of a human eating nothing but rice and broth and taking a vitamin pill-- it may keep you alive, but you’re not getting all you need. She suggested that occasionally I make my dog a bowl of rice and spinach with real (cooked) meat stirred in. She said that dogs in the wild have a varied diet of both plant matter and meat. (That’s why your dog eats grass-- they eat it to try get their vitamins, but the barbs on the grass irritate the stomach which is why they sick it up after a while.) Wild dogs also eat the plant matter that is in the stomachs of their prey. Dog foods are generally made of corn and the parts of animals that can’t be fed to humans (including chicken feathers ground up.) She said that you should, at least once a week, feed your dog something like a beef stew made with fresh veggies and lean cuts of beef.