The
Domestic Dog
Carnivore
or Omnivore
Another
dog food recall came out today. With all
the controversy surrounding the safety issues of feeding a commercial dog food
diet vs. a raw food diet, it is hard for many pet owners to decide just what is
best for their beloved pet. Having fed a
raw, meaty bone diet for over thirteen years now, I believe I have a pretty
good understanding of the issues involved; however, I believe one should never
stop learning and evolving. The bottom
line is not what one believes but what is best for the animals in one’s care.
What
experience has taught me is that each dog is an individual. What works for one may not be right for
another. The majority of my dogs do well
on a meaty bone diet, but there are exceptions.
One of the first things I noticed was that some individuals need
supplementation with Vitamin A. These
were all Chinese Crested hairless individuals.
They developed skin crusting without Vitamin A supplementation. Other individuals could not maintain weight
on a raw, meaty bone diet. No matter the
amount of food consumed, these dogs remained too lean. After issues such as these began to crop up I
decided I should do further research into just what and how dogs digest food.
The
argument that dogs are strictly carnivores because their closest relative, the
grey wolf, is a carnivore is the main stay of most raw, meaty bone
feeders. Of the various canids wolves do
consume a basic meat and bone diet; however, they also consume grasses and
berries. (I have actually seen a video of a wolf picking and eating grapes.) Wolves do not eat the stomach content of
their larger prey so they do not pick up vegetation from that source. Coyotes consume a wider range of foods
including insects and fruits and berries.
Jackals are omnivores as are Dingoes and foxes. There are more canid omnivores than there are
carnivores. Why?
Canines,
like humans, are opportunistic. Survival
of a species depends on being adaptable.
If an animal restricts itself in diet, such as the koala bears feeding
only upon eucalyptus leaves, then its very survival is at stake if that source
of foods vanishes. Dogs like people take
advantage of what is available in order to live. Dogs have lived with and eaten what we eat
for thousands of years. But can they
digest what we digest? Can they digest
and use carbohydrates?
One area
we can look at is the length of a dog’s gastrointestinal tract. Unlike a cat, which is strictly a carnivore
and has an extremely short GI tract, dogs have a ratio of 6:1 GI tract to body
length which is within the range for an omnivorous diet. Dogs produce the pancreatic enzyme amylase
which allows them to hydrolyze soluble carbohydrates. What this means is dogs can break down the
chemical bonds of carbohydrates by combining them with water. This allows a dog to change disaccharides (two
linked monosaccharaides such as sucrose which is a combination of fructose and
glucose) into monosaccharaides (single carbohydrate molecules.) When the carbohydrates are hydrolyzed into monosaccharaides,
these are absorbed through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream and carried
to the liver. In the liver they are
converted into glucose and used for energy. The body wants to use glucose for energy but
it can use protein and fat if necessary.
Excess glucose is stored in the liver and is converted for other needs
such as building DNA and RNA. Dogs have the gene which enables them to increase
the cellular response to glucose transport in the face of increase in dietary
intake of carbohydrates. (Cats do not.)
In addition dogs can taste sweets. (Again, cats do not.) Obviously dogs when compared to cats which
are true carnivores and will die on a carbohydrate alone diet, are omnivores.[i]
Lucky Dogs! They have a better chance of
survival in adverse circumstances.
How did I
relate this information to my feeding regiment?
I now include grains (mainly brown rice) and fruits and vegetables in my
dog’s diets. Dogs if allowed will
supplement their diet with plants. I
live in the forest so my dogs feed on a variety of plant materials and seldom
if ever regurgitate them. My first Rottweiler, Josie, picked and ate
blackberries. I believe dogs eat grass
because they now live in controlled urban settings and are not exposed to the diversity
of plant life as they once were. I juice
the fruits and vegetables to help break down the cellulose and facilitate
digestion. The dogs love it, especially
the addition of carrot juice and watermelon.
Stools, which are indicators of what is and isn’t being digested are not
as dry and powdery as they are on a
strictly meat and bone diet, but they are small and firm demonstrating the dogs
are digesting well their new regiment.
Deciding what is best for one’s pets is a
personal choice. Do the research. Don’t depend on sale pitches or pretty
packaging. Don’t believe everything you
read. There are good, scientifically
researched articles available on the internet to help one decide what is best
for the dogs sharing one’s world. Take
the time to find out if what you are reading is in fact correct or just someone’s
dogma. Your dog will thank you for it.
[i] D.
Batchelor, M. Al-Rammahi, A. Moran, J. Brand, X. Li, M. Haskins, A. German, and
S. Shirazi-Beechey, “Sodium/glucose Cotransporter-1, Sweet Receptor, and Disaccharidase
Expression in the Intestine of the
Domestic Dog and Cat: Two Species of Different Dietary Habit,” Am. J. Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol
300: R67-R75, 20ll.
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