She decided to put her on a meat-free diet this summer when she started to go off her food. She believed the animal wanted to be vegetarian, so she served up meat-free dog food and leftover vegetables.
Comment: There could be many reasons the dog went off her food but this owner made an erroneous assumption based on her (apparently) unconscious biases.
However, during an appearance on This Morning, the dog headed straight for a bowl of meat - nevermind the carrots and peas.
Veterinarian Scott Miller explained that while dogs are omnivores and so eat both meat and plants, making them vegetarian is taking away their freedom to follow their natural need to eat meat.
Dogs get a number of health benefits and vitamins from eating meat; including Amino acids and vitamin D, which they can't synthesis through their skin like humans do.
He said:
People make this decision for all sorts of reasons; people are making it for cultural reasons, for religious ones, for reasons of animal welfare, but the point is it's a choice and our pets can't make that choice so it's something we have to be exceptionally careful about.
They can't make the choice so we need to do look at the natural history which dictates that dogs are omnivores they eat a mixture of meat and plant in order to get all the essential minerals and vitamins they need.Lucy admitted that she would now be giving Storm meat again said:
If this is what she wants then obviously I'm going to adapt accordingly.
Comment: The owner is evidently embarrassed when, as the dog goes straight for the meat, she says "Oh you little....i didn't swear!". And, other than sniffing the vegetables, Storm the dog doesn't even lick them.
Be sure to check out the links below for more information on why the comments in the video praising the ideologies of vegetarianism and veganism for humans, and the suggestion that it could be suitable for dogs, are potentially deadly.
For another entertaining (but not necessarily scientific) study, let's see children's reaction to broccoli or bacon:
Broccoli...
Bacon!
Links: