Are You Killing Your Dog With Kindness? Canine Dietitians Say ‘Yes!’

Begging for scraps off the table is something most self-respecting dogs do and it takes a hard heart to deny your beloved hound a few choice leftovers and tit-bits that otherwise would end up in the bin.

Yet feeding dogs human leftovers is not really such a sweet treat for our furry friends according to animal experts.

Canine dietician Kristina Johansen told the Daily Mail:

“It’s time dog owners stopped killing their pets through misplaced kindness.”

Sounds a bit dramatic doesn’t it. After all, what harm does it really do, to share a prime cut of under cooked steak or perhaps a choice lamb chop with your famished mutt after a long ramble cross country together.

It’s not like wolves in the wild don’t have it large and dine like wild-eyed and bloodthirsty carnivores with every stray opportunity that catches their fang.

So should we really expect our dogs to be happy with a few bowls of the dry stuff each and every day? Or even worse, a couple of tins of very dubious and low grade meat content?

To a degree, no! It’s true that canine digestive systems are not equipped to handle the same food as humans, but we are talking about some very specific food items here and meat definitely isn’t one of them.

Kristina’s animal diet consultancy, Elmo’s Kitchen, have compiled a list of the ten most dangerous foods to give your dog. The list which should be retitled ‘stating the obvious for complete dullards who have absolutely no knowledge of dogs’, makes for some pretty uninspiring and uninteresting reading.

The list warns any bumbling bonehead out there that it’s not a particularly good idea to feed your dogs, amongst other things. chocolate, artificial sweetener, caffeine, and wait for it, alcohol.

Kristina explained:

“Dog owners’ good intentions are sadly misplaced and by feeding their dog ‘treats’ such as chocolate, grapes or, heaven forbid, a glass of wine, they are literally risking their lives. Some of these danger foods can be found in every-day products that you might feed your dog without thinking, such as gravy containing onions.

“It’s so easy to give your dog your leftovers, but it’s important to remember that although they are part of the family they have a completely different digestion system to humans, and so some foods that we would class as healthy can be toxic.”

I can’t say me and Brutus have ever shared a few cheeky glasses of Chardonnay or blithely tossed a couple of naughty artificial sweeteners into our high-caffeine content energy drinks, but it does take all sorts I suppose.

Yet you learn something new every day and apparently onions and leeks contain a chemical that can damage dog’s red blood cells and cause anaemia, weakness and breathing difficulties. Grapes and raisins also apparently have an extremely vicious impact on your dog’s kidneys.

So perhaps the real takeaway message from all this is, vegetarianism sucks big time, especially if you’re a dog.