Should Your Dog Be a Vegetarian?
By Kelly Marshall
Jun 25, 2012
Are you a vegetarian who owns a dog? Oh you are? That's great! Do you want to know if it is okay for your dog to eat vegetarian foods? Let's examine some information on this topic to see what we find. This will help you discover if you should feed your dog a vegetarian diet.
Let's first discuss what a vegetarian diet is. Typically it means leaving out all meat, and in some cases, fish. With some hardcore believers, they will not eat any dairy or egg products either. The latter version is normally called vegan. With being vegan, nothing they consume can have animal products in it including their vitamins. These diets are perfectly fine for us humans, but may or may not be for dogs. Keep reading to find out more.
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It is rather short compared to animals that are herbivores or plant eaters. A dog, according to science, is a carnivore or a meat eater. Today, though, the dog is more of an omnivore, which eats both animals and vegetables or other plants. The dog's short intestinal tract does not digest large quantities of the plants. Also a dog's nutritional requirements include high quantities of calcium and protein which are easily attained through eating meat, eggs and dairy products, the exact foods you the vegetarian might not eat at all.
You can see by this that a dog should have a diet that is at least partly meat. Sure you can mix in some vegetables (dogs like veggies) but make sure the meat is there for protein. If you just can't bring yourself to feed your dog meat though, then you need to become aware of the substitutes for it. Below is a list of foods to help you round out your dog's vegetarian diet.
The protein for your dog's diet can be