Yes, I know many people think they are carnivores and behave like they are but sadly (mostly for them but also the planet and other beings on it) they are not. We are able to eat it but it is not ideal.
That is why if humans eat too much meat they are likely to have high levels of cholesterol in their blood (which as you may have gathered no carnivore would ever have) which is likely to lead to high blood pressure, clotted arteries, diabetes and most likely heart disease and obesity in time. There are other interesting ones such as gout, erectile dysfunction and constipation... which to date it is likely no carnivore has experienced.
Nevertheless, humans adapted at some point to eat meat and dogs adapted to live with humans and eat what the humans were eating.
There are lots of interesting facts that point to dogs evolution as omnivores. One of them that stands out is their ability to manufacture vitamin A from carotene (this is something that other carnivores like cats for example cannot do). But frankly... we are not really too fussed about any of this. To cut it short, if dogs were true carnivores they would have no interest in vegetables like carrots, tomatoes or apples, and most dogs, love these foods.
Mario came into our lives 2 months ago roughly. He was living in the street and eating garbage. We do not buy meat for ethical and environmental reasons and while we were willing to make compromises for him, we were clear that we were not too happy to pay other people to torture animals so that Mario could eat... so we tried to feed him pellets (which do indeed contain some meat but you'll be surprised to know that a lot of their content is vegetables, oils, animal fats and grains).
After 2 weeks of this food, he stank of wet dog and was constantly scratching his paws and ears. The vet told us that he was probably allergic to chicken and derivatives (which a high % of pellet foods contain)... this is apparently, a very common thing with cocker spaniels. He told us to change the pellets. We told him we were going to try home made food for a couple of weeks.
The week after, we took him to the vet for some blood tests. Turns out, Mario has sensitive kidneys so he needed to be put on a diet with special pellets: low in protein and high in salt (and very pricy too and all of the special pellets contained chicken...). We decided to stop this nonsense and Mario became a Freegan.
Freegan!?
Yup... freeganism (or click here for the spanish link) is an anti-consumerist lifestyle whereby people employ alternative living strategies based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freeganism involves choosing to salvage discarded food.
Basically, Mario eats home-cooked vegan food (made especially for him and higher in protein than ours would be, without grapes or raisings, cocoa, onion, garlic, citrus fruits or spices as these might upset his digestive system) but he is free to forage when we are out and about. This has several advantages: he has the lower protein diet his kidneys require, he does not stink, he does not scratch his ears constantly, he does not eat flesh from very sick animals that are not even fit from human consumption (how many of you would dare eating your dogs' food? does that not make you wonder?)... We do not pay for other people to torture animals to cover our needs (or wants).
His usual foraging trips involve eating ham sandwiches from the street or the odd bit of chicken or cow... though most days he is not so "lucky" and finds nothing. Now and again, I take home flesh that my work colleagues don't want to eat. Currently, all chileans are celebrating their independence which leads most of them to gain and average of 3Kg, the ministry of health to issue health warnings and the whole nation to be constipated for about a week... Lush... the 3 of us will watch them in awe and might save some chunks of flesh for Mario but won't join into the toilet experience.
Today we had an experience because he actually managed to hunt a bird... we don't want to encourage hunting too much (or in fact at all) as the local fauna already has many pressures and the cat and dog population is artificially high due to human habitation (i.e. ecologically speaking they are invasive species). Nevertheless, after telling him off for catching and killing the bird this morning, we gave him back the corpse this afternoon... to see what he wanted to do with it. We were fairly surprised to find that he was amused by it, just like he is amused by his ball, but he had no real pressing desire to eat it... in fact, when confronted with chunks of apple, carrot and the dead bird, he went for carrot and apple without hesitation (he might change his mind tomorrow?!)...
The short of this is... what is natural?
Mario likes carrots, apples, celery, brocoli stems (?!), lentils, almonds, rice, pumpkin... he has aso learnt that to eat these foods, he needs to chew!
Sure, he also likes flesh but it is not available in this house, only outside like when he was living in the street. Also, if we want to stay truly natural, is going for canned dog food or pellets the best way to do it?! Real carnivores eat the skin, the intestine, the eyes, the feathers, the testicles and the bones... that is what natural flesh looks like, this is the package nature gives meat and this is the package that Mario is going to find his meat into when he is away from the city and human rubbish.
Anyways, in case you don't believe us, here is a short video of Mario preferring eating fruit and veg to his dead bird:
And a brief link to Bramble... a fairly old vegan dog... 27 years old.
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