Shooting Times & Country Magazine
SAY ‘NO’ TO A VEGAN DIET
Meat is an essential part of a dog’s daily food intake
We hear a lot these days about fake news, but while some of the stories we read in newspapers may not be fake, they often state the obvious.
I recently read that, in the opinion of a nutritional expert, it’s not good to feed dogs a vegan diet. I’m not a nutritional expert but that is a classic case of stating the obvious.
The dog’s ancestor, the wolf, is an eclectic carnivore, which means it gets its food from a broad and diverse range of sources. Some it kills, some it scavenges. While it may be, principally, a meat eater it is not averse to eating anything it fancies, from grasshoppers to birds’ eggs and berries.
Such a varied diet provides all the protein and carbohydrate the animal requires. It’s a diet that changes during the seasons. In winter, an Arctic-dwelling wolf will survive almost entirely on meat (which it can eat frozen), while in summer it will be much more omnivorous.
It’s difficult to replicate such a diet for our domesticated wolves – sorry, I mean dogs – but it’s quite clear that meat forms an essential part of their food intake.
Feeding a dog a meat-free diet is open to risks, as well as being unnatural. I challenge anyone who feeds their dog on a vegan diet to give their pet a choice of a bowl of tofu with pureed vegetables and a bowl of beef or chicken, and see which one it goes for first.
Feeding a cat a vegan diet is even more problematic. Cats require a certain amount of amino acids to stay healthy, and the lack of these is likely to lead to health problems.
Under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, owners of animals have the obligation to feed them an appropriate diet and it could certainly be argued that vegetarian, let alone vegan, diets for dogs and cats are far from appropriate.
By all means, feed dogs vegetables (mine eat everything from broccoli to asparagus), but don’t feed it to them exclusively. However, that’s unnecessary advice. I don’t believe that any readers of this magazine are daft enough to feed their dogs a vegan diet. assume any knowledge. However, her enthusiasm for the sport is obvious.
She emphasises that having a first-class working gundog is not all about going for the next retrieve and constantly pushing yourself. “It’s about leadership. It’s about building a relationship with your dog based on trust and respect. It’s about having a well-mannered, well-behaved dog that you can take to the local pub or to the shooting field. It’s about having a companion at your side you can be proud of.” I couldn’t agree more.
I have left the best to last. Buying a copy of The Pet Gundog series comes with one-year access to The Pet Gundog online training platform (thepetgundog.co.uk). This allows viewing of short training videos designed to illustrate and complement each chapter in each book.
I have always had a problem with training videos as they send me to sleep, which is why I find Lez’s tutorial videos so good. They are short, to the point, expertly filmed and accompanied by Lez’s own commentary. There’s no need for a DVD player and you can even watch them out in the field on your mobile phone.
The Pet Gundog series is available on Amazon, priced £19.99 per book.