Vegan dog food?

[Jakethesnake69]

I have been vegan for close to a decade (see my screen name). My wife is also vegan. We also have 2 dogs and a cat. At one point many years ago we wrestled with this same question and looked into the science and evaluated the nutrition and species requirements for products such as V Dog. We eventually concluded that...

A) Veganism is a personal decision that you should not push on others (including dogs or your own children). Why? Because ethical decisions are personal and shouldn’t be made on behalf of others. For instance, when we have children, we will not force them to be vegan, they need to make that decision on their own. However, if they are living in our house, eating our groceries, they will need to accept that we will not be purchasing or cooking them non-vegan food.

B) We believe that when you take on the responsibility of caring for an animal, you owe it to the animal to care and provide for it to the best of your ability. That means not intentionally feeding a diet that is less natural (or so complicated that it could inadvertently present new problems, deficiencies, or health issues) because you want to push your personal views upon other beings. Just because it CAN be done, doesn’t mean you should. The higher risk for causing a new nutritional deficiency or imbalance is not worth the risk based on the research we had done.

I also noticed that you are trying to micro-manage this conversation and ban opinions, demanding only scientific evidence. Just a little advice on that...
1) Trying to control people on the internet like that is a pipe dream so don’t even waste your effort.
2) Saying you don’t want other’s opinions sounds arrogant because it implies that you think you have nothing to learn from others except for the specific facts you are researching. If that’s the type of hard data you want, you’d be better off doing a literature review, not posting on a public Internet forum which isn’t even related to vegan nutrition or dog rearing.

Bottom line is I gave you opinions, which you stated you don’t want. Do I care that you don’t want my opinion? Not not really, I’ll post what I want. Should you maybe care about my opinion since I have been vegan much longer than you, have had dogs all my life, and as I mentioned, wrestled with the same question many years ago? If you were wise you’d consider other people’s viewpoints, and if you disagree in the end, that’s fine. But to hold your hands over your ears and say “I don’t want to hear opinions” isn’t going to serve you well in life.

First of all not trying to control the conversation in regards to hearing one side and being sold one way or the other. Just looking for people like yourself who struggled with this and have an answer that could benefit my question. I only asked for people that have gone through this.
I am not now or ever in favor of feeding my animals vegan. I am not the owner of these dogs. However as you know there are probably 50 vegan dog foods on the market. I’m not looking for the moral or ethical or environmental reasons to feed/ not feed the dogs that do live under my roof a vegan diet.
Scientific reasons, varied and widely available for dogs fed meat. Not so much for vegan dogs. Seems like a taboo topic on dog forums. So who would have this information I seek. Pretty much people that have gone through or are involved in a vegan diet for their dog. So far seems logical to maybe ask a know group to me about this and possibly get folks like you to say why the choice they made or what went wrong if a vegan diet was or is tried. I’m sorry but feeding meat to dogs is a dime a dozen on an internet search. No need to ask the question from that opinion or body of facts. Just sayin’. Seems like a good way to get an honest answer from a targeted audience right.
I never said I want the dog to eat vegan for any reason. I believe it’s extremely irresponsible. I did go back and read what I posted and perhaps the part about the meat eating belief for the dog eluded you. My decisions are mine and like you provide no meat products in my home but do not control the diets. For me this is no different. However, it’s not just that but dealing with a relationship that is clearly divided.
I suspect your soul searching did not just take you straight to the ethical part of this question and since we are on ethics and morals do you suppose having agreed to respect others on this site should play a role in the decision to post in a manner that was requested to avoid, oh I don’t know the mass of controversy and conflict. My feelings are not hurt I just don’t care for the eating meat jokes as one starts a whole mess of them. Counterproductive. Does it help the problem, create more problems or poke fun at the problem.
My reasons to not eat meat are not just cruelty. Environmental as well as the unnatural aspect of mass produced food pumped up with growth hormones and antibiotics on my plate. Not here to sell you on what you already know but that’s my point about the people having never tried or contemplated the choice or lifestyle.
If I want information from a library would it be the same from a guy on the corner with a dictionary?


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