DOGS ARE CARNIVORES

Dogs are very adaptable, but just because they can survive on an omnivorous diet does not mean they are omnivores.

Your dog is a true carnivore, and should be fed accordingly.

Carnivores are at the top of the food chain, even above human beings, in the richness and quality of their dietary requirements.

You only have to look into your dog's mouth to see that their teeth are designed for grabbing and tearing. Their molars (grinding teeth) are not suitable for grinding vegetation. Their molars are pointed and situated in a scissors bite (along with the rest of their teeth) that powerfully disposes of meat, bone, and hide, but is useless for vegetation.

Dogs (and cats) are equipped with powerful jaw and neck muscles that help them pull down prey and chew meat, bone, and hide. Their jaws hinge open widely, allowing them to gulp large chunks of meat and bone. Their skulls are heavy, and are shaped to prevent lateral movement of the lower jaw when captured prey struggles (the mandibular fossa is deep and C-shaped); this shape permits only an up-and-down crushing motion, whereas herbivores and omnivores have flatter mandibular fossa that allows for the lateral motion necessary to grind plant matter (Feldhamer, G.A. 1999. Mammology: Adaptation, Diversity, and Ecolog,. McGraw-Hill. pgs 258-259).

Dogs and cats have the internal anatomy and physiology of a carnivore. They have a highly elastic stomach designed to hold large quantities of meat, bone, organs, and hide. Their stomachs are simple, with an undeveloped caecum (Feldhamer, G.A. 1999. Mammology: Adaptation, Diversity, and Ecology . McGraw-Hill. pg 260). They have a relatively short foregut and a short, smooth, unsacculated colon. This means food passes through quickly. Vegetable and plant matter, however, needs time to sit and ferment. This equates to longer, sacculated colons, larger and longer small intestines, and occasionally the presence of a caecum. Dogs have none of these, but have the shorter foregut and hindgut consistent with carnivorous animals. This explains why plant matter comes out the same way it goes in; there is no time for it to be broken down and digested (among other things). People know this; this is why they tell you that vegetables and grains have to be pre-processed for your dog to get anything out of them. But even then, feeding vegetables and grains to a carnivorous animal is a questionable practice.

Dogs do not normally produce the necessary enzymes in their saliva (amylase, for example) to start the break-down of carbohydrates and starches; amylase in saliva is something omnivorous and herbivorous animals possess, but not carnivorous animals. This places the burden entirely on the pancreas, forcing it to produce large amounts of amylase to deal with the starch, cellulose, and carbohydrates in plant matter. Thus, feeding dogs as though they were omnivores, taxes the pancreas and places extra strain on it, as it must work harder for the dog to digest the starchy, carbohydrate-filled food instead of just producing normal amounts of the enzymes needed to digest proteins and fats (which, when fed raw, begin to "self-digest" when the cells are crushed through chewing and tearing and their enzymes are released).

Nor do dogs have the kind of friendly bacteria that break down cellulose and starch for them. As a result, most of the nutrients contained in plant matter—even preprocessed plant matter—are unavailable to dogs.

It is often wrongly conveyed that your best friend is an omnivore. The main “myth” used to support this is “wolves eat the stomach contents of their pray” inferring that the stomach contents are usually vegetable/plant matter, so the wolf must be an omnivore.......

WRONG! Wolves DO NOT eat the stomach contents of their pray. This “myth” is repeated over and over as false evidence that wolves, and therefore dogs, are omnivores. It is not supported by the evidence available to us, and is therefore false!

Wolves eat the actual stomach, not the contents. The only times a wolf would eat stomach contents would be:

The wolf has survived by being an adaptable creature. He will survive by eating what can be found in times of shortage. This does not mean that he is an omnivore, it simply means that he is a survivor. Just like if you were hungry and the only food available was not your “normal” diet, it wouldn't take too long before you would eat what was available in order to survive. This might not be the best for your health, but it would certainly help you survive.

The majority of the information in relation to this page is courtesy of L. David Mech's 2003 book Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation. Mech is considered the world's leading wolf biologist, and this book is a compilation of 350 collective years of research, experiments and careful field observations.