JudyJB wrote:It may seem strange to have a dog eating vegetables, but when I was in high school, I spent one summer with a family in the Netherlands. They and all their neighbors had impeccable gardens--about 40' wide and 80' long, most of their long backyards. They grew potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, cabbage, strawberries, currents, gooseberries, and a lot of other things, with never a weed in sight.
Problem was their dog, a mid-sized spaniel type. He used to run away from home and come back with produce. He particularly liked to steal cabbages and carrots, and would bring them home and eat them. (He was NOT underweight or lacking regular food. Plus the back garden was walled in, but he managed to get away anyway.) The family could not return anything or apologize for his thievery because we never knew which garden he had stolen them from!!
Strange to have a dog eating vegetables?
Well. . . hrm. . . actually, not so much. Dogs (unlike cats) are not true carnivors, but rather fall firmly in the omnivore spectrum.
Like us.
Here is a short article explaining this from National Geographic:
https://education.nationalgeographic.or ... omnivores/"Omnivores are a diverse group of animals. Examples of omnivores include bears, birds, dogs, raccoons, foxes, certain insects, and even humans."So most, if not all, dogs will savor some yummy veggies when given the chance.
Pigs also are omnivores - they will eat meat if given the opportunity. Which is why pork should be fully cooked before being consumed - this avoids contracting trichinosis. Although modern pigs in the United States are fed a mostly grain diet - this was not true in the past, when pigs were fed food scraps of many different kinds, including meat.
I like to eat a lot of tossed green salad, with oil and vinegar dressing that is a bit on the sour side.
My favorite brand of dressing is Wishbone Italian - I sour it up a bit by adding apple cider vinegar.
When I first got my sweet boy, Big Joe, for the first couple of weeks he would whine and cry whenever I made a nice salad - iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots. I would just say to him, "Joe! Dogs don't like sour salad!!" Joe was not then, nor has he ever been, under-fed.
He just kept on trying to convince me that he would like to try some of my salad. Finally I got tired of this and put quite a bit of my vinegar-y salad into his bowl, looking forward to laughing at him after he took one close-up sniff and turned up his nose at it.
Well. . . no. He gobbled it all right down, and looked up at me, asking for more!!
Another time (and a different, long-ago, beloved dog) I had just come home from the grocery store, I was tired, and not paying too much attention as I put the groceries away. Then I heard a THUMP, followed by a gobbling-dog-eating-noise. Then another THUMP, followed by more dog-gobbling-it-all-up sound.
I looked up to see that I had put my freshly-purchased bag of tomatoes too near the edge of the kitchen counter - one by one, they were rolling out of the bag, and falling to the floor.
Where they didn't last long!
Little Rodrey James had a very happy - and most satisfied - look on his face. That is, until I took the few tomatoes that were left and put them into the refrigerator! Poor Rod! No more tomato snacks for you!
Anne