Feeding your dog Table Food: A Bad Idea?

If you are debating whether to feed your dog table food as opposed to dog food, you should first consider the pros and cons before making this decision. There are many benefits to feeding your dog table food instead of dog food. The easiness of this type of feeding is one of the most popular reasons why people like to feed their dog table food instead of dog food. Not only is it easier to remember exactly when to feed your dog, but it is also easier to clean up, and you feel like you aren’t wasting any leftover food. Another benefit of doing this instead of using dog food is that it is likely much cheaper. You probably only feed your dog the same amount of food you would have otherwise thrown out, so it doesn’t cost you any more to feed them table food, and you are saving on the cost of dog food. There are negatives to this type of feeding, though.

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Those puppy dog eyes gaze into yours, pleading for just a bit of food.  You look at your plate, look at your dog, and then back at your plate.  Do you feed him your food?

While each of us takes care of our dogs differently, we need to be aware of what foods can harm our dogs and what can’t.  For example, certain ‘human foods’ should not be given to dogs, because they can seriously harm your dog (foods like chocolate).  Not to mention, feeding the dog table scraps is giving them more food on top of what they’ve already eaten, which is not very good from them either.  We need to be aware that our dogs should (preferably) not be eating out food.  There are a wide variety of foods out there that dogs can eat and that are healthy for them.  Human food could make your dog sick, and no one wants that.

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We have all done it.  Our cute, little furry friend is practically smiling at us from beneath the kitchen table.  The ears are perked and the tail is wagging.  We know what our dog is after.  Just a tiny tidbit from dinner would be delightful, right?  What could it hurt?  It is just a bite or two after all.

Hold Fido’s ears he won’t want to hear this.  A dog’s diet really should not contain table scraps.  People food is just that…for people.  A dog’s nutritional needs are not the same as a human’s.  Sure, we eat some of the same things, but feeding your pet from the table is one of the biggest mistakes for  your pet.  A dog’s diet doesn’t require all the added goodies we put into our meals.

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What are table scraps anyway? Sure, these are the left-overs of one’s meal. But your meal probably differs from my meal, so there is no clear definition.

A colleague, who regularly feeds his dogs table scraps in addition to premium dog food, told me the following story yesterday. He had fed this three dogs Indonesian table scraps. Two of them, the Australian Shepherds, could handle this without any problems. However, the Portuguese Water Dog got severe diarrhoea. When my colleague woke up in the morning and went downstairs, he discovered the huge smelly mess on the floor. For two days the unfortunate Portuguese walked around with bubbly sounds coming from his stomach and didn’t care so much for food. So what seems ok for one dog, may hurt the other.

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