People Food

I have a friend who has 2 dogs. She feeds them a lot of people food. I've seen her feed them bacon, sandwiches with mayo on it, hamburger (no buns) from fast food. When they go to a mexican restaurant, she brings them home their leftovers. One of her dog (black lab) is slightly overweight.

We have a dog and 5 cats. The cats gets no people food (unless they get into it on their own LOL). Our dog only gets a piece of turkey on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Other than that she get no people food.

My question is can people food shorten a dog's life?

Thank You,

Bernice

Long story short - it really just depends on the type of "people food." In actuality, it's all just food, so what really matters is whether the particular food is nutritionally beneficial to your dog.

Fresh meats are "people food," and quite honestly are probably just as good for, if not better than the "dog" food you feed your dog. Twinkies and potato chips? Not so much...

Boo gets plenty of "people" food, namely because I consider them healthier treats than many dog treats for sale.

Well 'people food' covers a lot of different things. I certainly don't think dogs should be eating McDonalds and mexican food leftovers for their main diet.

But that said I feed my dogs 'people food' sometimes. They get cooked veggies sometimes, cooked meat of all kinds, sometimes cheese or lunch meat or hotdog in their treat bag for training, and they always get some raw meat when I'm cooking meat for myself.

So yeah... it depends on what kind of 'people food'. I think giving dogs some fresh food is a good thing.

Basically this.

My dad is HORRIBLE about feeding the dogs, like, everything. Their one dog is fat and the other is always having stomach issues.

He will give them oreos if he's eating them, some chocolate ice cream, bacon, sausage, pizza. Ugh. He knows better than to do this with Jackson because I'm somewhat strict about it. Don't get me wrong, I feed Jackson off my plate too, but it's always tiny pieces, and I tend to avoid any fatty-type things... no ham, no sausage, things of the like. The few times he's gotten ham (like a big ham from a Xmas dinner) he pukes right away. So we avoid it.

But yeah, chicken, cheese, other kinds of meat? He gets some. Also if I AM eating something like pizza, he gets some of the crust. Things like that.

Depends on whether its junk food, or healthy food. Roxie is the resident plate-licker (not like huge chunks of food or anything, but what's just leftover and pointless to refrigerate), as long as it is dog-safe and not junk food. If I were to feed her home made instead of kibble, she would be getting basically the same stuff... Just made differently, I guess.

It's all "people food," isn't it?

Too much junk food isn't good for dogs, just like it isn't good for us. And being overweight, regardless of the type of food you're eating, isn't good either.

This. My dog's diet is entirely made of "people food" her vet is always going on and on about how she's the healthiest dog he's ever seen.

Roman and the chickens are my living garbage disposals.

Roman in the last week has had meals of raw meat, kibble, cooked turkey as well as the cartilage from buffalo wings, bread, ice cream etc. I actually considered buying him a Happy Meal or something when I ran out of dog food on New Years Day when everything was closed.

He's healthy, generally has good digestion, and his weight, coat and teeth were complimented by the vet last time we were there.

The majority of the diet should be of meat or kibble just like the majority of your diet should be of healthy foods, but personally I don't hyper analyze the diet of an animal that is probably just as (if not more) hardy and resiliant than I am.

It depends I guess - my dogs get 'people' food, mostly meats and meat leftovers, with a few veggies or eggs thrown in.

My parents had an English Cocker that Dad fed EVERYTHING, that dog would eat anything he was eating - grapefruit, toast with jam, etc. It wasn't her main diet but it was enough. She wound up with pancreatitis when she was about ten, in part, the vet said from her fatty 'junk' food diet. The good news that was because she would eat anything, she thought treats of carrots, apples, green beans and pears were the greatest things going. Dad would sit down to dinner with his plate and a container of carrots/green beans or pears and two forks, one for him, one for her.