Can my dog eat fish, eggs, legumes, and veggies instead of meat?

Dogs are omnivores and require an appropriate balance of nutrients as a part of a healthy diet. Most dogs do well with twice daily feedings. Typically, I recommend commercially prepared foods, such as Science Diet, Royal Canin, and Purina ProPlan. However, many people prefer preparing their dog's food at home. Balanceit.com is a website out of UC-Davis that has a wide variety of recipes for home cooked diets with appropriate vitamin and mineral supplementation. I am not aware of any appropriately balanced vegan diets for dogs, but a vegetarian diet is certainly possible. Common fruits and vegetables that Pelu could consume include green beans, peas, carrots, beans, and apples. I don't understand your question about "dollops" of fruits and vegetables. Simply follow any home cooked recipe closely and be sure to supplement so that Pelu does not experience any mineral deficiencies.

Great question! I'm glad to hear that Ideal Balance is the basis of Cassie's diet, so adding on home cooked treats in moderation is perfectly fine. Commonly used protein sources for dogs include: chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, salmon, pork, lentils, or eggs (all cooked, of course). Some examples of commonly used vegetable and grain sources include: Black beans, pinto beans, green peas, green beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, quinoa, and white or brown rice. Use fruits more sparingly due to the sugar content and greater likelihood of gastrointestinal upset, but apples, bananas, and canned pure pumpkin. For a more comprehensive list of safe ingredients, you can look at www.balanceit.com, which is a website from the veterinary nutritionists at the UC-Davis veterinary. I hope this helps!

The problem with home cooked meals is that they are often unbalanced nutritionally. There are two websites that offer recipes for home cooked diets that are made by veterinary nutritionists. I would check out these sites to get recipes to cook for Pali. https://secure.balanceit.com https://www.petdiets.com

It is possible to make a balanced vegetarian diet for dogs, and if you are interested in this I would check with your vet first to make sure your vet feels it would be safe to try for Cooper. I typically recommend Royal Canin's Vegetarian diet since it has gone through feeding trials. If you are interested in formulating a home cooked diet it may be more difficult to make something balanced, but would certainly be possible particularly if you do have access to fish or game. You should ask your vet for referral to a veterinary nutritionist who can help formulate a balanced recipe.

Unless the raw meat is a formulated raw food diet, then the raw meat alone is not a balanced diet. There are a number of raw food diets that are formulated to be complete diets, so if that is all Ma wants to eat right now, you could look into feeding her one of those for now. There are also some freeze dried raw formulations that might be a good option. Stella & Chewy's ( https://www.stellaandchewys.com ) makes both formulations, that might be something to look into. Good luck! Thanks for using PetCoach.

Dogs are omnivores and can get enough nutrition from a balanced commercial vegetarian food. If you would like to try a meat diet, you could consider a novel protein diet. A novel protein is one that Buddy hasn't eaten before. You could consider venison, bison, fish or duck. Natural Balance makes a number of limited ingredient diets that you could consider. https://www.naturalbalanceinc.com/dog-formulas/special-category-limited-ingredient-diets Another option would be to try a hydrolyzed diet. Those would be prescription only and would be more expensive, but might be a good option as well. I am attaching a handout with more information about diet trials for food allergies below. https://veterinarypartner.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=19239&id=4952600 Good luck! I hope that was helpful. Thanks for using PetCoach.

If you are looking at formulating your own homemade diet there is a great resource for that that I recommend to clients that cook for their pets. The website is www . Balanceit.com Here you can use a tool called the free autobalancer and input the ingredients you wish to use. It will tell you if your diet is sufficient or not. Also, you will need to add a vitamin and mineral supplement to the food and this website sells the powdered supplement to mix in with the food. I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any further questions or are having difficulties using that website. Have a great weekend!