V-dog

V-Dog Review and Sample Giveaway

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Lucky has a Giveaway for your dog!

It’s been a week since our first shipment of V-dog arrived! From day one, it was clear that Lucky preferred V-dog to his other up-market brand dog food. Hardly a surprise since most commercial dog food is greasy and smelly. V-dog smells fresh, because it is! He loves the breath bones too (we love them even more, his breath is totally fresh after eating them)!  More importantly though, adjustment has been easy and Lucky hasn’t experienced any gastrointestinal upset or problems with the switch!

Since V-dog was kind enough to send us 2 five-pound bags of dog food to review, we want to share with you. I was gonna give the second bag to one lucky winner, but what’s the fun in that? I know lots of you want to try it. So, we are breaking up the second bag to send out samples to the first 10 20 comments here that request a sample! If I get more requests than that, we’ll see what we can work out 😉 Requests only for followers of this blog within the U.S. please.

Update: I’ve received far more than 20 requests and cannot accept any more. Sorry!

IntroDid I mention the bag is compostable?

Why switch to V-dog?

Veterinarian Dr. Ernie Ward gave me permission to share part of this article of his:

As a long-time vegetarian vet, I’m often asked whether I feed my pets meat. I’m never certain whether it’s an honest question or an attempt to trip me up. It’s similar to being asked, “If you don’t eat meat, where do you get your protein?”

My protein comes from the same place the animals people eat happen to get theirs — plants.

Can Your Cat or Dog Be Vegetarian or Vegan?

The simple answer is that dogs can do just fine on a carefully balanced vegetarian or vegan diet, while cats cannot. Sure, you can try to work around the whole cats-are-obligate-carnivores thing by supplementing certain synthetic amino acids, but it gets tricky — not to mention dangerous to the cat’s health.

So the answer is yes for dogs, but no for cats.

The comment that I most often hear after I state that dogs can be fed a vegetarian or vegan diet is that canines do better on a meat-based diet. Again, I’m not going to argue. There aren’t any studies that I’m aware of that have compared longevity and disease occurrence in dogs who’ve been fed meat versus canines on vegetarian diets.

Interestingly, one of the world’s oldest dogs, Bramble, who lived to a reported 27 years old in the U.K., was never fed an ounce of meat by her strictly vegan owner.

Ingredients

Still not convinced? Check out the ingredient list above. It’s human grade people!

After lots more research, this particular article really pushed me over the edge: Article used with permission from V-dog:

Vegetarian Diets Can Be Healthy for Dogs

by Dr. Armaiti May, D.V.M., C.V.A.
For both ethical and health reasons, many vegetarians and vegans choose to feed their companion dogs vegetarian or vegan diets. Up to 50 % of commercial pet food brands are comprised of “meat meal” and “byproducts,” which include various body parts (such as beaks, brain, spinal cord tissue, bones, lungs, intestinal tracts) slaughterhouse wastes, 4-D meat (from dead, dying, diseased or disabled animals), supermarket rejects, as well as rendered dogs and cats from animal shelters. Other contaminants which have been found in commercial pet foods include old restaurant grease containing high concentrations of dangerous free radicals and trans fatty acids; PCBs, heavy metals and other toxins, particularly from fish; bacterial, protozoal, fungal, viral, and prion contaminants, along with their associated endotoxins and mycotoxins; hormone and antibiotic residues; and dangerous preservatives.
Many speculate that the increase in incidences of cancers, kidney failure, and other degenerative diseases in our companion animals recently may be due to the harmful ingredients in many commercial meat-based pet foods. This has led people to feed alternative diets. Dogs can be healthy and in fact, thrive on a vegetarian or vegan diet, as long as all necessary nutrient requirements are met. Dogs are biologically omnivorous, but can adapt well to a plant-based diet which meets all their nutritional needs.

SmileLucky loves V-dog!

The final convincing: one of my Facebook friends, Veterinarian Dr. Michael Roth (Veggivet) mentioned to me that he feeds his own dogs V-dog.

There are other vegan dog foods on the market, but V-dog is the only fully vegan dog food company. To learn more about their company, please visit their site here.

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….and I’ve got no doubts your dog will eat it, love it and thrive on it!

Update: I’ve received far more than 20 requests and cannot accept any more. Sorry!

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Vegan Dog Food?

V-dogSomething special arrived on my porch yesterday. I wasn’t going to talk to you about it til’ January, but I can’t help myself. I’ve been plant-based now for nearly a year. Our Portuguese Water Dog, Lucky, is part of our pack. Since we changed our diet as a family, inevitably, he’s wanted to change his. He’s started to turn up his nose at his (upmarket brand) dog food. He steals loaves of freshly baked whole grain bread. When I open the crisper door of my refrigerator he cries for an apple. He’s been known to sneak off with a whole bunch of bananas if they’re left on the counter-top, later I find the peels (expertly peeled) in my back yard. I suspect he needs to go back to dog training school, but I also suspect he doesn’t really like his greasy smelly commercial dog food much. Who can blame him?

Smile

Look at that smile! 🙂 We had to use our “leave it” command to get him to not gobble these up while I was taking the photo.

The owner of V-dog generously offered Lucky a couple bags of dog food and some treats to try out and for me to review my dog’s response here. Lets just say the response was overwhelming. As soon as I cut one of the bags open, he was right by my side. To my surprise, the food didn’t smell unpleasant at all like other dry dog food does. I offered him a few pieces as a treat. Gobble gobble, my kids came home from school and wanted to test it out on him too. Gobble gobble. For dinner that night I mixed 1/3 V-dog with 2/3 of his other commercial food. Guess what? He somehow sorted the bits and only ate the food from V-dog, leaving the other dog food behind in the bowl. I all ready know he’s a convert.

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Take it!

For those of you who think I’m nuts (I’m sure even some of you vegans do!), next week I’ll be presenting you with evidence as to how dogs can thrive on a plant-based diet and how commercial dog food is full of yucky stuff. Indeed V-dog meets all the national nutritional standards that traditional dog food does. The label is 100 times cleaner though. In fact, it’s so clean that they say their dog food is human grade… So I ate a piece. It tastes like an unseasoned lentil loaf or a vegetable type cracker…

I’ll let you know how Lucky is doing with it and I’ll be doing a GIVEAWAY to some of you who may be interested in transitioning your dog too. Check out V-dog’s website for more details. Stay tuned for another Giveaway tomorrow!

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