Dr. Greenway discusses about feeding human foods to dogs and cats and things to be mindful of if you are giving them regular food to eat. Other topics covered in this video include behavioral issues, high fat and protein, meat, pancreatitis, low calorie, obesity, introducing it slowly and monitoring, allergies and raw vegetables.

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TRANSCRIPT:

One of the really common things I see with clients is they feed a lot of human food to their pets. We all love our pets and this is what brings us to feeding them some of our food. I think we have to recognize that when you start feeding them things off your plate, they’re going to develop a bad behavior of coming around looking for food there. It could become quite a bothersome behavior, that’s the first thing I want you to think about.

Next human food is very rich. We’ve got to remember that in a lot of cases our pets are pretty small, so feeding them a small morsel off our plate will actually be quite a lot of food for them and it could be very high calorie. In fact, a lot of people will feed a piece of meat and that’s high in fat and protein, this can stimulate a real problem in our pets. Most of the time they have a very consistent diet so if you feed them something that’s very high in fat or protein and get a blast of it all at once, the pancreas which digests those ingredients in that treat can become inflamed and that can lead to vomiting and diarrhea and a very sick pet.

So anything you feed them, you have to try to make it a little less rich, a little lower calorie, so that you’re not contributing to obesity and you really want to do it very, very slowly to make sure that they’re handling it alright. You never know when your pet is going to have an allergy to a piece of food that you haven’t tried before, so everything in moderation and watch them very closely after you introduce a treat.

So if you have to feed them some human food, best to go with something that is low calorie and very healthy such as chopped up raw vegetables. I see a lot of pets really like that and that way you’re not stimulating some of the problems and contributing to obesity in our pets and that’s what’s most important to us here at healthcareforpets.com.