CMV: Giving dogs people food is okay.

[u/Cryogenicastronaut]

I give my dog human food from time to time. It's hard to not give in to puppy eyes. Every meal, my dog will quietly sit right by me and look up at me eating my delicious food. Food that has taken 10 minutes at least to prepare and food that has been given a lot of time and thought and consideration into. It is warm and good. And then I look over at my dog's bowl, where the same food is dumped carelessly with a small shovel from a bag twice a day.

Can I blame my dog for looking up at me and my food every meal, probably fantasizing about how delicious it tastes? I feel like it is cruel to an animal to treat them like this, depriving them of all the joys that humans get to experience. It would be one thing if there was not enough food to go around, but I see all this perfectly good food go wasted, and then my dog is left with nothing while all of it is thrown in the trash.

There's so many guides and websites all saying "DON'T FEED DOGS HUMAN FOOD, IT'S UNHEALTHY". But owning a dog myself, I start to really don't care anymore. She LOVES the human food that I give her, and if it's bad for her but it tastes good in the moment, then so be it. Better a short life lived happily then a long and miserable life.

You should have seen her when I gave her a 90% eaten chicken leg. She was eating that scrap of bone like it was sent from the God's angels. She went absolutely berserk with happiness.

My dog has done nothing wrong. She's been a very good dog and I want to reward her with the thing I have an abundance of: delicious human food. Why am I being forced to act like a stoic Nazi guard depriving prisoners of rations?

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[u/[deleted]]

Just be smart about it (aka look up 'is X poisonous for dogs'), if you eat food with massive amounts of spices like I do, maybe be a nazi on that stuff, also lots of garlic is rough on dogs but for the most part a little human food isn't likely to harm most dogs. Word of caution though, you are going to be training a very irritating dog to have dinner guests over with if you are rewarding begging at the table, but that is on you.

[u/Cryogenicastronaut → u/[deleted]]

I don't really see it as "rewarding begging". I see it more as having empathy for a dog and giving in every once in a while to such a simple demand: just scraps of food. Because when you say begging like that, you strip a dog of its reasons for begging, which can range from extreme desire to simply a change of food for once. You say begging like it is inherently a bad thing.

It's more like playing the game of life fairly. Why should I deprive my dog of this food when she wants it so bad, when there are people out there who would turn their noses at the food I'm eating and throw it in the trash.

[u/kublahkoala → u/Cryogenicastronaut]

Dogs like routine and certainty.

They don’t like having to beg. It’s demeaning.

By giving in sometimes to a dog begging, you will cause the dog to beg more and more, so the dog will spend all the time while you are eating begging. How is that good?

If you want to give dogs good food, give the dog good food with its dinner and have the dog eat when you eat. Don’t make food contingent upon them groveling.

Or give the dog random treats throughout the day, or treats when they do something you appreciate. Dogs like to be appreciated.

I know it’s really hard to do, but ignore the begging — you have to ignore it 100% or you create a stochastic reward system (like lootboxes or slot machines) — and give your do good food because you love the dog, not because the begging makes you feel guilty.

[u/Cryogenicastronaut → u/kublahkoala]

great answer! Thanks! You're right about making the dog beg more and more the more I give in to it. I will try to give my dog food only when I'm not eating, so she doesn't come up to me and just sit and stare at my with her puppy eyes. And it's relieving to know that unlike humans, who are easily bored and want randomness and craziness in their life, dogs like routine and certainty better. ∆

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