Throwing food on the ground for your dog

By Kodichukwu Okonkwo, DVM | May 14th, 2018




Growing up I have always observed people throwing food for their dogs to pick up from the floor and somehow I thought it was right until I became a vet. I have a client whose dog will practically turn his plate upside down to empty his food on the floor of his cage before he starts to eat them. We tried to stop him by changing his plate to a proper dog bowl that he cannot over turn, he now started to use his front foot to scoop the food out of the plate unto the flour before he starts to eat. His own case was bad because he was always locked during the day and only released at night so sometimes his poops in his cage.

Is it right, healthy or ethical to throw food for your dog on the ground to eat? Many might believe it is wrong to do it but will do it anyway. 

As a vet, I will say it is not healthy to do that but as for being right or ethical –I don’t know. Food is considered fit for consumption and able to contribute to the wellbeing of any living thing but when it has been contaminated like when thrown to the ground, it will certainly loose that fitness to whatever extent.

Many dog owners see their dogs going through very bad experience health wise and many times they wonder how these dogs come about these ailments without counting the food they drop on the ground for their dogs to eat as one of the possible cause. They often overlook that regarding it as normal. It is possible to see a dog cleaning his body with his tongue or licking your own skin with his tongue in form of greeting or showing love and assume it won’t be wrong to throw food for him on the ground to eat.

I am not trying to conclude that all surfaces are dirty including your homes but my focus is on the habit that the dog might pick up and will never stop. So many dogs have been killed simply by strangers outside the house throwing poisoned food into the house targeted at the dog. Some dogs that were trained not to eat from the ground will simply ignore the poisoned food and save themselves while the other will pounce on the food and finish it.

Many of the infections that result to enteritis in dogs is most likely to come from this practice of throwing food to the ground for the dog to eat. These dogs will be stooling profusely and sometimes be vomiting as a result of the infection. Maybe not all the time but it happens. They might even pick up some viral infections that might take their lives.

I have seen so many stray dogs eating from the ground and stay alive for many years but when some of them disappear no one ask questions on what happened. Many of this dogs will be dying but because they are not our responsibility we don’t care but most of the diseases that kill them may have been picked up from scavenging activity if not majority of them.

I will discourage anyone from throwing food on the ground for his dog to eat and will rather recommend that you always try to put the food in a plate or bowl before giving the dog so that the dog will only learn to eat from his plate and not from the ground.

Someone might ask: “what about giving the dog straight from my hand?” Yes that is very acceptable because the food has not been contaminated. Most dog trainers reward their dogs by giving them food from their hands as a reward for learning a trick or doing something right.

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    Kodichukwu Okonkwo, DVM

    Founder of Fairvet Animal Clinic Ltd since 2011, studied at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. He is well experienced in small animal, large animal & poultry medicine, and also skilled at zoo medicine. He loves animals and builds both professional and personal relationship with pet owners in order to sustain a good interaction with pet and animal owners, coupled with His great skills in programming; he brought about www.fairvet.com which he personally built from scratch.



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