When I was writing my book about caring for aging dogs, the toughest parts to write were the nutrition sections. This was not because there was a dearth of information, but because, since there is nothing comparable to NIH funding for pet health research, it is industry funded. The pet food industry is a 15 billion dollar industry full of competition and Madison Avenue advertising, so to find real research data, you have to dig with the tenacity of a badger.

Two research reports that I found gave me some new ideas on the best way to feed dogs and the benefits of getting them to do something that parents of finicky children often struggle with: to eat their vegetables.

Vegetables? Aren’t dogs carnivores? Based on their teeth and protein quality needs, yes they are. But even the wild canids, like the wolf, have a diet that is a lot more cosmopolitan than many people realize. And recent theories about dog domestication suggest that dogs evolved as from the wolf as camp-followers—scavengers on the edges of human settlements who eventually lost their fear of people. It is not a stretch to imaging that what we, the consummate omnivore ate, so to did the dumpster diving dogs. Getting into the garbage is apparently a time-honored canine tradition.

One interesting study looked at a breed of dog that had a high prevalence of a specific type of cancer. The researchers asked owners to fill out a detailed diet profile on what they remember feeding the dog and how often the dog had eaten these foods. They compared dogs who had developed this form of cancer with age matched dogs of the same breed that had not. (It turned that a lot of people disobeyed veterinary advice and fed table food to their dogs). And it also turned out that the dogs who were fed vegetables, particularly green leafy veggies, and to a lesser extent the orange veggies, had a lower incidence of this form of cancer. Now the caution here is that this was a retrospective study, dependant on accurate owner memory and reporting. The results, none-the-less, were intriguing.

Another lab is engaging in an ongoing series of experiments looking at the effect of diet and environment on age-related learning changes. In this study, laboratory beagles were fed with a standard diet or an enriched diet containing several antioxidant vitamins and nutricudicles and a portion of the corn in the diet was replaced with a vegetable-fruit mix. One group of dogs also had an enriched environment in addition to the enriched diet. The results from this series of experiments showed that older dogs fed the enriched diet showed better learning and memory in a set of psychological learning tests (those with both enrichments did better still). Initially young dogs fed the enriched diet showed no difference from controls, but as these dogs aged, they better retained their learning and memory abilities. And while the experiments weren’t designed to look at this factor, the enriched dogs also appear to be living longer.

Dogs, it appears, may also do better with some color in their diet. Of course, prepared dog foods are nutritionally balanced, but a veterinary nutritionist I spoke with said that you can replace 10% of the calories in your dog’s diet with fruits and veggies (this also helps with obese dogs).

The caveot: According to the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center, food and beverages dogs should never consume include alcoholic beverages, chocolate, coffee, fatty foods, macadamia nuts, moldy foods, raisins/grapes, onions, garlic, yeast dough and anything containing the sugar substitute xylitol.

"Next month Eat Your Veggies Part Two will discuss ways of feeding veggies to dogs (even the finicky or tender stomached ones).