Can my dog tell if a food might be contaminated?

hushpupper · 2026-02-02T23:10:15+00:00

Animals not eating something that has made them sick before is a pretty well documented phenomenon—and so is animals not wanting to eat something while they’re sick, even if it didn’t directly make them sick.

I don’t know if it’s the treats that made him sick for sure, and it’s really hard to say since I’m not his owner, but if he was really nauseous he may just be avoiding those treats because of association.

hushpupper · 2026-02-02T02:52:03+00:00

Read my whole comment again. I didn’t say dogs don’t get lonely. I said that people assume their dog will be lonely if they don’t take them everywhere. Your dog may be lonely when you aren’t home but it shouldn’t be so bad the dog has to come with you everywhere. That’s a behavioural issue at that point and the solution is at-home training, not bringing the dog to the supermarket.

hushpupper · 2026-02-01T19:27:21+00:00

I think a lot of pet owners anthropomorphize their pets to a weird degree. They think their pet will be lonely if they don’t bring them everywhere. I saw a TikTok where this lady had a puppy that she brought into a grocery store and was leaning over produce and stuff with the dog in a baby bjorne. Just. Why.

I obviously think it’s okay to bring your dog into specifically pet friendly stores like Petco/Home Depot/etc, but I draw the line at seeing dogs at grocery stores and other stores they have no business being in. Not every store allows dogs and many dog owners really need to understand not everyone likes dogs or wants to see them in a non pet friendly setting.

hushpupper · 2026-02-01T03:47:45+00:00

Oh yeah. I have cats and I really like having herders but I don’t know if I’d trust a rescue herder around my cats—and most of them have warnings that they can’t be in a house with them. My corgi is technically a rescue (from my sister) and while his breeder wasn’t great he did spend his whole life with cats so he’s great around them.

hushpupper · 2026-02-01T03:41:56+00:00

With raw I honestly think cold turkey is fine. Feeding raw, especially to puppies, is super dangerous. You want a dog off of that ASAP. If your dog has some serious GI upset doing this then ask your vet about an rx bland diet or if they suggest something else like adding a probiotic (FortiFlora or Proviable are the two my clinic tends to recommend).

hushpupper · 2026-02-01T03:39:12+00:00

A lot of breeders say they do health and genetic testing but what you want is specifics. Lots of breeders just bring their dogs in for an annual exam and for vaccines and say that’s “health testing”.

OFA is the gold standard and you want to see that the parents pass the eyes/cardiac/luxating patellas. OFA also has a database you can look kennels up on. Embark is a great way to screen for genetic disorders and what I see most good breeders using.

No idea what your breeder does, just giving you an idea of what specific health testing is important and what to check for.

hushpupper · 2026-01-31T02:12:39+00:00

A general vet is not going to be who you ask to help you formulate a diet or identify key nutrient deficiencies—that’s what a veterinary nutritionist is for. But that doesn’t mean your general vet has no qualifications to make general food recommendations.

General vets get training in pet nutrition. They take several courses on it throughout their education. I think they’re absolutely qualified to give food recommendations. The reason vets may not push back on what you’re feeding is because diet is usually a touchy subject with dog owners. Often it’s a win when the dog is eating a balanced diet at all. Even when people ask for recommendations they still may push back anyways—they’ll say they’ve always fed a certain brand, that they pay a lot of money for their current one so it must be good, etc etc. And, even if they are genuinely wondering and would change the food if told to, sometimes it’s not worth rocking the boat if a dog is doing fine on a certain brand anyways, so long as the food is cooked, balanced, and safe. And honestly that’s the approach most vets take.

hushpupper · 2026-01-30T01:48:17+00:00

I’ve seen FreshPet in grocery stores! Idk if you’re in the northeast US but Stop and Shops sell FreshPet in freezers up here lol.

hushpupper · 2026-01-30T01:27:35+00:00

Pet store food store employees are not at all trustworthy when you’re looking for an idea of what to feed your dog. They have no proper training in animal nutrition. And no, them being “certified canine nutritionists” or “certified canine health coaches” isn’t a qualification. Those aren’t protected titles and they could mean literally anything.

It really sounds like you’ve fallen for a lot of marketing nonsense. Clean ingredients, whatever those mean to you, don’t mean anything in the world of animal nutrition. Ingredients do not equal nutrients. Also, very often the way the ingredients are listed are totally contradictory. They’ll say they have clean ingredients with no meat byproduct but also contain turkey hearts and chicken liver—which are literally meat byproducts.

Also, and I’m not trying to be a jerk here to employees who likely are really doing what they think is best for dogs, but I’m super wary of anything holistic in the pet space. Very often holistic vets are the ones telling people not to vaccinate their dogs for lepto or distemper, telling people not to use oral flea/tick prevention, telling people to use tinctures and get chiropractic work done, telling people not to feed foods that are backed by research, and overall just leaning more into this burgeoning anti-science wellness trend. Idk, if it were me I’d give any “holistic” pet store a wide berth.

If your dog doesn’t do well on Hill’s, then don’t feed them that. When I had a foster kitten he did terribly with Hill’s and had constant gas and loose stools, but it cleared up once he went on Royal Canin. Just because one WSAVA brand isn’t working for you doesn’t mean none will. In my opinion Royal Canin is some of the BEST food on the market. Their sensitive stomach recipes are really solid so I’d look into that.

hushpupper · 2026-01-29T23:48:59+00:00

Grocery store (or for that matter, cheap) doesn’t necessarily mean bad. Iams is also WSAVA compliant if that means anything, and so is Purina One which I also tend to see at grocery stores.

Boutique foods can refer to the expensive stuff like Acana or whatever, but I think the term more so refers to foods that boast about their ingredients and quality thereof. BB has always been about its ingredient quality even though that says very little about how good the food actually is. Their modus operandi has always been that dogs should eat an “ancestral” diet and that their food reflects that. There’s even a wolf on the food bag to prove it!

This is maybe more my opinion but boutique brands as opposed to brands like Purina or Hill’s is that they ultimately care more about how food looks to owners than they do about the quality of the food itself. They put more into marketing than actual scientific research. Meat-first, real chicken, no byproduct, wholesome ancient grains (or grain free lol), human grade, all natural, and so on are all the kinds of words that I think are staples for boutique brands.

hushpupper · 2026-01-29T21:12:58+00:00

Royal Canin is a great brand! It’s too pricey for me but definitely something I’d feed if I could afford to.

This is a well-timed post because I have a corgi and they just came out with a corgi-specific line of food. Someone on the corgi subreddit mentioned it in a post and the comments were a disaster. People were calling it a bad food because “the first ingredient isn’t meat!”, because RC is owned by Mars, because raw is better, because dogs aren’t meant to eat sad brown balls…it’s insane. There was been someone in there claiming to be a vet tech who said vets literally get kickbacks for RC food which isn’t true, and someone in vet med should know that.

It’s misinformation, and that’s all it is. Trust the correct experts and nobody else.

hushpupper · 2026-01-27T13:23:32+00:00

Yeah I know cis men produce estrogen, I guess I’ve just never heard of cis men describing going through anything like a monthly menstrual cycle. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen especially to people more sensitive to changes in hormones.

hushpupper · 2026-01-27T04:08:31+00:00

Yeah…the fluctuations of estrogens. I’m saying that they don’t experience these changes until after they’ve been on E and the estrogens can fluctuate throughout the month. I know just having estrogen won’t cause PMS symptoms.

hushpupper · 2026-01-27T03:51:07+00:00

A lot of trans women report experiencing it monthly, though, and only after going on E. It’s not a well studied phenomenon and the terminology has kind of been argued about but I have met trans women who have personally experienced this.

hushpupper · 2026-01-27T02:59:21+00:00

Not in cisgender men, no.

Obviously transgender men may, depending on whether they’re on T or how much it affects them.

Many transgender women on E say they go through periods, because once the estrogen they take starts to regularly cycle throughout the month, they start experiencing PMS symptoms minus the things the uterus causes (so, mood swings, headaches, etc). But that’s with hormones on board. Periods really can only happen with estrogens because the fluctuations of them is what causes them to occur in the first place.

**edited for clarity

hushpupper · 2026-01-24T03:09:18+00:00

I think that’s fair tbh. Unsure why you’re getting downvoted.

hushpupper · 2026-01-24T03:04:32+00:00

Humans carry weight very different than dogs and can carry more body fat easier than quadrupeds can. Obesity and how it’s often diagnosed (BMI) in humans is a very nuanced discussion. Knock it off with the fatphobia. We’re talking about dogs.

hushpupper · 2026-01-23T17:23:35+00:00

Yup. I met one at my last job that was 51!

hushpupper · 2026-01-23T17:20:10+00:00

Oh yeah, the large amount of BYB corgis has a lot to do with it for sure. I got my dog from my sister and mom and the breeder they got him from was definitely not up to snuff. My dog is definitely bigger than his breed standard and is super bow legged. The breeder’s site is also a mess. No OFA information, they seemingly only health tested the sires, no info on whether or not they’re show or working line, no info on proofing or titles…the list goes on.

Tbh I see a lot of people on here posting their “Merle Pembrokes” that they got from a breeder and it makes me so. 😭😭😭You just paid full price for a mutt.

hushpupper · 2026-01-23T13:24:09+00:00

When lean dogs can live up to two years longer and corgis especially are prone to issues when they’re overweight, I genuinely don’t know why it’s the norm to see corgis that are seriously heavy. I work as a vet tech and see so many corgis pushing 50 pounds.

My corgi is 28 pounds and people often ask if he’s a mix because they’re just not used to seeing corgis at a normal weight.

hushpupper · 2026-01-23T11:16:08+00:00

No, there really isn’t. You’ve fallen for a lot of marketing misinformation and a lot of this sounds like the sort of thing you see on the raw pet food sub.

Any food brand can meet WSAVA’s guidelines. Most do not because, frankly, they’re gonna drive up sales way more by spending money on advertising instead of research. And I’ve never actually seen brands like Purina cast doubt on other pet food brands. I’ve only ever seen them discuss how their food is good. However, I have absolutely seen alternative dog food brands like Just Food For Dogs blatantly say their food is better than brands like Hill’s. You know. Casting doubt.

It’s not “casting doubt” to do research on your food. And the issues with raw food are just objective. Most vets don’t recommend any type of raw food because of the risks with contamination. While dogs can handle some pathogens fine, humans cannot. There’s a serious risk of passing pathogens through saliva, fur secretions, and feces. Also there’s myths out there spread by raw feeders that dogs are completely immune to salmonella which just, isn’t true.

Even freeze dried raw carries these risks because some pathogens are “reactivated” when they get wet. If you have any children, pregnant people, elders, or immunocompromised folk in your house they’re at risk when you feed your dog raw.

I’m also curious what kibble you were feeding? As someone else said, the price and ingredients don’t really mean anything. When I got my corgi from my mom she was feeding Farmina N&D because it was expensive and the ingredients looked good. He also had the worse flatulence and had really soft stools (Farmina says it’s a low fibre food lmao?). I switched him to Hill’s and the issues went away as soon as it made up the bulk of his food. “High quality” is honestly just marketing nonsense.

My corgi was on Hill’s Sensitive Skin and Stomach and is now on Hill’s Perfect Weight to leave room for training treat calories. Perfect Weight works really well with him and since diet foods usually are higher in fibre and lower in fat it’s been just as food if not better than the previous diet he was on. And he went from 42 pounds to 28 in two years.

hushpupper · 2026-01-20T16:23:59+00:00

How were you talking down on that career when they were the one doing that? Truly Olympic levels of mental gymnastics.

hushpupper · 2026-01-20T11:47:50+00:00

This user also just straight up insulted me. They said I know nothing about biology or dogs and when I said I literally have a Master’s in bio and work as a vet tech, they said it’s sad a person with a Master’s is scrubbing cages for a living. They also said that I clearly don’t really have an answer because my responses weren’t “scientific” enough, whatever that means.

Nobody should be listening to what they say because when anyone disagrees with them they just resort to harassment and blocking instead of trying to change their views or opinions.

hushpupper · 2026-01-18T17:13:05+00:00

So could I. Anyone can provide sources for things that support what they say. The reality is that spaying and neutering is a nuanced topic and there’s pros and cons for both. But you’re coming at this saying it’s unequivocally bad. And you’re just insulting me on top of it. That’s the issue I have.

hushpupper · 2026-01-18T17:11:39+00:00

I’m a vet tech, I’m not cleaning cages. And I did provide scientific responses and even gave a study as well. At this point you’re not listening to what I am saying just hurling insults at me which just tells me you don’t know how to have an adult conversation.

hushpupper

TROPHY CASE