Don’t Bite on the Veggie Dog Even though dogs are not obligate carnivores as cats are, they still require nutrients that can be derived only from animal sources. While it may be possible to feeda vegetarian diet with appropriate supplements, it is not optimal, and it is extremely difficult to ensure that all nutritional needs are met. Dogs are sometimes called “opportunistic omnivores” due to the fact that they can survive on a wide variety of foods, but they are designed by nature to eata diet primarily from animal sources. Their teeth and jaws are made to rip and tear off chunks of meat, not to chew and grind plant foods; their saliva does not contain digestive enzymes; and they have the carnivore’s shorter and smoother intestines designed to process proteins and fat, not the longer, pouched digestive tract needed to digest carbohydrates. Asurvey of 300 dogs fed a vegetarian diet found a number of health problems, including several deaths. Some of these problems increased the longer the dogs were fed a vegetarian diet. Heart disease, especially dilated cardiomyopathy, is just one of the conditions that can be caused by the nutritional deficiencies of a vegetarian diet. Even commercial vegetarian diets are not guaranteed to meet your dog’s nutri- tional needs. Remember that taurine has not yet been classified as essential in the dog’s diet, despite newer research showing that dogs develop heart disease when fed diets containing inadequate amounts of this amino acid, which is found only in meat. While your dog may appear to be healthy when fed a vegetarian diet, you will never know about the damage being done to his heart, or other potential problems, until it is too late.