While vets will regularly tell owners “Feeding your dog people food can make them sick”, we rarely follow that rule ourselves. My dog, Joe, will attest that he gets a little bit of almost anything I’m eating unless it’s chocolate. So why do we tell this to people? Well, it’s more of a blanket rule because feeding people food can cause severe illness and even death. It’s just a matter of what and how much. We usually know from the history when “leftover-itis” is the cause of diarrhea and/or vomiting in dogs. When we tell owners this, it is typically followed by one of two responses:
1)”But we all ate it and we’re fine…”
2) “But he’s had it before and never gotten sick…”
People think we feel there is something wrong with the food. There isn’t, nor is anything “wrong” with the dog like a food allergy. It’s just not a food their body is used to.
A similar thing happens in people. We can decide one day that we are going to eat clean for a period of time. We eat light, healthy foods for several weeks and feel great. Then comes the cheat meal. In celebration of our resolve, we will reward ourselves with a rich, fatty decedent steak dinner. The next day, most people feel terrible with gas bloating, stomach upset, and diarrhea. The reason for this is that our bodies become accustomed to certain foods. It will increase and decrease certain digestive enzymes depending on chronic need. The bacteria in our guts that help us process food also increase and decrease in numbers. Dietary fat is a great example. When we eat low fat foods, our body decreases what it would need to digest it and the bacterial counts change. If we suddenly flood the stomach with a fatty meal, unprocessed fat will enter the guts and bacterial counts go out of whack as they are inundated with fat calories. Now, imagine you are a dog that, instead of eating different foods at every meal, eats the same dog food EVERY DAY. Getting something your body isn’t used to would be a nightmare.
Most of the time, this sickness is self-limiting. Just like with us, going to a low-residue and healthy regimen will make out guts auto-correct. Unfortunately, not all dogs know when to still hold back on eating when their GI tracts are unwell. They can continue to feed the deranged bacterial colonies and their disease will continue. In some cases, it can travel backwards along their intestines and cause serious problems with their pancreas and other important organs. In these cases, ICU-level hospitalization may be required to allow the dog’s body to recover. This is why vets are so reticent to says it’s OK to feed people food.
Most dogs are OK after a day and will get back to normal. However, of your dog is showing signs of vomiting , diarrhea, or lethargy for more than a couple of days after sharing a meal with you, an examination and some testing by your vet is warranted.