Daniella Dos Santos, the president of the British Veterinary Association (BVA) states that “It is theoretically possible to feed a dog a vegetarian diet, but it’s much easier to get it wrong than to get it right,” she says.

The last thing that you want as a dog owner, and me as a vet, is to cause harm to your pet. Any unbalancing of nutrients, deficiencies or excesses of nutrients can cause harm. For example:

The main source of protein in a vegan dog food diet comes from legumes, peas or soya and these tend to produce phytates that lower the absorption of important nutrients such as Zinc and Taurine. These need to be supplemented but in just the right proportions to make up for this shortage, or certain dog breeds may be more prone to developing Dilated Cardiomyopathy.

A plant-based diet tends to result in a very alkaline environment in the intestines, and in the bladder. This can result in your dog suffering from urinary tract infections with resulting bladder stones, and this condition is extremely painful for your dog. Some owners add apple cider vinegar to homemade food to attempt to balance this, but cider vinegar actually turns alkaline in the intestines so has the opposite effect! The addition of one of the sulphur amino acids methionine, is the most important way to acidify your dog’s urine. This is found in the foods we recommend as well as in the supplement we use in our homemade recipes.

There is enough calcium in many of the green leafy foods that we recommend in our homemade diets, but it can only be properly absorbed with the addition of just the right amount of Vitamin D. Your dog may get enough Vitamin D if taken for a few hours walk a day, but for most of our dogs (and us too) this just does not happen. A lack of calcium in your dog’s body can cause so many painful arthritis issues as well as heart issues and again, it is SO important to supplement correctly.

Why we made our JUST BE KIND supplement

As a vet and owner of our own family dog, getting it wrong with turning him onto a 100% plant-based diet was not an option. Only once I felt that I had it 100% right for him, did I feel that I could offer my advice to you the owner as I know just how important it is.

We are a family of vets and professional medical ‘children’ so getting it wrong wasn’t an option. We turned to science and made up a batch of his favourite homemade recipe – Feed the Rainbow and we sent it off to a laboratory for a full analysis (at a cost of £2400 for the one recipe!)

We thought it was nutritionally complete made with brown rice, oats, beans, soaked and cooked red lentils, peas, sweet potato, Algae oil capsules, sesame oil, kale and mushrooms…..but the results we received from our pet nutritionist who analysed the results for us were astounding: