A Vegan Dog Food? You Bet Your Pooch & Planet!

by Danielle Bussone

When a vegan friend harassed me into trying v-dog, a non-GMO, vegan dog food, I was more than a little skeptical. It seemed to me that it was animal activism taken a bit too far. Don’t dogs require meat to survive? The answer came as a surprise. They don’t, actually.

v-dog 20 lb. bag

In fact, two papers which were published in 2013, roughly three months apart, one from the University of California at Davis (one of the leading veterinary schools in the country) and the other from the University of Uppsala, in Sweden, came to the same conclusion.  Modern dogs, the product of 14,000 years of evolution, have developed an enzyme composition which allows them to digest starch. Wolves do not share this trait. Wolves, like cats, are true carnivores. Unlike their wolf ancestors, dogs are omnivores. They cannot only survive, but thrive, on a plant-based diet.

“This research has substantiated what we all felt on a gut level and have seen in practice,” says Dave Middlesworth, CEO of v-dog. He is passionate about the subject. “What we do not have to date are longevity research studies, though we do have a lot of anecdotal information that dogs on a plant-based diet live longer. In my own family, for example, we had a Lab who lived to fifteen when all his siblings died four or five years before he did. He was the only pup from the litter who was raised vegan. We’ve heard a lot of stories like that. I’d like to see some actual scientific research on this.”

Amen to that. Phoenix, my eighty-five pound cross between a Samoyed and “some big red dog,” has had hip problems ever since she was two years old. Rich and I have always had to team up to hoist her dead weight (she was no help at all) into the back of our vehicle whenever we traveled. Our other dog, Camper, named “Happy Camper” because we found him in a campground, leaped into our vehicles with ease. Phoenix could never do that. By the time she was nine and a half years old, Phoenix was on anti-inflammatories twice a day and was beginning to behave like an old dog. We were steeling ourselves for the inevitable.

Phoenix with a 30-pound bag of v-dog

I finally gave in to my friend’s persistence and ordered v-dog with no expectations that Phoenix’s health would improve at all. In fact, I was still suspicious of a decline in nutrition. Within a week, Phoenix was no longer in pain. Within two weeks, she was leaping into the back of my Subaru! You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw her jump a fence in my back yard! Phoenix has been on v-dog for the better part of a year now and she is healthy, active and pain-free. I feel like I’ve been given another five years with the best dog in the world! I only wish I had discovered v-dog in time to benefit Camper, who has since departed our world.

Photo taken yesterday of Phoenix at ten years old leaping into the back of my Subaru

V-dog was initially an English company. Dave Middlesworth and his wife, Linda, while attending a vegetarian conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, were attracted to a table promoting a vegan dog food. Dave had retired a couple of years before from a long career with Xerox.  Becoming bored with retirement, he began communicating with v-dog’s management. Since it was cost-prohibitive to package and ship the product to the United States, Dave began manufacturing it here in 2006. In 2008, he and Linda bought the company and all its rights. V-dog is a 100% family owned company, with daughter, Tory, and sons, Darren and Colin, on the board of v-dog, Inc. V-dog now has four warehouses, two in the United States (Sacramento and Memphis) and two in Canada (Toronto and Vancouver). V-dog also ships pallets to Germany, to an all vegan company called Veganz, similar in structure to Whole Foods. V-dog currently has around six thousand customers across North America and Europe.

v-dog, the healthiest dog food on the market. And it’s VEGAN!

“We’ve created an all vegan company with essentially two products, a dog kibble which is a complete dog food containing all the essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. It is 24% protein. We also have a hard chew product which we call breathbones. In 2014, we will be introducing a wet food and also a biscuit. We are hoping that the wet food product will be organic, we are working hard to achieve that. In the following year, we will be introducing a freeze dried product.”

It is cost prohibitive to offer the kibble, or dried dog food, as a 100% organic product. A thirty-pound bag would cost $230. Dave doesn’t believe that is a sustainable model for selling kibble. He has taken the soy, wheat, corn, gluten and GMO’s out of the mix, and while he tries to work with as many organic products as possible, it isn’t a certified organic product and probably never will be. Still, v-dog is the healthiest dog food on the market today.

“We produce 60 tons of kibble every month,” says Dave, “and we are a very small producer. When you talk about that kind of quantity, organic isn’t very feasible.”

His business model is simple and consists of three components:

1-The health of the dog,

2-The ethical issue of not killing animals to feed animals, and

3-The notion that a dog on a plant-based diet is going to make a much smaller paw print on the environment.

Dave and Linda Middlesworth

Dave Middlesworth and his family are committed to raising animal rights awareness and promoting a healthy vegan lifestyle. They support many of the major animal organizations in the United States and Dave personally knows all of their leaders. He and his wife serve on the President’s Committee of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and are on the Vanguard Committee for PETA. Linda is a graduate of T.Colin Campbell’s Plant-Based Nutrition Program and does cooking demonstrations and classes for PCRM. Dave is on the board for an organization called Red Rover, an organization devoted to developing books for elementary school children, especially in economically depressed areas. These books are very carefully crafted and are designed to instill a love of animals, an understanding of animals as sentient beings and to help children develop empathy for animals. Red Rover is also developing Apps for iPads.

Linda being kissed by Farm Sanctuary’s “Peanut”

At seventy-five years old, Dave Middlesworth shows no sign of slowing down. He still skis, runs three days a week and plays tennis three days a week. His wife, at seventy, is an aerobics instructor. Linda became attracted to plant-based nutrition because of some health issues twenty-two years ago. She has been a vegan now for twenty years. Dave, a typical BBQ guy, was dragged into it kicking and screaming and has now been vegan for over eighteen years. Somewhere along the way, Dave began to read about plant-based nutrition, the health of the planet and the plight of animals raised for meat. That awoke in him a stewardship which continues to drive him. “Once you’ve entered into that world you can’t return,” says Dave.

I know just what he means. I click the “CHECKOUT” button on my computer and order sixty pounds of v-dog kibble for Phoenix. I smile with satisfaction at the contribution I’ve just made to my pooch and to my planet. It’s a small beginning, but who knows where it will take me from here?

Thank you, v-dog, for giving Phoenix back her smile!

Dave is offering a 20% promotional discount for Veggin’ Out and About!  followers from February 3, 2014, through February 16, 2014.  Just go to v-dog and enter the code “OAA” when you check out! Free shipping on orders of $30 or more within the continental US.

Co-founder and editor of Veggin’ Out and About!, Danielle writes restaurant reviews, profiles, and interviews of people making a difference in the plant-based community. She is currently writing a cookbook for vegans called, “Time For Change: Whole Foods For Whole Health.” Danielle’s region is SW Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina and anywhere she happens to stop for sustenance along the road. Contact Danielle directly to share your restaurant finds, to make comments or just to say hello.