One thing that can help a lot is to give dogs and cats more vegetables. In particular, they love brassicas, especially brussels sprouts and broccoli. Either mixed in with their regular food or as a treat, it helps fill them up with very few calories - and really good for them too.
If you haven't tried this, I recommend it. Simply microwave some brussels sprouts or broccoli until tender, let cool, and either chop it up, add a little water, and mix into their food, or else take the sprouts and slice them in quarters as a treat.
With broccoli, they like the stems more than the heads. Sweeter and less pungent.
When I give them the sprouts as a treat, the dogs get the quartered sprouts, and the cats like to have me peel off a leaf and tear it into pieces for them. I sit down on the kitchen floor, the dogs line up, and the cats muscle in between them and sit on my legs to get their share. (That's why I sit down, so they don't climb my legs!)
I've had a couple of people tell me, "You must be kidding. Dogs and cats don't like vegetables, they want meat!" They change their mind when they see how our dogs and cats respond to the brussels sprouts.
BTW, if you are used to steaming brussels sprouts for yourself when you don't do something fancier with them, I highly recommend microwaving instead. It cooks them evenly, unlike steaming which ruins the outside by the time the inside is done. Rinse them first - the bit of water avoids burning - and undercook them a little because they continue to cook when you take them out. A microwaved brussels sprout dipped in hummus is a tasty treat. (For people, not for the pets! The garlic wouldn't be good for them.)
Update: I didn't expect this to spark quite such a discussion, but thank you everyone for the replies - I learned some things here. Rest assured that I only give the cats a small amount of the brussels sprouts - the dogs get more.
Occasional greens are OK for cats, but do NOT feed them carbohydrates; and especially do not feed them carbs regularly. Cats are obligate carnivores, and the grains that are common in cheap pet food contribute to kidney disease.
Dogs yeah, they're omnivores as far as I understand.
Cats though are straight up carnivore, and while they might enjoy the taste of some veggies, and some stuff can help with their digestion, they don't really get much nutrients out of vegetables, and a large portion of veggies are downright harmful to them.
Dogs picked up the ability to use some starches for nutrition around the time humans started to farm.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/how-farming-changed-d...
Wolves (from which we domesticated dogs) have only a tiny ability to digest starches.
Dogs that were bred in mostly hunting communities like the Siberian Husky do not have the ability to digest starches well, same as wolves.
Dogs needing bone is incorrect. Plant sources can meet all their food requirements. But the science around if plants can form an ideal diet isn't clear currently (similar to humans).
I'm guessing you're trying to trap me into saying the following:
Why? Because they are direct descendants of the gray wolf.
> Dogs needing bone is incorrect. Plant sources can meet all their food requirements.
They cannot live on a purely protein based (i.e. only meat) diet. They need organ meat and bone as well.
Saying that they cannot live on meat alone is a very weak "they are omnivores" argument. So I make sure to add where they can get their micro-nutrients. A whole prey model is the carnivorous model.
Whether you can substitute that with a plant based model and have them survive is arbitrary. I did not claim that they are obligate carnivores. They will forage when starving and survive, cats will not.
> Dogs needing bone is incorrect.
Bone gives them calcium and most of the other minerals that they require. So yes, what bones give them is something they absolutely require. Can it be artificially substituted, yes.
My Mom is a hardcore vegan. She inherited a cat that was unwanted. Mom was not about to feed that cat meat. Despite the comments here, there does exist vegan cat food and my mom fed that cat vegan cat food for the last 10 years of its life. The cat lived to be 19 years old.
TLDR; it's possible for a cat to survive on vegan cat food (even if its not recommended). I know from experience.
The important part is that cats need taurine, an amino acid that only comes in nature from animal protein (the taur- is from the latin word for bull). Cats can not synthesize taurine in their bodies -- if you do not include taurine in your cat's diet, IT WILL DIE.
This food explicitly includes synthetic taurine, which appears to be lab-synthesized so that it does not have to come from animal sources.
Our dog absolutely loves carrots -- if you dare to eat a carrot near him, you won't hear the end of it until he's had one too.
We stopped making homemade (meat) treats for him in favor of just keeping a baggie of small carrots in the fridge. It's still hilarious to me, but he just goes crazy for them, time and time again. I'm not sure if it's just the crunch, or maybe the 'social factor' of him watching my wife eat them, but he truly adores a healthy carrot snack/treat. =)
My parents had a dog that would go out to the garden and dig up carrots to eat. They thought it was varmints until they caught him doing it.
Our Pit Bull/Mastiff mix will come running when he hears a cereal bowl being filled. That would be because when cereal is served, odds are there's fruit going on top of it. That dog is a hound for bananas, but he'll settle for peaches. It's blackberry season here in Seattle, so he gets a handful or two on our walks. Broccoli, brussel sprouts, I don't recall that we've found anything yet that he won't eat. Makes for low-calorie snacks to put in his Kong.
If you haven't tried this, I recommend it. Simply microwave some brussels sprouts or broccoli until tender, let cool, and either chop it up, add a little water, and mix into their food, or else take the sprouts and slice them in quarters as a treat.
With broccoli, they like the stems more than the heads. Sweeter and less pungent.
When I give them the sprouts as a treat, the dogs get the quartered sprouts, and the cats like to have me peel off a leaf and tear it into pieces for them. I sit down on the kitchen floor, the dogs line up, and the cats muscle in between them and sit on my legs to get their share. (That's why I sit down, so they don't climb my legs!)
I've had a couple of people tell me, "You must be kidding. Dogs and cats don't like vegetables, they want meat!" They change their mind when they see how our dogs and cats respond to the brussels sprouts.
BTW, if you are used to steaming brussels sprouts for yourself when you don't do something fancier with them, I highly recommend microwaving instead. It cooks them evenly, unlike steaming which ruins the outside by the time the inside is done. Rinse them first - the bit of water avoids burning - and undercook them a little because they continue to cook when you take them out. A microwaved brussels sprout dipped in hummus is a tasty treat. (For people, not for the pets! The garlic wouldn't be good for them.)
Update: I didn't expect this to spark quite such a discussion, but thank you everyone for the replies - I learned some things here. Rest assured that I only give the cats a small amount of the brussels sprouts - the dogs get more.