I think the reason you are receiving so much negativity is you are seeming to conform to a lot of the stereotypes of vegetarian feeders (ie: lack of knowledge of canine nutrition, lack of canine medical knowledge, lack any sort of formal nutritional training and yet propose that they know more than their vet and people with PhDs in the field canine nutrition). Vegetarian diets should only be imposed on a dog if there are medical reasons to do so (ie: some sort of allergy) and I personally haven’t read any cases of dogs allergic to all meat sources so I highly doubt that is a legitimate argument in your case. Now if you are switching your dog to a vegetarian diet because of your own moral reasoning or some ill founded notion that vegetarian diets are healthier than diets that include meat then I would strongly reconsider being a dog owner.
Lets take a quick look at your arguments. First (in regards to your dog being obese before), a dog becoming obese is almost always the direct result of an owner not properly managing their dogs caloric intake to activity level ratio. Not because meat was magically making their dog fat. Switching to vegetarian meals most likely significantly reduced the dog’s caloric intake therefore attributing their obesity to meat is a really poor argument. Second, in regards to your dog always being sick. If their sickness was food related your dog may have had an allergy you were not aware of and switching to a vegetarian diet eliminated that allergen. Saying that this means that vegetarian diets are better than diets that include meat is a poor founded conclusion from your observations.
Third (and this one really concerns me), no… coconut water is not some magic fluid that will cure all ailments, to draw the conclusion that coconut water is such a strong medicinal product that it cured your dog overnight is logic I’d expect to see on late night infomercials, not from someone who claims to know more than their vet about canine medicine.
I understand that this doesn’t directly answer the question you originally asked but I am a strong proponent of making medical and nutritional decisions using science and always in the best interest of your dog (even if it goes against something you believe in).
Some of things you’ve said really concern me. At the end of the day if you can’t have a science based discussion with your vet on why you chose a vegetarian diet for your dog then that should be a flashing red light for you that you haven’t done the proper research and don’t have the knowledge/qualification to be making such a drastic change to your dogs nutrition source….
