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18th Jun 2019

Turns out feeding your dog food from the dinner table is loading them with lots of extra calories

Olivia Hayes

Poor doggos.

We’re giving them so many more calories, how are they supposed to stay fit?

A new study has found that we’re giving our pet pooches 54,000 extra calories a year by feeding them off the dinner table.

If my dog is anything to go by, the minute my family sit down at the table with plates bundled with food, he looks up at us longingly with those puppy dog eyes.

If we don’t give into said puppy dog eyes he starts trying to jump up to us, wagging his tail and making us feel sorry for him.

If we still don’t give in (which is extremely rare at this point) he will end up barking and so, pieces of chicken are thrown down for him to gobble up.

It’s a vicious cycle for a clearly untrained dog.

However, new research says that throwing them bits of food could be harmful as it’s the equivalent in a medium dog of a human eating 340 cheese burgers.

The study looked at 2000 dogs and their owns and found that one in five think that giving their dogs food from their plates shows that they love them.

The most common food that the doggos are given is chicken (77 percent), beef (68 percent), sausages (67 percent), ham (63 percent) and vegetables (57 percent).

According to Metro, Hannah Poile, Scientific Communications Manager for Royal Canin Canine Care Nutrition, who conducted the study, said that the results are quite shocking.

“The four most commonly fed titbits are different varieties of meat which you could assume are the healthy choice, however these foods could easily lead to digestive upset, weight gain, or even skin issues.”

Will you think twice about feeding your dog from your plate again?