Why I made my dog go vegan… even though he hated it, the food cost £12 a day, and I’d have been judged less harshly by my friends if I’d chained my children up in the basement

The M&S sausages were probably a temptation too far. No matter that they were the dinky honey and mustard kind, safely secured in their tightly taped cardboard box and shoved deep in the recesses of a shopping bag in the car.

To a meat-starved Labradoodle halfway through Veganuary, this was easy pickings. In the two minutes it took me to walk to the parking ticket machine, Otto had wolfed down the lot. He didn’t even look remotely guilty.

And, quite honestly, who can blame him? I’ve never given up meat for January and I never would. So, why force my poor dog to make sacrifices I’m not prepared to make myself?

It’s a question that has incited rage over the last few weeks. A woman I confessed to in the park muttered that depriving dogs of meat was tantamount to abuse. One horrified friend told me I was ‘incredibly stupid because dogs need meat to live’. 

I honestly think if I’d announced my children were chained and starving in the basement I’d have been judged less.

What we feed our dogs is increasingly, and often heatedly, debated as pet owners become more conscious about what they eat themselves and the effect of their diet on the planet 

It’s not even as if we’re a tree-huggy, veggie kind of family. On holiday in France last summer, there was one day where my youngest, 14-year-old Dolly, had a large portion of steak tartare for lunch and dinner.

Yet I have found myself extolling the virtues of a plant-based diet to my four-year-old canine for the last few weeks, as he looks at me with mournful eyes and a rumbling tummy. Because, genuinely, I believe it’s the best thing for him.

Last summer, we lost our other beautiful Labradoodle, Rupert. He was also just four. It was cancer that killed him, devastatingly fast. I now know that one in three dogs will get cancer in their lifetimes, but nobody expects to lose a beloved pet so young and I’d do anything to prevent it ever happening again.

What we feed our dogs is increasingly, and often heatedly, debated as pet owners become more conscious about what they eat themselves and the effect of their diet on the planet.

The vegan pet food market was worth £7 billion in 2020 and is predicted to double by the end of the decade. One of the main motivators for this swing? Our pooches’ health.

In 2022, a University of Winchester study found that vegan dogs visited the vet less often and required fewer medications. It concluded that vegan diets are healthier and safer for dogs, as long as they are nutritionally complete.

Indeed, such is the increasing popularity that celebrities like Sir Lewis Hamilton and actor Joaquin ­Phoenix are giving their dogs a plant-based diet.

The shock of losing Rupert has made me look again at what I’m feeding Otto to ensure he has a better and longer life. So why not try a vegan switch?

My husband Keith is sceptical. He rolls his eyes and reminds me that his childhood dog, Sadie, was fed leftover scraps with gravy every day and lived to the equivalent of 100 human years. He simply cannot understand why it is already costing us £2 a day, per dog, to feed ours quality food.

I’m a little more progressed in my thinking on this. I won’t touch highly processed supermarket brands so, instead, mine are fed a quite expensive, hypoallergenic, grain-free dry food.

Still, vegan dog food? It’s a considerable leap into woo-woo territory and if Rupert hadn’t died, I’d probably be sceptical too. But Otto has been depressed since Rupert’s death and his separation anxiety has gone through the roof. In my own grief-stricken state, I figured it was worth a shot to see if it made a difference. I still can’t get the image of Rupert out of my head, struggling to stand upright to say goodbye to me in the moments before he went to the vet for the final time. Overwhelmingly, I felt I’d let him down.

It is well documented that meat consumption in humans — ­especially red meat and processed meat — is associated with a higher instance of cancer. And I learned that a growing number of vets now feed their own dogs a plant-based diet. Dogs can’t choose what goes into their bodies and so it’s up to us to ensure they stay healthy. Otto — being half-Labrador — has historically eaten everything and anything, so I had high hopes for the experiment.

I opted for Omni, a blend of yeast and plant proteins with the texture, taste and nutritional profile of meat. For wet food, there’s a choice of beef and chicken-style options combined with vegetables for additional health benefits, which sets me back an eye-popping £6 a tin. Dry food is a less ­eye-watering £14.99 per 2kg bag, which I could normally make last a week.

Omni’s co-founder is vet Dr Guy Sandelowsky, who switched his own 16-year-old black lab, Bondie, to the diet three years ago. Today everyone in the park assumes his geriatric dog is still a puppy because she is so bouncy and agile. ‘People are finally waking up to the fact that plant-based pet food can be just as healthy if not healthier than traditional meat-based products with a fraction of the environmental impact of the meat industry,’ he says.

Otto has been depressed since Rupert’s death and his separation anxiety has grown

Otto was never entirely convinced about the vegan dog food but he did, at least, begrudgingly start eating it

Extolling the virtues to Otto, however, has proved harder. On the first night he sniffed his bowl of dry food suspiciously, refusing to touch it. I tried the wet food instead, which looks enticing enough, like real juicy, meaty chunks in a delicious gravy. But somehow my hound could sense that no animals had been harmed in the process. In disgust, he turned his back on the food and plonked himself, dejected, on the sofa. It remained pretty much that way for the next three days, until I eventually buckled and added his own dry food — which is chicken-based — to the Omni tinned mix.

At this point, he spent a painstaking 30 minutes picking every genuinely meaty morsel apart from the fake stuff and placing it separately on the floor beside him to eat. The Omni was untouched.

Indeed, he looked so unhappy and hungry that by night four I caved, making a late-night dash to the corner shop to buy the kind of canned rubbish I would never normally feed him. It felt like the equivalent of having a sneaky Big Mac. Still, it perked him up and we didn’t tell anyone, so it doesn’t really count.

Over the course of the next week or so I persevered. It didn’t help that we have recently welcomed a new Labradoodle puppy named Goose in another bid to cheer up Otto. Now Otto is not only hungry but jealous as well. My husband keeps saying ‘If he’s hungry, he’ll eat.’ But the stand-off was dragging on and I started to worry that he’d gone on hunger strike. Still, we carried on feeding him a combination of his own food whilst trying to disguise the Omni in the bowl. He was never entirely convinced but he did, at least, begrudgingly start eating it.

But I couldn’t shift the unsettling notion that it feels wrong to be shunting him through this change in diet when he has no say in the matter.

Also, whilst I can embrace all the reasons for making a dog go vegan, I can hardly sit Otto down to explain that the recent University of Winchester survey estimated cats and dogs consume about 9 per cent of all land animals killed for food — about 7 billion animals annually — as well as billions of fish and aquatic animals. And that plant-based diets lower greenhouse gas emissions and require less land and water.

I couldn’t shift the unsettling notion that it feels wrong to be shunting him through this change in diet when he has no say in the matter 

Now that Veganuary has come to a close, I wonder if Otto’s vegan odyssey will become a permanent lifestyle choice or just something he embraces once a year

It’s a compelling argument and Dr Sandelowsky tells me it is rare for a dog to not make the switch. But, just in case, they have developed a ‘fussy eater’ vegan food containing carob (a vegan chocolate base) and green apples that are both safe for dogs and much loved. They have also created a premium herb mix that makes the food smell delicious because dogs are often guided by their nose first when it comes to eating. I tell him Otto once happily ate an entire loo roll, but we agree he will send a next day delivery of the ­emergency food.

He also suggests their newly developed vegan supplement chews containing calming properties like L-tryptophan, passion flower and L-theanine to help with Otto’s anxiety. Now this I get. It’s far more in line with my own personal theory that if I pop one multi-vitamin pill a day it somehow cancels out a packet of Jaffa Cakes and half a bottle of pinot.

As January nears to a close, I wonder if Otto’s vegan odyssey will become a permanent lifestyle choice or just something he embraces once a year (or never again, which I suspect is his preference).

It’s a tough one. I want to do the right thing but it’s as plain as a burger with no relish that Otto is very much missing meat. He constantly runs to the fridge whenever we open it. He seems healthy — but healthier? I can’t call it.

I might also have to take out a second mortgage to sustain this. A one-off purchase of 12 tins of Omni No-Beef Casserole costs an eye-watering £69.99. If you wanted to give a dog Otto’s size the wet food, that could mean a daily cost of up to £12 and a weekly bill of £84, or £65 if I subscribed. Luckily, I managed to make one tin last two days, alternating it with the dry food, but even that represents a leap in costs. Luckily, I managed to make one tin last two days, alternating it with the dry food, but even that represents a leap in costs.

The supplements, however, have been a life changer and Otto is definitely calmer and less stressed when I leave the house (although he could be hoping I’ve gone to buy a steak).

On balance, I think if he could talk, he would be saying: ‘Shona, enough of this madness. There is a reason the saying goes “fit as a butcher’s dog”. Now for pity’s sake, give me a bloody bone.’