Hold The Turkey and Gravy!

We may want to share the bounty of all the great smelling food in our house this Thanksgiving, but Bret and Veronica talked to Rancho Coastal Humane Society's John Van Zante, who says the turkey and fixings isn't good for them.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
At the time of the year, we feel very generous,

(00:02):
very loving, very I don't know, warm and fuzzy inside.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
You mean, is the time of year where we should
feel the same way all year round, but we don't.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
We don't.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Yeah, but before you get to go too crazy with it, Yeah,
when it comes to your pets, remember that turkey and
the fixings shouldn't necessarily be on their menu.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Joining us on the Cocoa News liveline is John van
Zandt from the Rancho Coastal Humane Society. John, thank you
so much for joining us, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Thanks so much, Happy Thanksgiving. Maybe we can give some
information and save some lives this morning. I think you're right.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Tell us what concerns you the most.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, but some of it is as you were just
talking about. We feel generous, we want to be helpful.
But one of the things you do not want to do.
You're sitting there in the kitchen, you're getting food ready.
Don't make a plate for your pet that's not the
food that they're supposed to be eating. And I've seen
people that will take the dog bowl. They'll put in turkey,

(01:01):
they'll put in ham, they'll put in tofu, they put
in some potatoes with gravy, and those are all things
that your pet should not eat. Their digestive system just
isn't designed for that.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Those are the main things that we feed them, you know,
the meat, But there are just I hear people giving
their dogs everything off the table and dogs just will
eat it. At least the dogs I've had, they'll eat
whatever you hand them. There are some things that are
really really dangerous for them.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Well, one thing is bones. Somebody will say they'll give
their dog a bone, a turkey bone. Well, before they're cooked,
the texture is different. After they're cooked, they become brittle,
they can splinter, they can puncture a digestive system. Also,
fat people will they'll have a hammer, they'll have a

(01:51):
turkey and they'll give the fat and again the dog
or the cat, their digestive system just isn't designed for that.
And this is one of those situations where unfortunately curiosity
can kill the cat.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah. I mean, you bring up a very good point,
and that is as we look ahead to Christmas and
Hanukkah and all the things that all the traditions that
we like to do, and many of us like to
bring foreign objects into our house, like living trees and
point settios and things like that. Are those dangerous to
pets as.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Well well decorations. We've all seen those pictures online of
the last thing that the Christmas bulb saw before it died,
and it's a reflection of a cat looking right at it.
If they break them and they start to chew on
them again, they splinter. Take out the trash. If you

(02:45):
leave it laying on the kitchen counter, or if you
put it into an uncovered waste basket, your pets are
going to get into it. Whether it's on the counter
or in the waste basket. Take it out or leave
it in somewhere where it is sealed and your pets
can't get to it.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
We're talking to John van Zandt from the Rancho Coastal
Humane Society. John, things have changed a lot over the
last few decades. I remember as a kid, you know,
we just fed our animals scraps our dogs. Matter of fact,
I remember one Thanksgiving. My sister listening will laugh over
this one. My mom and my aunt were trying to

(03:22):
make gravy and they made a disaster, and so they
took it and scraped it outside the dog holes, and
then my dad was laughing because the dogs wouldn't even
eat it, thank goodness, because it's terrible for him. But yet,
back in the day, we used to just feed our
animals those kinds of things.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
A few years ago on Thanksgiving, we were all standing
in the kitchen looked up just in time to see
one of our dogs running by out the front door
with a full sneak of butter in his mouth. Oh so,
here's four of us running out the front door across
the yard, and all of a sudden somebody said, well,

(04:02):
what are we going to do with that better? If
we get him, It's like, are we going to No,
just let him have the better. And then when we
put out another one and he was looking at it again,
we decided that wasn't the place to leave the butter.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Oh I left my defrosting on the cabinet one time
and Luna, which you and I have talked about, Luna
jumped up and grabbed it and ran and by the
time I caught her there was nothing but the wrapper left.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
What was the next day like, yeah, that dog.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Is made of steel. Nothing happened to her.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Well, and Veronica, since you mentioned the butter that was
still in the wrapper, they can digest the butter, they
won't digest the wrapper quite so well. And it gets
in there and it gets caught, it can cause a blockach,
it can cut the insides of the intestines. So again,

(04:53):
that's the thing with with putting the stuff in the
garbage in the trash is there's things in there that
we don't need think of because we take it off. Candy.
If you've got a dish of candy sitting out, pets
don't use their paws to unwrap the candy. They eat
a wrapper and all, and those wrappers can be dangerous.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, John, great information, and yeah, I think we're saving
some pets lives, Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
No booze, no cider, no sparkling water, make sure that
they have water, make sure they have dog food. And
even though it's a even though it's a holiday, take walks.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Fantastic advice, John van Zand from the Rancho Coastal Humane Society,