that is my point - why a lot of dog food so bad? Back at the USSR we didn't have dog food, and the dogs we had in my childhood ate what we ate (or a bit better as we, humans, could go on pasta/bread, while cats couldn't and dogs would better get some meat too). Coming in the US i discovered that there is a lot of crap biologically not suitable for consumption by mammals, especially by biological predators like cats/dogs/humans, which is sold under the guise of cat/dog food. Unfortunately for my cat back at the time it took some time for me to learn that.
>Dogs aren't as discerning as humans. They have far fewer taste buds, and they'll eat carrion that you couldn't force down if you tried.
given the sensitivity of their nose, i don't think that's really true. Not having such sensitive taste&smell apparatus as dogs, we - humans - naturally learned to not eat wide categories of "carrion" while dogs can make more fine-grained decisions inside whose categories. Another example would be "dumpster divers" - given enough learning and practical training people also start making more fine-grained decisions inside such previously learned as untouchable category as the "food in the dumpster".
And from my experience, my Chihuahua is much more discerning with regard to food than any human i know.
>My own dog will happily eat her own vomit.
i wonder, do you feed dry food to her? Given the low nutritional content of typical dry food, a dog would stuff as much of it as physically possible and that would lead to vomit. Still being hungry, the dog wouldn't let the food go waste - and there is biologically nothing wrong with a food which has been partially processed by stomach acid as long as such partially processed food hasn't been outside long enough to start to rot and accumulate bacteria.
People, under various non-typical conditions, have also been known to eat the stuff which they would find unimaginable to eat otherwise.
>They also only live 10-20 years, so ensuring they have a completely optimal diet is not quite as important as it is for a species that lives 80 years.
i don't think you thought that well. I'm pretty sure that you do see a big difference between a dog's live of 10 years having various medical problems, like digestive, neuro, joints/skeletal, cancer, etc. vs. 15 years of healthy live.
