Dog regurgitating food

Hi I have a 10 year old pekapom who has never had any health issues. We changed his food about three mo this ago to a natural fresh dog food from the store to get away from dry kibble. About two months ago he started regurgitating human food, for example a piece of pizza crust, or chip, etc. he has always had some human food in the past he’s a bit spoiled. He has no issues at all with his dog food but if we give him any human food now he almost immediately regurgitates it. Has no other symptoms. He can eat treats okay as well. Still plenty of energy and tails up and seems happy. Except he can’t eat junk food now. Just wondering if this is anything to be concerned about or not? I have assumed maybe as he got older he can’t handle non dog food as much and that’s okay as he doesn’t beg as much anymore since we don’t give him any out of fear of making him throw it back up. He hasn’t had an episode in a couple weeks since we stopped giving him human food but yesterday a guest dropped some potato salad and he grabbed it before we could get to and it and almost immediately regurgitated it. Thoughts or should we just not give him junk food any longer as he eats fine on his food? Thanks

Hello!  What an interesting question.  Dogs (wolves) evolved eating an omnivorous diet, including stripping down carcasses and perhaps foraging for creepy crawleys / seeds etc.  However, they did not evolve drinking milk, making cheese products from cows' milk, cooking greasy meat products with added fat or putting together dense carbohydrates.  Dogs' bodies are therefore well adapted for the former kinds of food, but not the second group.  The inevitable increase in dogs' consumption of these foods since they grew so close to man, has led to various problems, not least obesity. which in turn predisposes to arthritis, pancreatitis, cancer and various other -itis es.  But on a more immediate level, a lot of dogs just can't stomach a high fat, dense carbohydrate diet and I wonder if this is why you are seeing regurgitation.  During regurgitation, some stomach acid inevitably ends up in the throat, and can severely damage it (reflux oesophogitis).  If the regurgitation is associated with fatty / human foods, then it makes a lot of basic sense to stop feeding them (most vets would argue that they have no place in a dogs' diet anyway). I don't know how much the regurgitation is happening, but we would also recommend seeing your vet, who will worry about ruling out other contributing causes of regurgitation, help you to review your dogs' diet and may also provide drugs to coat the oesophagus, in order to avoid any unpleasant secondary effects of any continued regurgitation. Wishing you and your pekapom the very best with that.

Hi Liz it is only happened when eating human foods. He has never regurgitated his dog food which is why I’m hoping this is probably an easy leap to duh, stop feeding him human food. And he has had no other symptoms since this started.