Sorry Kent, but I beg to differ.  The picture you see is of my late best friend and most humble companion ever - Maxwell P. Coaltrain, also known as Max to his close friends.  He was half pit-bull and half bassett hound, if you can imagine such a creature.  In this photo, he was 12 years old, but he was with me until he was 17 and he was pretty peppy all the way to the end.  He ate ALL of  my table scraps for his entire life.  He wasn't picky either.  He ate anything and everything. But Max was never fat and he was always very active.  In fact, he was the best ground hog killin' dog I ever saw.  Because of an unfortunate experience with a big hog in his youth, he HATED groundhogs for life and showed them no mercy whatsover. He was bad to the bone and I still miss him dearly.   It wasn't table scraps that killed him.  I had to have him put down because he started getting arthritis in his legs late in life.  He couldn't walk anymore, but he otherwise looked fit as a fiddle.  Before the vet came to my house to put him down, I cooked Max a huge T-bone (very rare) and cut it up into little pieces for him.  He most gratefully wolfed it all down.  He also knew what was coming and seemed grateful to me for giving him a dignified end to life.   I miss him terribly, but I still have his girlfriend, a beautiful Australian Shepherd dump-me-off that is almost as great as Max was.  I've never owned, and probably will never own, a purebred dog.  All of mine have been the want-nots of the K-9 world. Dog pound bailouts and strays,  they're the best dogs you'll ever own.