Can I Feed My Dog...

June 15, 2009 7:48 AM

Can I Feed My Dog...
We've all been there. You dropped a stick of celery on the floor, or a hard-boiled egg, or a big glob of mayonnaise. Your dog's eyes whipped open, and she made a bee-line for the mess. But wait, is it okay? Can dogs eat that? This website is intended to be a central crowd-managed database of all of the information currently available all over the Internet.
posted by Plutor (13 comments total)

Handy, but only in specific incidences.
Did not have:
Steak
Bacon
Croutons
Poison
My Cat
To My Family
posted by JeremiahBritt at 10:36 AM on June 15

It just launched, so the database is, so far, thin. Register for free, login, and then you can submit references.
posted by Plutor at 10:43 AM on June 15

When I tried to look at the site, I got this (plus a lot more, but this is what was easily copy-and-paste-able):

TemplateSyntaxError at /

Caught an exception while rendering: Reverse for 'dev.index' with arguments '()' and keyword arguments '{}' not found.

Original Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/template/debug.py", line 71, in render_node
result = node.render(context)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 378, in render
args=args, kwargs=kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 254, in reverse
*args, **kwargs)))
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 243, in reverse
"arguments '%s' not found." % (lookup_view, args, kwargs))
NoReverseMatch: Reverse for 'dev.index' with arguments '()' and keyword arguments '{}' not found.

posted by ocherdraco at 11:58 AM on June 15

Of course you had to check it the moment I was changing something. Should be fixed.
posted by Plutor at 12:04 PM on June 15

Oh good. Yes, it works now.

I think it would be good if you made clear on the front page that logged in users can add foods.
posted by ocherdraco at 12:36 PM on June 15

Wonderful. If I had a dog, I would find this to be incredibly useful. (Sure, this information is available in many locations, but not in such an easily accessible form.)

Now, what I really need now is one for cats..
posted by Ms. Saint at 12:32 AM on June 16 [1 favorite]

Is there an easy way to just see a list of the foods in there? I would find that useful, or at least educational. For instance, I never would've thought corn was bad (obviously right off the cob is dangerous for other reasons), so I probably wouldn't have searched for it. But seeing it in a list would jump out at me (as it did, being two of the sample "Recently added foods:").

Regardless, this could be sweet. There's so much info out there, that searching for info on a specific food gets tricky sometimes.
posted by inigo2 at 4:19 PM on June 16

A "random food" link would be fun.
posted by aubilenon at 11:46 PM on June 16

You'll get many more votes and more content if you don't require registration.
posted by Pants! at 8:23 AM on June 19

Yeah, and a lot more vandalism and spambot submissions, too. I'm trying to come up with a compromise. Any suggestions?
posted by Plutor at 8:42 AM on June 19

Man, I feed my dog celery all the time. He loves them! He calls them "veggie-bones". (Okay, that's what I call them...)

Of course, he was a rescue who had been on the streets for months and was on the kill-list because he was underweight, and had been eating rocks and plastic utensils. (So the rescuers called him "Hoover".)

Cool concept, but authority is tricky in this space...
posted by disillusioned at 6:23 PM on June 19

Apparently, I've been abusing my dog for 12 years.

How do I tell her "No more chocolate milk in your coffee"? Why would she even be attracted to such poison?
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:47 PM on June 20

Okay, I came up with a solution for non-registered people to be able to add sources: recaptcha plus moderation. Unregistered folks still can't vote, but this is a step in the right direction.
posted by Plutor at 10:00 AM on June 29