Some info: I don't eat meat and my SO does eat meat, but I think they are trying to eat less.

What happend was that my SO sent me a link to an Instagram post. The link showed a dog and their owner giving them their vegan meal. The next pictures said that while some defended the owner, many disagreed and essentially showed someone arguing that a vegan diet is *absolutely* bad for dogs (they said that no dog could eat a vegan diet).

The whole conversation is on WhatsApp and I'll try to break it down while still getting both sides correct (everything quoted is a rough translation from German to English):

My first response was: "Why do you hate vegans?", because they sent similar things before, all mocking vegans. Their response: "Can you read?" and "I don't hate vegans, I love animals". So I said: "That's why you eat them".

Next I just wanted her to stop sending me those things: "Just stop sending me nonsense like this", I wrote.

After that they asked me if I would feed my dog a vegan diet and I said yes, as long as I don't see them getting unhealthy/having problems with it. They got mad because I even considered feeding them vegan food (so it seemed to me) and implying that I "let them suffer".

They asked "Why is it so hard to believe that dogs need meat?" and I said that not all dogs necessarily need meat. So they asked why I would even set them on a vegan diet, even though in nature they would still hunt other animals and eat them. I responded that I thought that it is hypocritical: feeding one animal by killing another (and also supporting the meat industry) and also that it would reduce the CO2 emissions too.

After that the next topic seemed to occur: environment

They asked if I knew who the top CO2 emission producers are and answering their question themselves: big industries.

I said that while this is true that also 18 to 40 percent of all CO2 emissions come from the meat industry (also milk and egg industries, but I forgot to write that).

They sarcastically said that I shouldn't buy cotton anymore (I only buy cotton clothes), because it's also bad for the environment. Basically I said that I can't do everything and I purposefully made a strawman saying "Huh? You want to protect the environment, but not doing this, this, this, this, this and this? What an a-hole you are"

After all of that they said that I was more of a "anti meat eater" than they are a "anti vegan" or "whatever I am". They also wrote that I want everyone to be vegan (misunderstanding an older conversation we had), forcing it on everyone. I asked if I was a JW, going from door to door and forcing my believes onto them (sorry JWs).

This was about it. They also sometimes asked if I "can read" or if I'm "a little" stupid, though they never said stupid, just implying it.

Am I the asshole?