Let’s Talk Dog Food – ‘Dog Food
101’
Part 1
I get a lot of questions about dog food and requests for
recommendations and I thought I would offer a little ‘Dog Food
101’.
I am the proud owner of two wonderful English Springer Spaniels,
Jezzie and Bruti and let me state that my dogs eat a combination of
raw and home cooked. I did a great deal of research before
settling on this as what I feel the best alternative for their
health and nutrition. I have very little faith or trust in most of
the ‘commercial’ dog food available. This is not saying that
they are all bad but my choice is not to offer anything to my dogs
that I would not eat myself, or at least be able to eat my
self.
I am a strong proponent of the raw diet because of a dog’s basic
physiology. Their DNA differs from the wolf by only 2% and
wolves are basically carnivores. There is a great deal of
discussion on whether dogs are true carnivores or omnivores.
One phrase you will hear used is ‘opportunistic feeders,’ meaning
they will eat what is available. My own personal belief is
that a dog is more carnivore than anything but will be an
opportunistic feeder due to what is available to him.
Dog’s teeth are classic carnivore, they have short digestive
tracts and their bodies lack certain enzymes which make it
difficult, if not impossible for their bodies to process grains and
vegetables unless they are ‘predigested’ by processing; cooking,
mincing, grinding, breakdown by enzymes, or fermentation through
bacteria. Different grains can also be processed to different
degrees after they are ‘predigested’; rice (72%), wheat (60%) or
corn (54%).
For these reasons I tend to opt for a raw diet, and because my
dogs can be a bit finicky and picky and just plain enjoy certain
foods cooked, they also get home cooked. For their raw diet I
go by the basic raw guidelines of 10-10-80. Ten percent RMBs
– raw meaty bones, ten percent organ meat and 80 muscle meat.
Several meals a week they get home cooked which might consist of
baked chicken, scrambled eggs (they refuse to eat raw) and maybe
some low fat cottage cheese or plain yogurt. For treats they
get stuff like jerky, raw carrots which doesn’t do much health-wise
but they do enjoy them and it doesn’t hurt, same with broccoli
stalks, and a variety of home made biscuits I make myself.
As you can easily see I feed a diet that is high in protein and
even more importantly, high in digestible protein. Protein is
essential because it is utilized as the building blocks for
tissues, organs, enzymes, hormones, antibodies, etc. and a body
cannot manufacture the necessary amino acids without protein. The
most highly digestible, complete protein sources come from eggs,
muscle and organ meats. Once the body has utilized the
protein it needs, the extra is metabolized and used for
energy. Unlike fats, it is not stored by the body. Animals
fed diets too low in dietary protein may develop deficiency
symptoms like decreased appetite, poor growth, weight loss, a rough
and dull coat, and decreased immune function.
Based on this, you can see how important it is for any food that
you feed to you to be high in meat and I don’t meant meat
by-products. Whatever you are feeding your dog, take a minute
and check the ingredient listings, if meat is not the first
ingredient, you are short changing your best friend. Yes,
they can survive on less but why should they? Shouldn’t you
be offering them what if the best for their optimal health?
- When it comes to labeling, keep some things in mind;
Ingredients are supposed to be listed ‘in order by predominance of
weight,’ but this refers to weight before processing. This means a
food that may contain 75% meat prior to processing may shrink to
10% of the total weight once the water is removed.
- Named ingredients are only required to make up 1/4 of the total
product; they may not even be descriptive of the main
ingredients.
- When checking out the ‘guaranteed analysis’ of dog foods, take
a look at the moisture content, the higher the moisture content the
lower the actual nutritious dry matter – you’re paying more for the
water and less for the nutritious ingredients. You need to be
able to convert the percentages so that you’re comparing
‘equals.’
- Manufacturers are not required to list ingredients that they
did not add themselves such a ingredients added by
suppliers
The bottom line when it comes to labeling is that labels can be
misleading. What you believe you read may not necessarily be what
your dog is actually getting. If you really care about your
dog and its health and nutrition, take the time to do your
homework.
That’s it for Part 1 of my little ‘Dog Food 101’. Keep an eye
out for Part 2 where we’ll go more into depth of the good and bad
of some of the actual ingredients in dog foods.
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