dog nutrition
IMPORTANCE OF NUTRITION.
Racing greyhounds are probably the healthiest dog breed today, because they have been selected for physical performance and not artificial shapes. Veterinary books will tell you that they are a breed free of hip dysplasia. Yet Julie and I have seen a litter of 4 month old greyhound puppies with such bad rickets that their front legs together formed a complete circle. The owner had gone to great lengths (and expense) to cook rice and meat (beef) for them every day without realizing that this was totally deficient in the minerals and vitamines needed to form healthy bones.
The point I'm making is that any puppy, whatever it's genetics, can get serious bone (and other) problems from an incorrect diet.
"Aha!", you cry, "thank goodness for modern dog foods that are perfectly balanced so that I don't have to worry about deficiencies!" Sorry to disappoint you but read on!
The new, high-protein, very expensive dog foods on the market today can cause the same growth problems as a diet totally lacking certain nutrients. We know of very many dogs that have got rickets and other bone and joint problems on these dog foods. Many eat soil, stones and their own faeces which are all signs of deficiencies. We believe that it's the high amount of protein and low amount of absorbable calcium and magnesium as well as other deficiencies in these foods that causes the problems.
They can also cause dogs to be starved because of the labels which tell owners to only give only 'x' amount of food for a certain weight. The thinner a dog gets the less he weighs and the less food he is given!! We have personally seen dogs half the weight that they should be, with ribs and pin bones sticking out, and the owners are still giving them the 'correct' amount of food as prescribed. Not a cube more. One such owner even described to us how he struggled because his shepherd nearly broke the door down to get to the retriever's full bowl of cheap food every day! It's enough to make you cry.
A bio-chemist, who's company makes pet food vitamine pre-mixes, told us that he would hate to have to formulate an animal's 'complete' processed food because the longer he studies the biochemistry of nutrition the more he realizes how little we know. We cannot replicate nature and do not even begin to understand what a body needs for health. We don't know all of the components in food - what substances there are yet to be identified and how processing food changes their states and usability. We don't know what the effect is of combining foods. Different foods need different acidity to be digested properly, for example. We don't know how animal's bodies react to foods that are foreign to them. Dogs have not been genetically programmed to eat grains and preservatives etc. (Julie and I just know that the number of dogs that we have heard of with cancer has skyrocketed in the last couple of years.)
AND YET DOG FOOD COMPANIES AND THE VETS WHO SELL THEIR PRODUCTS WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE THAT THEY KNOW ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT NUTRITION AND THAT THEIR FOOD IS ALL A DOG NEEDS FOR THE WHOLE OF IT'S LIFE FOR PERFECT HEALTH.
They go as far as dictating to you that you are not allowed to give anything else because their food is 'perfectly balanced'.
Seeing that an honest expert can only say that dog food is just an approximation of what a dog needs for health according to our present limited knowledge, we can only speculate what these people can mean by 'perfectly balanced'.
-A bag of their food might be perfectly balanced if it doesn't topple off of the shelf!
-(If these people were perfectly balanced they wouldn't make statements like this.)
-Perhaps it's a successful balancing act selling food that doesn't cause such immediate damage that it can be linked to bad health. .......But not always.
Dog food companies have been successfully sued worldwide but obviously the public are almost completely unaware of this. Sometimes a group of dogs have been poisoned by a specific batch of food which is easy to prove. Other harder to prove cases have been successful though. Among the most common that we know of is bone problems caused consistently by certain companies. We complained to the biggest offender and offered our opinion as to why their food was causing bone problems. Of course they just denied that their food caused any problems at all. A few years later they then told us that they had a new formula that was specially for large breeds that now didn't cause bone problems! Now that they had something new to market they were prepared to admit that they had caused problems before!
So just realize that feeding your dog commercial food is convenient but not the best nutrition that you can give him. Unless you supplement it, it is likely to cause health problems.
So what should you do?
Our advice is to give dog cubes and natural food which includes those things that we know are not in dog foods. The list of natural foods given below are the things that are almost never in dog foods, which is why it's so important to give them. These include bone shavings to make up for the poor mineral content and quality of many dog foods; beef liver or brewers yeast to supply the B vitamine inositol which is in no dog food; fresh dirty tripe (best) oryoghurt with live cultures or a pro-biotic powder to supply micro-organisms vital to a dog's (or any animal's) intestinal flora; vegetables for 'live matter' vital for health; and wheatgerm or egg for vitamine E which is destroyed by the heat necessary for processing dog cubes.
Buy two or more brands of dog cubes (mix an expensive sort with a cheap one). The cheaper dog foods tend to be better for the dogs in that their minerals are better. (We have never heard of a dog with bone problems on cheaper dog foods.) The advantage of more expensive ones is that they are very digestible and the dogs form smaller stools which are easier to pick up.
NATURAL FOOD
Natural food is very important for health. If you haven't got the time or inclination to make up actual meals you can at least give your dog your left-overs mixed with the following things that are needed to supplement dog foods.
---- bone shavings
---- drop of cod liver oil
---- pinch of vit.C
---- teaspoon of brewer's yeast (NOT bread yeast) or bit of raw beef liver
---- vegetables
---- wheatgerm (and raw eggs)
---- tripe ( raw and dirty!) or live cultures (powder or in yoghurt).
The things listed here are discussed below.
What needs to be included in your dog's diet.
The most important thing to add to your dog's diet is raw BONE SHAVINGS. This is the best form of calcium, magnesium and phosphorus that there is for dogs because it is what they eat in the wild so the 'formula' is right! Not only is the ratio right between Calcium, Phosphorus, Magnesium , and whatever other minerals and substances are necessary, but their compatibility with the body's processes is optimum. In bone shavings there is usually fat too that helps in the absorption of minerals. Bone shavings is what falls through the butcher's saw when he cuts meat. Check your dog food label - most dog foods don't even mention magnesium even though it's vital to bone growth. Adult dogs can crunch up and digest bones, so give them large bones at least a couple of times a week. Small bones like sheep or chicken bones can get stuck and cause medical problems so avoid giving them.
Something else that helps to absorb the minerals is vitamines A and C so you can give a pinch of vit.C and a drop of cod liver oil daily. (Not more than a couple of drops because vit.A stores in the liver and so you can get an overdose of it if taken regularly.)
B vitamines are vital for health and the different ones work as a team together. Again check your dog food's label and I bet you that you will not find the B vit. inositol on there. Someone forgot to include it in the vitamine formulas for dogs and everyone has blindly followed suit. You therefore need to give either liver (raw beef liver is the richest source) or brewer's yeast daily. Both have plenty of inositol in.
Vegetables are very important because in the wild carnivores eat the digested plant contents of herbivores. You can give them cooked or raw but raw blended veggies are probably best. It doesn't have to be a large quantity - as long as your dog gets a little in every day.
Tripe or Live cultures are very important for healthy intestinal flora which help to digest food and produce vitamines. We've seen chronically thin dogs getting fat by just adding tripe to their diet. It first makes their stomachs runny and then they flourish!
Wheatgerm is a natural anti-biotic and prevents car-sickness. Our puppies seem to need it otherwise they get car-sick. Not all dogs are the same but wheatgerm is rich in vit. E which is not really available in dog foods (it is destroyed by heat). Raw eggs also have vit.E.
The above things should be added to starch (such as maize meal porridge/ oat porridge/ rice/ bread/ etc. protein (such as meat/ eggs/ fish/ etc.) and fat(unless there's enough in the bone shavings) to make up a natural meal.
We know a breeder who has ONLY fed his bulldogs and great danes raw meat and bones for the last 20 years- no extra starch or anything else. His dogs are always in excellent condition. His great danes are huge, wide dogs who live up to 14 years, and his bulldogs have up to 12 puppies each!! He's never had any bone problems. I don't know how many breeders of these two breeds can say the same.