This post follows on from the previous post about dog nutrition.

If you dont know why you make the diet choices you do for your dog, this may help ..

BUT THE CAN LOOKS LIKE ITS FULL OF CHUNKY PIECES OF MEAT

Don’t worry, that is what the image on the front and the chunks inside are supposed to make you believe.

At this stage you may won’t to look up ‘Textured vegetable protein’ or TVP. This is the stuff that fake bacon is made out of to make vegans feel good about eating fake bacon. TVP is made from 50% soy protein, soy flour or concentrate and may also be cotton seeds, wheat or oats.

The ‘textured’ part of this abbreviation means that like other non meat components in your dog food, more often than not what you are seeing is chunks of soy disguised as meat, rather than actual meat. This is how they keep prices down, cheat your dog, and make you feel good about feeding your dog their fake product.

WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT ABOUT A DOG EATING MEAT

There is a whole lot of science and evolution behind a dog’s need to eat meat, and a lot of misinformation by vets and manufacturers to ply their non meat stock.

Put simple domestic dogs evolved from wolves only 15,000 years ago and wolves are carnivores. A dogs physiology is essentially the same as its recent ancestor the wolf. The age old back stop for the manufacturer is the vague term that a dog is an ‘obligatory carnivore’. This means that it won’t die from eating vegetables and grains, but it does mean that a dog’s digestion has to work very hard to digest vegetable proteins compared to the more natural meat proteins.

Hands up anyone who has seen a dog grazing in a potato or carrot patch?

BUT MY DOG LOVES ITS VEGETABLES

Sure does, and how and when did it first experience these? Perhaps the previous owner or you fed it grain based pellets for most of its life. Have you ever heard of imprinting?

Dogs are a great companion to humans and highly reliant on their owners for guidance and boundaries. Whatever you raised your dog on, is what it thinks it should eat. If you raised a child on candy and red cordial it would think that these are its natural diet, would it be good for them?

BUT MY DOG IS HEALTHY

Dogs lack the enzyme to pre-digest vegetables in their mouth. They can digest vegetables but with a lot more effort. Many vegetables you will see pass straight through them, like corn for humans. But as dogs don’t need that much roughage for their very short intestinal track, there is no point feeding them roughage. If you want to make their stools solid you feed them bones along with meat and offal in the correct proportions. Perhaps feed htem a little bit of HIGH FIBRE dog pellets, but not all carbs!

The reality is, while dogs can eat vegetables even if they are carnivores and this food is very inefficient for them, they will survive. They are very adaptable animals, but like it is thought that human’s may have become more susceptible to cancers over the last fifty years because of overly processes, overly sugared and salted food, what do you think eating processes, non meat foods does to your dog.

Chances are that you may not even see any degradation until their old age. Perhaps you will think that dying at 12 or 14 is a great old age, but why shouldn’t your dog live longer and more happy? People now live longer than they used to fifty years ago, but how come dogs don’t live longer? It has been many more generations of dogs yet their life and quality of life has not been extended.

CONCLUSION

Buy your dog meat and small raw bones from the market. Buy offal (10% of their diet) and feed your dog regularly different meats once they have become accustomed to it.

I actually give my dog a human vitamin tablet too – necessary to complete all the vitamins it needs. The excess vitamin B group (water soluble) just pass through them, they are not stored. Dont buy dog vitamins if you are feeding your dog on a raw diet, as these are too weak to make a difference.

If you are unsure, do your own research or ask your vet. AND if they say just feed dog food from our shelves, ask someone else who really cares.

Research all you can about raw meat diets for your dog. Pretend your dog already has cancer, and put as much effort into understanding its dietary requirements as you would if a loved one (human) had cancer.

Realize that large multi nationals are not all our friends. That unless you are willing to live exclusively on pellets and cans of fake food, that you should not force your dog to do so.

A happy dog, is one that gets fed raw fresh meat on a regular basis. It is then freed up to experience all of the other things that will make it truly happy.

At least consider adding some raw meat and offal as part of your dogs daily diet – that is the most natural thing you can do ..