Most people who have dogs in their lives, reach for the easy option of commercial dog food. There is little thought that goes into it.
Or perhaps they feel their veterinarian knows best and they buy what they offer.
Either way, the health of your dog will suffer.
But you know that already, or you wouldn’t be here.
As you’re considering feeding a raw food diet for dogs, you’ve come a long way and first up, need congratulating!
I find that the most difficult part of changing anything in my life, is the initial reluctance to change my mind. It’s no mean feat. But now that you’ve done that, the rest is easy.
Or comparatively!
A raw food diet for dogs is what they evolved. on. You can’t beat or better nature. Nature has had a long time perfecting herself. Puny man and his pseudo ideas are no match!
But I’m sure you still have questions. For a start, what should you feed your dog, and how much?
Are there any foods to avoid or limit?
Should bones be a part of the raw food diet for dogs?
And lastly, how can you fit it into your busy schedule of juggling work, family and hopefully a bit of time for you?
Well, lets answer the last question first. Buying raw food is no less difficult or time consuming than buying commercial dog food. Putting meat instead of a packet into your trolly takes the same energy!
The other questions on what and what not to feed dogs have already been discovered by others who have gone before you. So you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. It’s already been done. Just follow in someone else’s footsteps.
It does take a little bit of time to get used to what to feed and how much, but once you have the hang of it, it becomes second nature.
Feeding a raw food diet for dogs is really the start of other things too. Such as listening to your dog. He will tell you what he likes to eat and what he doesn’t. He’ll also tell you what medicines he’s happy to take and what he doesn’t like and would prefer you not to insist.
It’s a whole new world, and one I can’t recommend enough!
Showing posts with label raw dog food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label raw dog food. Show all posts
Monday, March 9, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Natural Choice Dog Food, Chosen by Your Dog
The most natural choice dog food currently is commercial dog food. That’s as far as a dog ‘owner’ is concerned. If it was up to your dog, that wouldn’t be the case. How would your dog choose?
I believe dogs are inherently intelligent and know, on a deep level, what is good and healthy for them. This natural ability is often upset, just as in humans, by the daily consumption of junk food, year in, year out. Your dog can become addicted.
But if your dog had the freedom to a natural choice dog food from a puppy, what would you see?
I had just that experience, when a dog came into my home, for the first time since becoming an adult.
I was by then, feeding my cats raw meat and bones, having made the conversion a couple of years before.
I hadn’t expected to get a dog, she catapulted into my life, so I was unprepared. I didn’t know what to feed her. Here was this abandoned, energetic puppy, about eight weeks old, who had made it very clear to me that I was the chosen one. She intended to live with me, so I’d better just get used to the idea.
Still racking my brains for a clue as to her diet, I decided to purchase a couple of tins, while I tried to work it out. After all, they were supposed to be ‘balanced’, ‘nutritionally complete’, ‘recommended by top vets’ weren’t they?
My dog knew better.
Even though I was feeding her separately from the cats, she knew what I was feeding them.
And she didn’t like what I was offering her.
Abandoned dogs have often suffered a lack in regular or sufficient food. Even so, she left her food and raced to where the cats were, whining and leaping about as only puppies can, desperately trying to tell me that THIS was her natural choice dog food.
I ended up throwing away a tin and a half of dog food. I capitulated and fed her the same as the cats, just more of it, until I could be sure of the correct amount and type.
She remained fit, energetic and healthy up to about eleven years of age, with absolutely no veterinary intervention of any sort except sterilisation at about six months. She kept her figure, was always interested in everything going on, had a lovely glossy coat.
Her natural choice dog food was raw meat and bones. She chose it. She never had any other type of dog food.
It was me who was the barrier to try initially. I had to sort out my prejudices, my beliefs, my ingrained ideas of healthy dog food that I had gained over the years, from childhood, through advertisements. That was my biggest hurdle to allowing my dog her right for her natural choice dog food.
I believe dogs are inherently intelligent and know, on a deep level, what is good and healthy for them. This natural ability is often upset, just as in humans, by the daily consumption of junk food, year in, year out. Your dog can become addicted.
But if your dog had the freedom to a natural choice dog food from a puppy, what would you see?
I had just that experience, when a dog came into my home, for the first time since becoming an adult.
I was by then, feeding my cats raw meat and bones, having made the conversion a couple of years before.
I hadn’t expected to get a dog, she catapulted into my life, so I was unprepared. I didn’t know what to feed her. Here was this abandoned, energetic puppy, about eight weeks old, who had made it very clear to me that I was the chosen one. She intended to live with me, so I’d better just get used to the idea.
Still racking my brains for a clue as to her diet, I decided to purchase a couple of tins, while I tried to work it out. After all, they were supposed to be ‘balanced’, ‘nutritionally complete’, ‘recommended by top vets’ weren’t they?
My dog knew better.
Even though I was feeding her separately from the cats, she knew what I was feeding them.
And she didn’t like what I was offering her.
Abandoned dogs have often suffered a lack in regular or sufficient food. Even so, she left her food and raced to where the cats were, whining and leaping about as only puppies can, desperately trying to tell me that THIS was her natural choice dog food.
I ended up throwing away a tin and a half of dog food. I capitulated and fed her the same as the cats, just more of it, until I could be sure of the correct amount and type.
She remained fit, energetic and healthy up to about eleven years of age, with absolutely no veterinary intervention of any sort except sterilisation at about six months. She kept her figure, was always interested in everything going on, had a lovely glossy coat.
Her natural choice dog food was raw meat and bones. She chose it. She never had any other type of dog food.
It was me who was the barrier to try initially. I had to sort out my prejudices, my beliefs, my ingrained ideas of healthy dog food that I had gained over the years, from childhood, through advertisements. That was my biggest hurdle to allowing my dog her right for her natural choice dog food.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Healthy Dog Food - How do You Find One
Most people don’t stop to think about the food they are giving their dog. The colourful packs on the laden supermarket shelves are normally as far as people give dog food a thought. You may be one of them, but are now branching out and looking for something a bit healthier.
Believe me, the packs can look tempting and with smiling veterinarians and dog breeders on the cover, you’re not that hard to convince.
But stop for a moment and consider a wild dog’s diet. Dogs are naturally pack animals and so they hunt in packs. They can bring down a large animal, as large as a cow, with their combined efforts. Then they all gather round, with much growling and snarling and consume most of the carcass, bones and all. Probably the only parts left is the hide and hooves.
Whether or not you can accept this idea, that’s how dogs evolved. And the wild dogs still manage very well. This is the most healthy dog food. There is nothing that can beat it.
Man, with his puny pseudo scientific ideas of improving on the natural diet of dogs is going down a dead end. You can’t.
Period.
There is only one type of healthy dog food. And that is the one which so closely resembles a wild dog’s diet, as to be virtually the same as far as health benefits are concerned.
Lets look at some of the differences between a wild dog’s diet and commercial dog food, a diet most dogs exist on (I won’t say live, as it’’s hardly a life).
A wild diet, a healthy dog food, consists of:
A typical commercial dog food consists of:
So in your search for a healthy dog food, keep firmly in mind the diet of a wild dog. It’s OK to take your time to get used to the idea. If you find the idea repulsive, just go slowly. Try to replace one thing at a time. Just keep in mind that dogs have evolved over millions of years, on this diet. Humans have only been producing (poor quality) commercial dog food for a few decades.
If you don’t like the idea of raw meat for your dog, that’s your issue, not his.
I also suggest that you keep in mind the concept that most people are lured by price. With the best will in the world, if a commercial pet food manufacturer suddenly started to produce quality pet food, because it would be more expensive, do you think it would be a sell-out?
That would only be possible if people had already started to reject the current commercial dog food and were now looking for a healthy dog food, so were prepared to pay a little more.
However, if you make your own dog food, you won’t need to find the extra cash. Not only is a homemade, healthy dog food economical to produce, it has an enormous impact on the health of your dog, often beyond your wildest dreams.
Believe me, the packs can look tempting and with smiling veterinarians and dog breeders on the cover, you’re not that hard to convince.
But stop for a moment and consider a wild dog’s diet. Dogs are naturally pack animals and so they hunt in packs. They can bring down a large animal, as large as a cow, with their combined efforts. Then they all gather round, with much growling and snarling and consume most of the carcass, bones and all. Probably the only parts left is the hide and hooves.
Whether or not you can accept this idea, that’s how dogs evolved. And the wild dogs still manage very well. This is the most healthy dog food. There is nothing that can beat it.
Man, with his puny pseudo scientific ideas of improving on the natural diet of dogs is going down a dead end. You can’t.
Period.
There is only one type of healthy dog food. And that is the one which so closely resembles a wild dog’s diet, as to be virtually the same as far as health benefits are concerned.
Lets look at some of the differences between a wild dog’s diet and commercial dog food, a diet most dogs exist on (I won’t say live, as it’’s hardly a life).
A wild diet, a healthy dog food, consists of:
- raw food
- lots of raw bones
- internal organs are consumed, but these are scarce compared with the muscle meat
- carbohydrates which are limited to the stomach contents, so is small in the overall content
A typical commercial dog food consists of:
- cooked food (many vitamins, enzymes and other nutrients are destroyed by cooking)
- the meat is of poor (often extremely poor) quality (humans get the good stuff)
- carbohydrates, in particular sugar, are a major part of the food - it’s cheap and bulks out the ‘meat’
- the food is fortified with strong preservatives (not allowed in human food for their dangerous impact on health) - DESPITE WHAT THE LABEL SAYS
- to try to redress the nutritional imbalance, isolated and synthetic nutrients are added - nutrients which can’t be properly absorbed and utilised when they are in isolation, or if they are synthetic
So in your search for a healthy dog food, keep firmly in mind the diet of a wild dog. It’s OK to take your time to get used to the idea. If you find the idea repulsive, just go slowly. Try to replace one thing at a time. Just keep in mind that dogs have evolved over millions of years, on this diet. Humans have only been producing (poor quality) commercial dog food for a few decades.
If you don’t like the idea of raw meat for your dog, that’s your issue, not his.
I also suggest that you keep in mind the concept that most people are lured by price. With the best will in the world, if a commercial pet food manufacturer suddenly started to produce quality pet food, because it would be more expensive, do you think it would be a sell-out?
That would only be possible if people had already started to reject the current commercial dog food and were now looking for a healthy dog food, so were prepared to pay a little more.
However, if you make your own dog food, you won’t need to find the extra cash. Not only is a homemade, healthy dog food economical to produce, it has an enormous impact on the health of your dog, often beyond your wildest dreams.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Raw Dog Food - How Can You Be Sure It’s Healthy?
Most people feel reassured by the pictures of smiling veterinarians and dog breeders paying tribute to the commercial pet food they feed their dog. Or perhaps, you’ve been convinced by your own vet that the food they sell is sure to be nutritionally balanced.
For your dog’s sake, be a bit suspicious. Don’t be convinced by anyone (including me) that what they are trying to sell you is necessarily in your dog’s best interest.
Instead, it may be in their own best interest if they gain a sale from convincing you.
If you’re having a problem getting your head around the idea of raw dog food, then I suggest it’s your problem, not your dog’s.
Dogs evolved on a diet of raw food over millennia. Humans have only recently taken an interest in making dog food.
Do you really imagine, for one moment, that humans have been able to change the domestic dog’s digestive and immune system in fifty odd years?
You may well say that humans have had an impact on the way dogs look, with all the different breeds. Yes, that’s true. But have you also noticed that pedigree dogs are also the most unhealthy? What I call a Heinz 57 dog, is normally much healthier.
So in breeding a selective type of dog, humans have gone against nature, by isolating one or more traits, until the breed becomes what the breeder wants.
And so it is with food. Humans tinker about with food, under the guise of ‘science’. I call it junk science, because there’s nothing scientific about commercial dog food. The word ‘science’ has come to be revered by the majority. Just as the word ‘natural’ is currently enjoying popularity.
So a clever commercial dog food manufacturer will incorporate the word ‘science’ and/or ‘natural’ in the advertising, to lure you in.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything of quality within the packet or can It could be anything. You have no way of knowing how the food was prepared or what is in each pack.
Raw dog food, on the other hand, contains all the nutrients essential to a healthy dog.
I appreciate that it may take you time to get your head around the idea, because you’ve probably been brought up on the idea that commercial pet food is the healthiest way to go.
If that was true, how cum that dogs health invariably improves when a switch from commercial to raw dog food is made? The only way you’re really going to find out for sure is to try it out yourself.
You may be worried about parasites and bacteria in raw dog food.
Neither of these are an issue for dogs, whose digestive system is very robust, with powerful digestive juices. Dogs aren’t carnivores, they’re omnivores, which means they can eat anything (as long as it’s raw), including vegetation and rotting carcasses.
In fact, you will notice that when you feed a raw dog food, fleas and worms decrease and almost disappear.
Dogs have problems with unnatural foods - those that are cooked, those that contain preservatives. Neither of these are natural. Cooking destroys many vitamins and denatures other nutrients.
I can genuinely assure you, that your dogs health will improve considerably when you start feeding a raw dog food. There may be a ‘de-toxing’ period initially, but this is normal, natural and only takes a short time to go through.
Why not try it for a month and see for yourself? What have you got to lose?
For your dog’s sake, be a bit suspicious. Don’t be convinced by anyone (including me) that what they are trying to sell you is necessarily in your dog’s best interest.
Instead, it may be in their own best interest if they gain a sale from convincing you.
If you’re having a problem getting your head around the idea of raw dog food, then I suggest it’s your problem, not your dog’s.
Dogs evolved on a diet of raw food over millennia. Humans have only recently taken an interest in making dog food.
Do you really imagine, for one moment, that humans have been able to change the domestic dog’s digestive and immune system in fifty odd years?
You may well say that humans have had an impact on the way dogs look, with all the different breeds. Yes, that’s true. But have you also noticed that pedigree dogs are also the most unhealthy? What I call a Heinz 57 dog, is normally much healthier.
So in breeding a selective type of dog, humans have gone against nature, by isolating one or more traits, until the breed becomes what the breeder wants.
And so it is with food. Humans tinker about with food, under the guise of ‘science’. I call it junk science, because there’s nothing scientific about commercial dog food. The word ‘science’ has come to be revered by the majority. Just as the word ‘natural’ is currently enjoying popularity.
So a clever commercial dog food manufacturer will incorporate the word ‘science’ and/or ‘natural’ in the advertising, to lure you in.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything of quality within the packet or can It could be anything. You have no way of knowing how the food was prepared or what is in each pack.
Raw dog food, on the other hand, contains all the nutrients essential to a healthy dog.
I appreciate that it may take you time to get your head around the idea, because you’ve probably been brought up on the idea that commercial pet food is the healthiest way to go.
If that was true, how cum that dogs health invariably improves when a switch from commercial to raw dog food is made? The only way you’re really going to find out for sure is to try it out yourself.
You may be worried about parasites and bacteria in raw dog food.
Neither of these are an issue for dogs, whose digestive system is very robust, with powerful digestive juices. Dogs aren’t carnivores, they’re omnivores, which means they can eat anything (as long as it’s raw), including vegetation and rotting carcasses.
In fact, you will notice that when you feed a raw dog food, fleas and worms decrease and almost disappear.
Dogs have problems with unnatural foods - those that are cooked, those that contain preservatives. Neither of these are natural. Cooking destroys many vitamins and denatures other nutrients.
I can genuinely assure you, that your dogs health will improve considerably when you start feeding a raw dog food. There may be a ‘de-toxing’ period initially, but this is normal, natural and only takes a short time to go through.
Why not try it for a month and see for yourself? What have you got to lose?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)