Photo by 9mm, source: http://kumuya.blogspot.de/2011/01/just-beautiful.html
There are many approaches when comes to food, most of them are determined by the amount of time you want to invest, money and effort.
I like to consider that the dogs deserve respect and that we should get to know more about this mammal.
And a dog is ...? First of all if you look into biology you will find out that dogs are mammals, they belong to Canis genus (here you will find domestic dog, wolves, coyotes, and jackals). If you look more deeply you will see that the dogs are a subspecies of Canis lupus, along wolves and dingoes. And now if you still have doubts ... the name that is given to dogs as subspecies in biology is ... Canis lupus familiaris .... and they are ... a member of the Canidae family of the mammalian order Carnivora.
So... What is in fact this thing telling us? Nothing special, just that they are carnivore mammals ... and their cousin is the gray wolf. Just as fact, the wolf is from subspecies Canis lupus lupus.
What does a carnivore eat? The answer is simple and has just four letters ... MEAT.
That's right, your dog was not built to be vegan! Sorry, if is too hard to accept this, maybe you should first learn to accept that other beings can eat other things than you and live with it. If not, just do a good deed and give your dog away!
But why we keep hearing that whatever brand has meat and veggies, and the vet asks us how we stay with the veggies? For the first part I can say that no veggie was even around those biscuits and is all just marketing, and for the second ... I like to think that is just because we eat veggies and we say are healthy, our dogs MUST eat too.
Now if you are pissed I return to biology and take a look again at carnivores, they are built to extract all nutrients and vitamins from meat, bones, skin and organs. They process better than we process the meat or the veggies. Yes, fresh meat has vitamins! Cooked meat less vitamins because some vitamins get destroyed in the process. That's why we add veggies, you will say. Yes you add them for nothing as long as they are cooked because the same vitamin that is destroyed by heat in meat will be destroyed by heat in veggies too. You don't need a PhD to get to know this things, just review a bit your school books.
Enough with school lessons, let's get to the food! Love goes through stomach too so our dogs will love us more when the food is quality instead quantity.
Bad food: Here I put all the dried foods, meaning biscuits and their relatives. Doesn't matter if is premium food or not ... is BAD, ok, the premium one still is a bit better than the regular ... but have you looked at the content? Ash!?!? WTF!?!? Is my dog ash eater? Bone dust, preservatives, taste enhancer (are you shitting me!?!? tastes so bad that you need to enhance? anyway it stinks like hell), color (yes, that orange thing is not natural) and a lot of other chemicals.
Why we are using it? Because we are lazy and is easy to buy a bag of junk and every day serve the junk out of the bag. Nothing to clean, no waste of time just pure laziness! I did it too so don't jump to bite me, I was lazy for some years with my dog ... and was cheap ... really cheap, you don't notice you have a german shepherd in the house when you buy dry food.
Meh food: Canned wet food.... mmmm, a real winner, you really don't know what died inside but you continue to feed your dog with that thing that does look so close to the meat like the McDonald's hamburger. Another reading of the label makes you think what junk is really in there, but still closer to the meat than the first option. Been there, done that .... never again. The difference is that it costs so much that you believe is the Rolls Royce of the dog food, it is very expensive for what really is inside ... overpriced remains that are not for human consumption. This is another lazy method for the ones who pretend they care about their dogs. Have it there, look like a responsible owner, 0 time invested, lots of money spent. My dog should eat around 1 kilo of meat every day ... canned food will cost more than the real meat in a supermarket but guess what, for my dog I should give just 500g of can food, that's what the label says. So is meat inside or what?
Good food: Moderately cooked food (read meat), you can add some veggies if you want to have peace of mind that you dog has its salad. Has the big disadvantage that you need to cook separate from your food since your dog does not appreciate the spices nor that is healthy to feed your dog with what we eat. Is a method that keeps you busy cooking for your dog and since most of the vitamins are destroyed by cooking you will need to buy extra vitamins and minerals. Is less expensive than canned food but is time consuming plus extra things and fridge space for dog food if you want to cook for more than one meal.
Best food: Raw, yes raw, pure meat, what dog is built to eat, bones and meat on the bones. If you are afraid of bacteria and stuff learn that dogs have a very acid stomach, that's why they can eat bones, or even corpses without problems. But still for your own peace of mind you can put it in boiling water for 1-2 minutes. Enough to kill some bacteria and to preserve the minerals and vitamins. Relatively cheap since you can buy from slaughter houses things that they don't sell, sometimes at dumping prices, or even if you buy some meat that we consume will still be cheaper that at supermarket, almost half price or even less. Another advantage is that you don't spend time cooking, just 2 minutes in the boiling water, let the meat to get back at the room temperature and is ready to be served.
Which type of meat? I feed my dog with all type of meats except pig, not from religious reasons but is a bit too fat and I prefer to eat a juicy pig steak than a hard beef steak, so my dog gets the beef. My dog loves lamb, but lamb is quite expensive so I keep it simple beef, chicken, turkey, duck ... is no meat that my dog will not eat.
How much? Depends on the breed, size, age and activity. If you have a couch potato you can't feed it like one that is running 10 km per day. My dog has medium size, 7 years, medium level of activity and in order to maintain weight needs around 800g - 1Kg of meat per day. When has more activity I need to increase the quantity.
Why pure meat? First of all this is a dog and was built to eat meat, then it is healthy, the volume of feces after 1Kg meat is less than half for what a 300g premium dry food produces. In this way you can see how much of the meat is processed, compared with the biscuits that are more out than in. The fur is shiny, has more energy, plays a lot and looks happy, which is the most important thing. Now if I give again biscuits ... does not want to touch them for the first day, prefers to be hungry.
To sum it up, if you respect your dog you go for meat, if not is up to you but worth a try and your dog will be happy.
Note of caution: Dogs usually have problems when you change their food type, sometime even when is another type of biscuits, by problems I meant diarrhea. Usually it takes up to 9 days to introduce the new menu. BUT don't mix dry food with wet food because they have different times for digestion. When I changed the menu I was giving mornings few biscuits, to keep my dog still eating and afternoon meat, start with small quantity and increase during the 9 days while reducing the biscuits. Actually she was doing fine and from the forth day I served no biscuit but I added a bone, since bones tend to harden the stool and she was already used with bones.
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