Eating and Nutrition
Creating a healthy eater
Wonder what dogs think about? Food! In nature, dogs would need to be hunting
or scavenging for a major part of each day. If they were blessed enough to
get a full tummy then they could take a break and rest, but as soon as that
meal was absorbed they would be right back at it. Eating is a vital part of
your dog’s world and it is important to do it right.
It is
essential to teach your dog to eat in a timely manner, and that the food
belongs to you not him. Leave the food down for your dog for approximately 10
minutes. If you leave the food down for too long then the dog begins to
believe it belongs to him and will not feel the need to finish it right away.
He will come and take a little bit at a time and walk away from his food to
chew it elsewhere. This is not what a dog’s body was created to do. He
is built to gorge now and digest later. If the food is in the bowl for only
ten minutes he learns that you, as the leader, will take it away and he will
condition himself to eat it all at once.
This is important when your dog is older and/or ill. He needs to eat a hearty
meal – not just take little bits here and there. Eating a proper meal
can help insure a faster recovery, or keep an older dog more alert and
enthused about his feeding routine. It is also great for when you have to
feed in a hurry. You are on a road trip and you need the dog to eat now so
that you can keep driving. This way the dog is more cooperative and the whole
schedule runs more smoothly.
If you say,
“but my dog is a slow eater and he is rather picky”, then our
reply is – if he were living in a natural state he couldn’t
afford to be so picky. You have actually trained him to be this way. We had a
friend who thought her dog would only eat if she fed it by hand – no, in
fact she had trained the dog to believe that if it waited long enough to eat,
she would rescue it by hand feeding it. If you begin the ‘ten minutes
down and then it’s gone’ routine today, in approximately three
days he will be eating much more quickly and looking forward to his meals.
Feeding Schedules
Young
Puppies (6 weeks to 6 months) – need to eat three times a day
Older Puppies (6 months to 12 months) – should eat two times a day
Adults (12 months and older) – can eat once a day. Preferably in the
morning so that they have the whole day to burn it off.
Giant
breeds need to continue their dinner meals longer than smaller breeds because
the largest breeds can take up to four years to complete filling out. The
bigger breeds also have disproportionately smaller stomachs in relation to
their larger bodies, and the smaller breeds have larger stomachs in
proportion their bodies mass. The giant breeds benefit from having an evening
snack. It doesn’t have to be as large as the morning meal, but needs to
be substantial enough to prevent him from getting a grumbly tummy in the
middle of the night, or you might notice them throwing up yellow bile in the
middle of the night. Try feeding a light evening meal and see if this helps.
Dogs with
deep chests (sight hounds, Great Danes, German Shepherds…), or who
gorge their food, have a tendency towards bloat and need to be monitored in
their eating habits. Do not feed them and then vigorously exercise them, or
visa versa, this causes the food to expand more quickly in their heated bodies
and can lead to bloat, or cause the full stomach to flip and cause torsion.
Deep-chested dogs could benefit from their largest meal being feed at night,
so they can digest their food during quieter hours of the evening.
Diet
Kibble: Kibble is the hard cereal-like substance you buy in a bag that makes
life a little easier for us all at mealtime. Kibble has only existed for a
very short time in the history of dogs, as it was created from the surplus in
the processed foods industry. Some one thought that the ideal use for these
by-products would be to convince the public that it was good to feed to their
pets.
The problem
is that this product is typically manufactured with very poor quality
ingredients (wings, beaks, feathers, feet, noses, diseased tissue, corn, corn
husks, even newspaper, etc.) and processed at extremely high temperatures,
then extruded into the kibble that you scoop into your pet’s bowl. The
extrusion process is similar to dehydration – the moisture is removed
and the product is reduced in volume. When the animal drinks water (which it
always does right after it eats kibble) the kibble begins to expand in the
animal’s stomach – this is not natural or healthy for your pet.
Even if the kibble were made from the best ingredients possible, the processing
removes and destroys most of what was ever good in it in the first place.
There are some kibble products that are baked and those are at least better
than the extruded.
Kibble is
touted to be the miracle tooth cleaner for dogs, yet we are now being asked
by our vets to brush our dog’s teeth and have them cleaned
professionally every year to the tune of hundreds of dollars. If
wolves’ teeth were at risk to the degree that our canine companions are
today, then wolves would have died out a long time ago. They would not be
able to take down an animal, tear at the meat and crush the bones because
their teeth would be weak and infected – too painful to function
properly. Instead wolves have thrived for thousands of years, because they
clean their own teeth on the bones they are eating. They work on a large
marrowbone for hours scraping away the marrow along with bits of calcium.
They work all of their teeth as they shave pieces from the bone. Their gums
are exercised beautifully and any tartar that might be there is cleaned off.
The pH of a naturally fed animal also creates less tartar in the first place
– so there is less to be concerned about. Heck, if we ate more
naturally our teeth would be better off as well.
A
Natural Diet:
If you know that dogs are wolves inside, then let’s look at what a wolf
might eat in the course of a week. He might consume: a rabbit, some mice,
some apples that have fallen from a tree, a nest of eggs, a little grass, a
bird, the bones of a dead deer left in the woods. You get the picture. Wolves
and dogs are hunters and scavengers - they are built to be hungry 24 hours a
day. Today might be a feast, but tomorrow might be famine, so eat all you can
today.
Think about
this wild diet – did he peel the meat off of the rabbit and sauté it
over a nice fire? Were the mice filleted? Were the apples the best he could
pick from the tree? Did he crack the eggs over a hot rock and serve them
sunny side up? The old dead deer – yuck, way too much contamination–
what was he thinking?
Do you get
the point? Dogs can eat it all and do just fine. It is important to remember
that the raw state of most foods is what is natural and best. To imitate the
wolf diet you need to think raw most of the time.
Grains
and Vegetables: The only foods that must be cooked are the grains and
vegetables. The wolf would get these from the stomach of the animal he is
eating and therefore are already predigested and help him break it down more
easily. Grains expand when heated with water, so you need to cook them in
advance to prevent expansion in the stomach. Some dogs will eat grass
(especially in the spring), usually as a cleanser and it will make them vomit
– don’t panic, they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t
know they needed to.
Dairy: Dairy doesn’t
exist naturally in the adult dog’s life, they do not have the enzymes
to digest it and they will get diarrhea. The counterpart to that theory is
that yogurt and cheese are great for your dog – full of good protein,
bacteria and enzymes. Your dog would love a tablespoon of yogurt (plain or
vanilla) in every meal or cheese for treats.
Eggs: The eggs are raw
and should be fed on a minimal basis – the wolf would only find a nest
full of eggs on a rare occasion, but one egg two times a week is good for
your dog.
Fruit: The fruit is not
picked from the tree, but scavenged after it has fallen to the ground and is
slightly over ripened and digesting in its own enzymes. Your dog can have all
kinds of fruit – when it is a little too soft for you it is perfect for
him. He will have his own tastes and love some fruit and not others. Be
patient, some fruits are an acquired taste. Do not feed raisins or grapes:
they have been related to renal (kidney) failure.
Bones: Your hackles are
probably raising at the thought of your dog eating chicken bones. We have
been told to never feed our dog a chicken bone – it will splinter and
tear him up inside. Well, a cooked bone just might do that. It becomes more
brittle and far less nutritious when you cook it. A raw bone is easily
crushed and digested and full of good nutrition. Our dogs have been eating
raw chicken bones for years now and we have yet to see a problem. They are
loving the food, digesting it well, and pooping out glorious poops that are
so full of leftover calcium that they just crumble into the ground (and they
don’t stink!). Our clients who have taken the step towards a natural
diet see all kinds of changes in their animals. They experience digestive
improvements, energy shifts, allergy corrections, coats that glisten, over
all health improvements, some even swear to a change in their relationship
with their dog.
*This is
not to say that a dog has never had an ill effect from eating raw bones. If
you are at all uncomfortable with allowing your dog to chew up bones, then
consider putting some chicken wings in the blender and break them up into
small bits in advance. Feeding chicken necks is great because they are just
cartilage and there are no bones to worry about.
Yes, we do
feed a high quality kibble to our dogs, heck, our family eats breakfast
cereal too, but all things in balance ~ make sure you supplement with fresh
foods as well.
Please
educate yourself before you begin making these changes. There are many great
books out on the subject and great raw-meat products you can get from you
local specialty dog store. Check out our book list for more information.
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