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PET FOOD & PET NUTRITIONAL NEEDS |
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FOOD- WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?
Dogs, just like everyone else, have specific nutritional needs. And, to complicate matters, the needs of individual dogs vary. Your dog’s behavior, happiness, health, longevity and overall well-being are inextricably intertwined with what you feed him. For example, even though your first dog may have done wonderfully well on Barfo Special Blend, it may be completely wrong for the dog you have now. You do need to know some basic concepts but we are not trying to turn into an expert on canine nutrition.
In his best-selling book, Pet Allergies: Remedies for an Epidemic, Alfred Plechner, D.V.M., paints a dismal picture for the future of our pets. The most common and most visible symptoms of nutritionally caused deficiencies are allergies of one kind another.
Animals are being programmed for disaster, for extinction. Because many commercial foods are woefully deficient in key nutrients, the-term effects of feeding such foods makes the dog hypersensitive to its environment….[I]t’s a dinosaur effect. Many of them are biochemical cripples with defective adrenal glands unable to manufacture adequate cortisol, a hormone vital for heath and resistance to disease.
Recognizing nutritional deficiencies will save you a great deal of frustration and allow you to make the necessary adjustments in your dog’s diet. Allergies can be, and often are, unrecognized deficiency diseases.
If cells are going to continue to live, the exact composition of the body fluids that bathe the outside of the cells needs to be controlled from moment to moment, day to day, with no more than a few percentage points of variation. All of these nutrients need to be in the correct proportion for the necessary chemical reactions of digestion, absorption, transportation and elimination to occur. When these nutrients are not provided, cells die, and this contributes to premature aging.
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Is Your Dog Getting the Right Food?
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CHOOSING THE RIGHT FOOD
There are so many choices available today that trying to make an informed decision can become an overwhelming task. We are going to tackle the job by the process of elimination. The cliché “garbage in garbage out” applies with terrifying garbage validity. Three commonly used criteria immediately come to mind: advertising, ingredients and price. Not all dog foods are alike and there are enormous quality differences.
- Forget about price. This works both ways. Just because it costs more doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better than a less expensive variety.
- Forget about what the ad says about how their brand of food is. You have to look at what’s in it.
A quick checklist to determine if your dog is getting what he needs:
- His breath smells.
- He burps a lot.
- He constantly sheds.
- He has a dull coat.
- He doesn’t want to eat the food.
- He has large, voluminous stools that are awful.
- He has gas.
- His teeth get dirty and brown.
MAKING YOUR OWN DOG FOOD
You can make your own dog food instead of leaving it to someone else. Many people, ourselves included, do it, and there are many recipes available. Whatever recipe you are going to use, you absolutely must follow two rules:
The diets discussed in Chapter 2, “The Natural Diet,” and the dehydrated version of the same diet meet those requirements. The diet must contain all known required nutrients in the right proportions, that is, it must be complete and balanced. If it is not, you can cause your dog all sorts of problems, and he’d better off with a good commercial food and some supplements.
Your veterinarian can do these tests. After our dog has been on diet for two months, he’ll need to get another blood test to compare to the first one. Comparing the results will immediately tell you whether you are on the right track. For a benchmark, your dog must have a blood test done which includes a complete blood count (CBC) and a chemistry screen.
This is a cardinal rule, and if you are not prepare to do the testing, you should not even think about a homemade diet. Nothing having the blood test done is like driving a car with a blindfold- you are bound to run off the road. We have annual blood test done on all our dogs, so that we can make dietary adjustments, if necessary. |
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Recommended Products - Dog Allergy Solutions |
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