What are you feeding your dog?

I'm not going to preach about what you should or shouldn't feed your dog. 

At one point, I was feeding my dogs commercial dog food, rotating between Science Diet and Eukanuba.  While living at Fort Benning, I came across this wonderful boutique, for dogs!  Dramatic Paws was a dealer for Natura dogs foods.  Natura makes brands like Innova, Evo, and California Naturals.  I learned that these foods are grain free and truly a premium dog food compared to what I was feeding our dogs currently.  Check out your local pet store, they usually give free samples.  We chose Evo to feed our pups.  While it is a little more expensive, it was worth it.  We fed Evo for a year before switching again.

Currently, we are feeding our dogs home cooked meals.  Basically, I take human-grade meats, cook it, and chop it into ultra fine pieces.  I also add Sojos to replace some of the minerals lost during the cooking process. Along with it, I will give the girls a boiled egg, some cottage cheese, or plain yogurt (it helps with Ellie being on antibiotics for so long).  I don't give them all of those additions at the same time, I mix it up a little, who doesn't love variety.  I also add some bone meal once a day.  This helps replace the calcium lost through the cooking process and the absence of bones.

Some people feed raw, which is a fabulous way to feed if it fits your lifestyle.  Raw bones are not harmful to dogs as raw bones do not splinter like cooked bones do.   

Commercial dog food has become my most recent soap box.  Brands like Eukanuba and Science Diet feed dogs a lot of corn and corn syrup.  Dogs don't need this, but that is not the worst part. The quality of meat used in commercial dog food is not meant for human consumption.  This basically means parts of animals that we would never consider eating.  Commercial dog foods also use rendered animals.  The rendering plants take any animal they can to sell as "meat" for dog food.  So, think about cows that died from diseases, roadkill, and even euthanized pets.  In the book, The Nature of Animal Healing, Dr. Goldstein talks about a circus elephant that died from tuberculous and cancer that was rendered, for dog food.  There is another book, Food Pets Die For, also refers to vets in California unknowingly sending euthanized pets to rendering plants.  All of them changed their service to a reputable company that cremated the pets instead of rendering them.  This is absolutely terrible! Another thing I learned, the process of heating commercial dog food ends up burning any vitamins and minerals that were present in the food.  So, the added vitamins are lost in the high heating process.  That goes for multivitamins as well, unless the vitamin specifically states heated at low temperatures. 

Take time to look at your dog food and consider the products used as the ingredients.  Home cooked is best for Ellie and I have the time to fit the requirements into my lifestyle.