The most important choice you make about your dog’s health is their food. Dogs can and will eat pretty much anything … table scraps, birds and bunnies they catch in the back yard, the newspaper, your sneakers… but SHOULD they?
I never ever feed my dogs table scraps. On the other hand, I will trim meat before cooking it, cook the trimmings separately for them, and supplement their kibble meals with it. Most of the spices I like are things dogs shouldn’t have — garlic, pepper, etc.
Innova entered Eowyn’s diet two weeks before her surgery. I bought a small bag of it as a ‘treat’ at the feed store when I was picking up some other supplies. Her body’s reaction to it was so favorable that I haven’t stopped feeding it since. She gets large breed, Henry gets your normal adult food since his hardy body doesn’t seem to need the same supplements that her joints do. He’s put on fifteen pounds. He has hair growing on his belly and other male parts for the first time in his life. He no longer suffers from mites and other infections. I’m only half kidding when I say that Innova could probably cure cancer. A friend of mine who feeds her dogs raw says that she feels the same way about kibble vs. raw… she doesn’t like processed food at all.
The benefits of feeding a quality food, no matter what you choose, is huge. The dogs poop less. They fart less. They need to eat less food (by volume) to maintain the same level of health. They have healthy coats that don’t shed as constantly. (I went from sweeping every other day to sweeping once a week.) They have more energy and rest better. I think the only side effect I don’t like is that they don’t think the treats I have for them are as good anymore. Time to start buying dried liver slices again, I guess…
When we went in for Eowyn’s hip evaluation, and I asked why her hips in particular were so bad, one of the reasons was malnutrition during youth and adolescence. That fits — my ex-girlfriend, now a veterinarian in a city near you, was feeding them Beneful … which is just one step better than Ol’ Roy. I think sawdust has more nutritional value than Beneful does.
One other things that my dogs don’t eat is Science Diet. Science Diet is crap. I think it used to be good, but these days it’s mostly filler and it fails just about every measurement of it’s ingredients. Hills does spend a lot of money selling it to veterinarians, who then sell it to you. Don’t buy Science Diet!
I’m working on a database to track ingredients and to develop a quantitative method of rating foods based on their ingredients and processing, but I’m buried under another project right now so it’ll have to wait a few weeks. I’m starting to collect evidence. If you want to help me with that and have a digital camera, please leave a comment with your email address and I’ll get in touch with you.