Food
Feeding your dog REAL food.
Your dog relies on you to provide him a healthy nutritional diet. He can't make the decision himself and your responsible for doing what is best. There is only one choice when it comes to food, and that is to feed him real, human grade food.
Providing a healthy balanced diet is easy and straightforward. Below is a dog food recipe that was carefully researched and has been fed to our dogs every day for years.
Advantages to feeding your dog real food
- All ingredients are 100% human grade and fresh
- There are no preservatives, additives, or food colors
- Your dog will be healthier
- Many dogs experience a much higher energy level on a real food diet
- Many dogs that suffer from alergies, rashes, and sicknesses are cured after switching to real food
- You can feel safe knowing exactly what is going into your dog
Dog Recipe for an adult Retriever
- 500 grams of uncooked chicken quarters
- 2 tablespoons of finely grated broccoli
- 1 large grated carrot
- 2 dried crushed brown egg shells
- 2 tablespoons of flaxseed oil
- 1 tablespoon of dried kelp/seaweed
- 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar
- Vitamin E tablet
There are numerous excuses given by people for not feeding thier dog real food, some are legitimate concerns such cost and the dangers of raw meat and bones, but most are based on lazieness and ignorance.
- Time: It will take about 5 minutes to prepare a real food diet for your dog each day
- Cost: It will cost about $6 per meal for an adult retriever
- Nutrition: A real food meal that isn't perfectly balanced is better than a manufactured processed dog food from a bag
Excuses given for not feeding your dog real food
- I don't have time to prepare my dogs food with real ingredients
- I am afraid my dog will get sick from eating raw meat
- I can't afford to purchase real ingredients for my dog
- Pet food manufactures spend millions of dollars making sure that each meal is balance, it must be good form my dog
- My breeder veterinarian, breeder, friend doesn't recommend feeding real food
- I'm not an animal nutritionalist, so how could I expect to provide a better diet than commercial dog food?
- My dog food uses human grade ingredients and is expensive, it must be good for my dog
Ask yourself the simple question "What human food exists that contains protien, fat, fruits, vegetables, grains and can remain edible for months without refrigeration, will give you all the nutritional elements needed for a complete balanced diet and is recommended by doctors to eat as your primary meal every day, year after year." It doesn't exist for a reason. Dog food manufactures spend millions of dollars on research, but that research is not to determine the perfect food for your dog, it is research on how take cheap ingredients, cook and process it, give it a shelf life of months and meet any government minimum nutritional standards.
It is economically impossible to create a 100% natural food diet for $2 per serving, if it were possible it would be available for humans as well. In order to keep the food inexpensive, dog food manufacturers include a large percentage of low quality processed grains, corn, and rice of which are all just fillers that are not easily digested by dogs and are a substantial cause of allergies and sicknesses. The resulting concoction found in what we call dog food is nothing more than a McDonalds Big Mac full of additives, preservatives, food coloring with a vitamin added for good measure. Even dog food manufactures with the best intentions can not deliver a diet better than a well balanced fresh food diet. Once you cook, dry, freeze or can food, it looses a large percentage of its nutritional value.
Commercial dog food has only been on the market for the past 50 years and for thousands of years prior to that dogs only ate real uncooked food. Don't let the food manufactures, your vet, breeder or anyone else convince you that processed food is better for your dog. There is nothing better than real food. Don't listen to anyone that tells you differently, use your common sense.
The danger of E. coli and salmonella poisoning in dogs
Many people are concerned with the dangers of E. coli and salmonella when feeding raw meat. A dogs digestive tract is highly tolerant to bacteria and samonella and this should not be a concern. Remember, dogs drink puddle water and bury bones in the ground only to dig the up months later to eat them all without ever getting sick. If you can't get past this concern you can wash the meat in grapefruit extract to help kill any surface bacteria on the meat.
The dangers of your dog eating bones
Of all the concerns of a real food diet, bones are and should be your biggest concern. Cooked bones must NEVER be fed to a dog, NEVER. When you feed your dog meat that includes bones, the meat/bones must be completely raw. Dogs can easily digest small bones. The legitimate concerns are that the dog will not properly chew the bones before swallowing, lodge in their throat and choke to death. The other concern is that the bones, even if broken when chewed still will have sharp points and will puncture the intestinal walls during digestion. Dogs do not grind food to small pieces before swallowing. They will take a chicken wing or neck and crunch it a few times to break the bones and swallow the wing or neck whole. I do not personally know of any dog owners that have had a problem with raw bones, but it is a legitimate concern. We do feed our dogs chicken wings with bones, and have done so for years without incident, but the concern is one that could be fatal. The safest thing to do is debone the meat, and take the bones and run them through a meat grinder. The reason we don't do this is for two reasons, we want the dog to chew on something solid to help clean his teath and the other is that we are guilty of not finding the time debone the meat.
The safest solution regarding bones for dogs
Whether you choose to give your dog bones or deboned meat is a personal decision you must decide. In a perfect situation serve deboned chicken wings or legs and run the bones through a meat grinder. Brush your dogs teeth twice a week and scrape the teeth for tartar twice a month.