Food

Antioxidants are all the rage nowadays, seemingly good for anything that ails you or your dog. Antioxidants, natural and otherwise, are also widely used as preservatives in processed foods for pets and their people. Antioxidants are, however, another of those things that the more the scientists learn about them, the more they learn they don't know. This paradigm seems to repeat itself in the realm of holistic health!

Many of us would like to feed our dogs a biologically appropriate raw diet, but lack the time and experience to ensure that the menu is complete and balanced. Frozen commercial diets are the answer. Despite what many makers of conventional canned or dry pet foods would have you believe, raw diets for dogs are not a modern fad, but a return to the dog’s not-so-distant past.

As we have described in our annual food reviews since 1998, this task starts with top-quality ingredients. To mix a metaphor, you really can’t make a silk purse out of sows’ ears, chicken heads, bovine tumors, restaurant grease, rendered fat from animals that died on farms, and cheap grain by-products left over from the human food manufacturing industry.

The making of laws and sausage, goes the old saying, is better unseen. Apparently, the pet food industry feels the same way about “wet” food for dogs and cats. We haven’t yet managed to get into a cannery to see how the product is made (but we’re not giving up!). There are a few reasons for this. The first has to do with the fact that there are very few wet food canneries in the U.S., relative to facilities that manufacture dry food. (As a matter of fact, the entire canning industry – of pet food and human food – has seen enormous consolidation in the last decade.

Every two weeks I faithfully fill the pill organizers for my Boxer, Tyler. He receives a number of supplements, some for general nutrition and well-being, and some specific to his particular health challenges, including Addison’s disease. I’m not the only one performing this ritual. According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, about nine percent of all dogs receive vitamins regularly; perhaps an even greater percentage of WDJ readers give supplements to their canine companions.

No one is in a better position than you are to decide which food you should feed your dog. That may not be what you wanted to hear. You may have been hoping that someone would reveal to you the name of the world's healthiest food, so you could just buy that and have it done with.

You may think of it simply as a convenient vessel, useful for keeping your dog's food gathered in one place, off the floor. Your dog probably has a very different perspective. For him, the bowl is likely to be a high value object of great import, especially if he's a hearty eater. In this magical dish, one or more times a day FOOD appears.

Thank you for alerting owners to facts regarding veterinary drug safety in “The FDA, Drugs, and Your Dog,” (WDJ February 2005). Because of numerous documented canine deaths and serious illnesses secondary to administration of certain drugs, efforts are under way to promote stronger regulatory programs for veterinary drug evaluation, approval, and monitoring. For these reasons, it is vital that any and all suspected adverse reactions to veterinary drugs be reported to the FDA. Cumulative data over many months may substantiate earlier reports and may also identify formerly undetected problems such as the recently identified link between NSAIDs and heart problems in humans. Reports should be made to FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine at (888) FDA-VETS, and can be filed by owners as well as veterinarians.

There are all sorts of other laboratory research studies conducted by the larger pet food manufacturers that push the envelope of humaneness." Some companies perform (or order a "contract lab" to perform) studies that call for a disease or health problem to be induced in a population of test dogs

Good Timing This is just a heartfelt, appreciative, giant, THANK YOU for an article in the January 2005 issue, "What Promotes Bloat?" We have lived with...

Few topics excite the passions of dog lovers as much as food. Should dogs eat meat? Bones? Fruits? Vegetables? Grains? Dairy? Should their food be commercially prepared? Home-prepared? Raw? Cooked? Fresh? Frozen? Should dogs eat what people eat? What dogs in the wild eat? Whatever the choice, is it safe? Is it dangerous? For thousands of years, domesticated dogs ate whatever their humans fed them plus whatever they could find on their own. No one worried about fat/protein ratios, the role of carbohydrates, or how much calcium is too much.

Some dog food manufacturers treat nutrition like a technicality. Others make the extra effort to ensure they provide good nutrition.