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A Balanced Bowl | from The New York Dog Magazine | Sept/Oct 2006
| | Raw for Randy |
| Q: |
If I feed raw meats to my dog Randy, will he get food poisoning? My vet does not recommend raw diets, but my friend’s dog used to get huge “hot spots” and now that he feeds a
raw diet the dog has had a complete turnaround. I’m confused. —Allen |
| A: |
Maybe your vet was schooled in crisis management and not preventative health. In the wild, the only diet for carnivores is raw meat. They also eat scavenged and decaying food that is
teeming with bacteria and live healthy lives. Processed pet foods are not a natural diet, which is why
pets today may not have healthy populations of protective intestinal flora and enzymes (because
enzymes don’t live in cooked foods). A dog may have a bout of digestive upset when they first switch
to a raw diet but according to R.L. Wysong, DVM: “The alternative of getting serious degenerative
disease later in life from sterile processed foods is a far greater risk [than food poisoning]. Raw foods
should be a part of the daily diet of pets to help insure optimal nutrition.” Just think, breastfeeding
was considered radical 35 years ago because people thought they could get formula that was more complete and
balanced than breast milk. |
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| | Bad Brew |
| Q: |
I was wondering if you could tell me what Brewer’s
Rice is? I noticed it is listed as an ingredient in my dog’s food. —Regina |
| A: |
This is the AAFCO definition: Brewer’s rice is the
small milled fragments of rice kernels that have been separated from the larger kernels of milled rice.
What this means is it is a processed rice product that is missing many of the nutrients contained in whole ground rice
and brown rice. Contrary to what many pet food companies want to make you believe, this is not a high quality ingredient, just much cheaper than whole grain rice. |
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| | Got Meat? |
| Q: |
My neighbors are strict vegans, and are currently
fostering a dog on which they’ve imposed an equally rigid vegan diet. Since canines are inherently
carnivorous, as I understand it, I don’t see how this can be healthy or beneficial for the dog. Any thoughts on
this matter? —Vanessa |
| A: |
It is probably fair to say that most vegetarian dog
owners are real animal lovers and as such may have a serious problem with the idea of inflicting pain
on any animal be it a cow, a chicken or a Labradoodle
puppy. Not only do I understand that, I am one of them.
I do not eat meat because I don’t need to. But, I own
a pet food company and I feed meat not only to my
dogs, but to my customers’ dogs. While it may seem
morally reprehensible to the vegetarians out there, let
me say that it is unequivocally a form of cruelty to feed
a creature in our care food that is not based on physical
criteria. (A note to my husband: No, your physical
criteria are not that of a carnivore, so it is not cruel to
feed you Boca Burgers.) Dogs thrive on raw meat. The
fruit and veggies and grains that dogs are designed to
eat would be the partially-digested contents found in
the stomach of the prey a dog would kill in the wild.
In the evolutionary scheme of things, we domesticated
dogs very recently and their digestive systems have not
genetically adapted to mimic ours. Other obvious carnivorous
features such as teeth and the urge to hunt
remain intact. Is it ethically correct to feed animals a
diet they would never naturally eat in the wild? In fact,
as someone who really loves dogs, I think the kindest
thing you can do for your dog is to respect that he or
she is a dog and not a person. In other words, feed a
species-appropriate diet. |
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