Dog Food Nutrition

For several years I fed my dogs what I thought was a good quality kibble without canned dog food. The snacks they got from me (that means who knows what my husband and kids were sneaking them) were leftover meat and fresh raw vegetables. In fact, they would choose a carrot over a dog biscuit every time. I thought they were pretty healthy. Fairly energetic and rarely needing to see a vet, life was good.

Then I was out of work and dog food nutrition went down the toilet. The dog food I’d bought for several years went from $32 a bag to $48 a bag. I couldn't afford $10. (Keep in mind my large dogs eat about 35 pounds each week – or one big bag.) I decided to feed them cheap dog kibble for awhile. I wasn’t happy about it but felt I had no choice. They’d be alright. Money got tighter. I applied for Food Stamps and my dogs ended up on the cheapest dry dog food I could find. I paid $17 for a 35 pound bag. A savings of $31 each week, and they ate it.

After a few months I noticed things. Runny eyes, smelly coat and bad breath. I started avoiding the back yard because it smelled nasty out there. I even noticed the fowl dog poop smell when I opened a window, but that was just the beginning. I knew this had something to do with dog food nutrition but I wasn't ready to admit it because I was broke.

My dog Helen would look so stiff when she got up I was sure she had arthritis, but what did that have to do with dog food nutrition when she was nearly 9 years old? She licked incessantly along with the others. And I swear they were suffering from depression.

Then flea season hit. I knew that parasites attack unhealthy animals worse than healthy ones and three out of five of our dogs each had roughly a hundred fleas a day rinsed off their bodies. The other two averaged 40 to 50 fleas per day. At this point I had to admit to myself this had a lot to do with dog food nutrition.

The fleas created a lot of licking, scratching, biting, whining, furniture moving and wall banging as the dogs tried to find some relief. They danced across the living room on their backs. They left blood on the walls while their fur fell out. Not wanting to compromise their health any more than I had already, I tried home made natural flea killers, flea repellents and skin soothers.

Nothing was working well enough for this kind of infestation. I gave up my natural ways when my husband came home with pesticides. I sprayed the house and the yard. We gave the dogs systemic flea killer (the one you put on their back and it soaks in). The fleas didn’t die but I thought my dog Helen might.

I read the ingredient labels on all the kibble dog food packages at Wal-Mart and Pets Mart and came to the conclusion neither of them carry a healthy kibble. I got on the internet and found dogfoodproject.com which explains more than my brain could soak up in one sitting (okay, maybe three). After a week, I settled on a dog kibble that I felt would not hurt them. It was better than my original dog kibble, and less expensive but the closest place that carried it was a 45 minute drive away. I would have to drive there once a month to save on gas. Read my article on Dog Kibble. My goal at the time was to feed them half commercial dog food and half people food. That way I was spending the same amount of money on kibble per month and adding good things to their dog diet.

I shared our food stamp allotment with the dogs. I've never had food stamps before and you can't buy dog food with it, but that turned out to be a blessing. It forced me to think more. I looked for dog food recipes but most were cooked and while that’s better than commercial dog food, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go that way long term and I didn't think some of the ingredients were actually good for dogs.

Then I researched raw dog food nutrition. That sounded more natural for a dog but food stamps don't grow on trees. There wasn’t enough money in food stamps for the family humans to eat meat every day, let alone the 15 pounds of raw meat a day required for five large dogs. Some how, some way, I had to figure out this dog food nutrition thing.

With all this information swimming around in my head and the budget of Cesar Milan after sneaking across the border and getting his first job in America, I came up with my own dog food menu. (By the way, I love and admire Cesar. He is amazing.)

I started with 1-1/2 cups kibble and added cooked brown rice along with fresh garlic and parsley. (Each dog gets one large clove of fresh garlic every single day since it’s a natural antibiotic and its great for the immune system.) The other ingredients varied. Cooked chicken livers or ground beef and an assortment of fresh raw pulverized veggies including, carrots, cabbage, kale, beets, broccoli, green beans, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, celery, spinach, bell peppers, apples, bananas, and blueberries depending on what I have and can get on sale. I topped it off with flax oil or olive oil and my dogs loved it! For more details, see Dog Food Recipes.

After a few months of this, I got brave and added Raw Dog Food. to their diet. Usually chicken, because of my price constraints. Each dog got a one pound chicken leg quarter a few times a week. It was a little scary for me, but they loved the food. I remember Lulu just looked at me like I was crazy the first time I handed her raw chicken. She wouldn't touch it so I set it down and and she smelled it. This was followed by licking and settling down on the rubber mat outside where she gingerly ate the meat off the bone. Halfway done she decided the whole thing was edible and chewed up bones and all.

Has this been a lot or work? Sometimes it feels like it and there are days I dread dinner time. Probably because I still over think it. I worry if I’m giving them to much of one thing and not enough of another, but you know what? Even if my amounts aren’t quite right, it’s so much better than cheap commercial dog food. How do I know even though I'm not a dog food nutritionist?

At this writing (November 2009), it has been roughly four months since the food change. My dogs still have some fleas, BUT they scratch very little. Their fur has grown back and most of the lumps and bumps are gone. Their energy is puppy-like. They want to run and play and fetch. Two pudgy dogs got thinner and one too slender put on a few pounds. Every time the veggies go in the food processor, all my dogs get excited. There’s whining, barking and begging going on. And Helen, who wouldn’t leave my closet for two weeks after I put the Biospot on her, runs full tilt from the living room to the kitchen over and over until I want to strangle her (just an expression).

And now while my 9-year-old Helen lays at my feet as I type this, I'm smiling. She's finally settled down after playing with a toy, running outside and barking at a passerby.

2011 Added Note:

I found a very interesting eBook about fleas. Kind of an everything you ever wanted to know book. It’s called Flea Secrets. It rates toxicity of products; follows the EPA flea control product safety investigation beginning in 2009 when complaints of bad reactions and deaths from flea medications DOUBLED to 14,000. It also covers the following categories: behavioral, sanitation, mechanical, biological, botanical, alternative and chemical while rating them for safety and effectiveness. I rate this a ‘must have’ for all pet owners or any household experiencing flea infestations due, in part, to a lack of dog food nutrition.



*Being a novice at this I went by gut instinct, using a few homeopathic remedies I had left over from my own Naturopathic physician to get the healing process started.

Here are other pages on this site that may interest you:

Dog Nutrition Explained

Read about Dog Kibble

Read About Dog Supplements

The Scoop is in the Poop

Back to Dog Nutrition

Back from Dog Food Nutrition to Home Page of
Three-Little-Pitties Dog Health

New! Comments