What to Feed Your Dog

Feeding begins with offering the best of food. It is important to know that the main element that separates a high quality or poor quality dog food is the amount of fillers. A dog's digestive tract is designed to mainly process proteins and fats, not carbohydrates...and certainly not fillers.

Even the best high quality dog food has fillers. They are ingredients which have zero nutritional value and simply "bulk up" the dog food to make it appear as if there is more. For example, if you are looking at a cup of dog food, what you are really seeing is about 3/4 to 4/5 of actual food (depending on the brand) and the rest is not food. It is very cheap ingredients, thrown in to not only fill up your dogs bowl but also to fill their stomach.

These fillers quickly pass right through the body (since they have no nutritional value and the body does not absorb them). This can potentially lead to nutritional deficiency.

Another way to feed your dog, and one I highly suggest home cooking food. By doing so, you are in charge of the ingredients, you know that you are not giving your dog any fillers and you can offer your dog the best of nutrition.

Home cooking can also save you money. Many of the ingredients are those which you would normally purchase. For example, if you will be getting hamburger to make a meal for your family, you can set aside a certain amount for your dogs dinner. You can make a large amount and then refrigerate or freeze servings. In this way, you can prepare your dog's dinners once per week and not need to be cooking every day (unless you love the kitchen!).

Feeding your dog in this way is not the same as allowing your dog to eat table scraps! It is important that each meal be prepared correctly and with the proper ingredients.

Some of the best ingredients that you will want to use are:

Organs - such as liver, kidney and brain
Lean meats - such as lean hamburger, white breast chicken meat and fish
Vegetables - Dogs usually love potatoes (either regular potatoes or sweet potatoes), baby carrots, spinach, and zucchini. Corn is not recommended.
Starch is very important. This does not need to only rice (white or brown). Dogs usually love pasta and there are many ways that you can incorporate this into meals.
Meat should be the # 1 ingredient. Dogs must have this protein as their main food source. Vegetables and then starch will round out the meals.

Rations will change slightly depending on which recipes you use, however you will want to keep it roughly: 40% meat, 30% veggies, 30% starch. 

If you choose to not home cook for your dog, we would then recommend: Eukanuba, Royal Canin or Hills Science Plan.

For any dog owner who chooses to serve manufactured dog food, I will give you some good general advice.