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Dog and cat owners today have many options of food that they can give to their pets. From standard commercial dry food (kibble), canned (wet) food, dehydrated food, freeze-dried raw food, and raw pet food there is plenty to choose from. The trick, is knowing what food is best for your pet. I am a strong advocate for a raw food diet for pets. I have seen the results with my own animals and can tell you that raw food does make a difference. Why is it so important to feed dogs and cats raw food? In a series of blogs over the next couple of months, I will try to explain why I feel so strongly about feeding dogs and cats a raw food diet (plus….this is going to be a great start on my research paper for college due at the end of September )

For the first part of this series, I want to look into commercial dry pet food. The commercial pet food industry has only been around for 80 years or so. The reason dry pet food was invented was to create a cheap and hassle free way for us to feed our pets. The food was filled with by-products of the meat industries, cheap grain sources, and other leftover ingredients unfit for human consumption. Before dry food was invented, dogs ate scraps and leftovers from the table. They were given cooked and raw meat to complete their diets. Cats were treated as mousers. They hunted rodents and ate them raw (I can just see those kitties starting a fire and roasting their fresh kill). The problem with dry food is two fold, many brands are full of cheap ingredients that our pets cannot digest, and all dry food is extremely processed. I will explain the processed problem first.

Today, many of you have probably heard of the dangers of processed foods in our own diets. Our personal doctors are telling us to eat more natural; yet, many people (veterinarians included) still are under the impression that processed food is the only safe way to feed our pets (we can blame the pet food industry for that one). I ask, where is the logic? How can it possibly be healthy to subject our animals to the exact same food over and over again. Answer….it’s not. Dogs and cats need a variety of food in their diet. If we ate chicken every single day for a year, not only would we be tired of the food, but we would probably not be very healthy either. There are different nutrients in different protein sources. Some have more omega 3’s while other have more digestive enzymes. No one meat is perfect for every animal. Furthermore, because the food is so processed, many of the nutrients in the meats are cooked out! That is why many of these nutrients have to be synthetically added to the foods.

Next, let’s look over the actual ingredients in dry pet food. Many cheaper (yet usually better known brands…as seen on TV) are full of by-products (the leftover parts of an animal) and grains. By-products may not necessarily be a bad thing, as many animals in the wild will eat the entire carcass of an animal (and don’t throw away the meat). The problem with the ingredient in pet food is that you are looking at your pet eating multiple by-products (from more than one animal) without the muscle meat to support the ingredient. Animals in the wild do not only eat the by-products of the animals that they kill….they eat everything, so the by-products are a small portion of their diet. Grains have absolutely no place in our carnivores’ diets. Cats are obligate carnivores (meaning that have to have meat to survive) and dogs are opportunistic carnivores (meaning they can eat vegetation, but need a diet of primarily meat) they cannot process grains very well (cat’s can’t at all!). There intestines are simply too short to break down the complex carbohydrates in grains. They cannot move their jaws back and forth to chew grains and they are lacking grinding molars as well. Their “molars” are designed to cut…not grind. Have you ever looked inside your pet’s mouth? It definitely does not look like ours…it is full of sharp teeth that are designed to shred meat….not chew.

These grains end up overworking your pets system. That is why many dogs and cats develop different internal and external problems. Dogs are usually more apparent in their early allergy symptoms by scratching, having tear stains, licking or chewing their paws (this is usually not a grass allergy), and having that brown gunk (yes, I know that word isn’t very scientific…but I bet a lot of you knew exactly what I was talking about) in their ears. Cats usually start out with not as recognizable symptoms, usually they will be going to the litter box more (excess waste…your dog would be doing the same thing), getting hairballs, throwing up occasionally (this is NOT normal…if you threw up a couple times a month I guarantee you would be talking to your doctor), and excess shedding. See my first blog to get a more detailed explanation to why cats should never be on dry food. These symptoms can all foreshadow even more serious conditions that could be going on internally with your pets.

Now, I would like to conclude this post by stating that not all dry pet food is horrible. There are some brands that are fairly decent and can keep your dog (cats should never be on dry food) healthy. Foods like Orijen, Great Life, Acana, and Evo are all grain free, high protein foods that are designed to mimic what your pet would eat in the wild. The problem still comes from the fact that they are processed and have many of the key nutrients cooked out. If you want to feed one of the high quality dry foods, I would definitely recommend supplementing with a high quality supplement and/or supplementing the food two to three times a week with raw food. This will give your dog the added nutrients he or she needs, but will not break the pocket book (which is sometimes the case with larger dogs).

In the next couple of weeks I will expand on the raw food topic by discussing canned/wet foods. If you have any questions, please visit my website at www.petcountryweb.com.