FEEDING AND GENERAL NUTRITION.

We feed our dogs on a natural diet, although we do start our puppies on complete. This page may be helpful to anyone wanting to transfer to natural feeding or to understand more about what complete they are feeding to their dog.
These are not our recommendations to any individual dog and is a guide only, to what we feed and what works for our dogs.

There are two basic options for feeding a dog. Dried (kibble in a sack), or natural - bones and raw meat (BARF – or biologically appropriate raw feeding). There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Below is just a generalisation, as not all complete foods are created equal and there are some very good complete foods. The most common reason for owners not feeding naturally is a) convenience - although with one or two dogs, it's hardly difficult and the other is being worried about getting it wrong. With over a hundred manufacturers in the UK alone, all using different ingredients, what makes you think they've all got it right? Even vets don't agree which is right or wrong.

Advantages of
Complete
Convenient
Low hygiene risk (usually)
Clean
Easy storage

Disadvantages of
Complete
70-75% grain from 95% of brands
= large stools from so much grain.
Costly and wasteful
Preservatives, synthetics, colours (not all) 
Skin and coat problems
Subdued immune system/more allergies 
Often dull for the dog
Questionable ingredients
Extrusion kills enzymes, vitamins and minerals
Tartar and scale on teeth
Accumulated toxins (preservatives, colours etc)
Increased risk of bloat 

Disadvantages of Natural
Buying small new freezer (try ebay)
Learning different meats
Higher hygiene risk
Handling raw meat
Risk of infection/bones

Remember the way dogs used to be fed – scraps from the butchers, leftovers from our meals, the odd kill they found whilst out walking or hunting and the occasional tin of Chappie. Then came……….. the Men from Marketing! To have succeeded in converting virtually an entire generation of dog owners worldwide, to feeding dried kibble from of a sack is why they get paid so much!

REALLY RETURNING TO NATURE
Over the past few years there has been a big shift to return to a more natural feeding regime as owners and breeders wanted a more natural way of feeding their dogs. Many top breeders now feed their dogs naturally. Natural feeding does take more preparation time, but is not the terribly difficult/dangerous foods that the complete food industry, warn people of. Many vets are also totally guilty of following the marketing men trend, and warn owners away from natural feeding with terrible tales of infections. Funnily enough the recent case of campylobacter I heard about was on a bitch fed on complete food. 

Vets (who are sponsored by food manufacturers with free gifts, marketing budgets, practice equipment and overseas conventions), promote their favoured complete food to their clients. Some vets, including ours, are fortunately much in favour of natural feeding. It is interestingly often the younger generation of vets who scorn natural feeding. Not of course that I am at all cynical, but could it be due to the generous sponsorship of their classes through vet schools?!

A DOG IS A CARNIVORE
Dogs are primarily carnivores and occasional omnivores. They are not herbivores.  They don’t have grain grinding teeth, they have carnassial (meat tearing) teeth. They do use carbohydrate, but only around 15% primarily from the gut contents of their prey and that is not all grain. Dogs are designed to eat meat and bones. If you are considering converting to natural feeding and your vet scorns the idea, ask him to explain what the dog’s tearing teeth are for and why he recommends you feed grain to the dog?

WHITE DOG POOH!
Do you ever wonder – ‘where white dog pooh has gone?!’ (Then again maybe you didn’t! J)White pooh is the result of digested bones. Dogs today are generally fed on complete food with no bones and consequently have sloppy, wet paps of pooh. The stools are so large because the majority of complete food is cereal or filler based which dogs don’t digest. You’re paying for that to end up on the floor.

The labels on a sack of food show that it contains maybe between 20-30% meat meal or worse – meat from animal derivatives. What then is the remaining 70% -80%? They are grains and fillers which dogs can’t digest which is why dogs fed on kibble do such large poohs. It is also very wasteful financially as the dog can’t digest that filler.  Owners have been convinced to turn dogs into herbivores, omnivores at worst, but certainly not carnivores, by feeding a grain based dried food.

It can be difficult to understand why a £40 bag of food is better than a £10 bag of food of the same size, and indeed some of the £30 - £40 price range foods also contain a large amount of synthetic preservatives, but learning to read labels is fundamental to good dog health.

MARKETING MILLIONS       
22% of the UK population own at least one dog, so even with one dog per household, there is a minimum of 13.2 million dogs. There are over sixty different dog food manufacturers in the UK. Marketing budgets are enormous and company profits are vast.

The natural food market is tiny compared to that. There are no marketing budgets and it is very easy for dog food manufacturers to slam natural feeding as ‘unbalanced’, ‘too difficult for the average owner’, ‘dangerous’ etc.

A recent advertising campaign for Pedigree Better by Nature shows images of happy dogs next to lots of fresh vegetables. Take a look at this: " Pedigree Better By Nature is a range of tasty and nutritious recipes ... Tender braised meaty chunks with garden vegetables and pasta shells. ... "

Now I’m not anti complete foods, but this is marketing madness - Cooked meat – with all the goodness boiled out, vegetables – it’s a carnivore for heavens sake(!), pasta – wheat which dogs can’t digest! Natural? By no means! ….with EC permitted antioxidants BHA, BHT./ With preservatives (permitted EC additives): Potassium Sorbate........................mmm, lovely healthy fresh natural NOT!

COMBINING BOTH?
Can you combine complete and natural? Despite dire warnings from manufacturers not to ‘unbalance’ their so called ‘finely tuned’ complete food, in our experience many people do mix complete with meat or bones (as we did for many years before moving over wholly to natural), and suffered no adverse risk. Some owners feed a complete food in the morning and a chicken carcass at night or some meat with their complete. There will be different digestion times (don’t feed a complete food straight after a big bone), but halfway is better than nothing at all.

‘BALANCED?!’
Commercial foods promote the supposed ‘balanced’ diet, but dogs do not naturally have a balanced diet over a period as short as a day. Dogs don’t have our equivalent of meat and two veg each day. They balance their requirements over a longer period. A wild dog or wolf survives on a diet of grains, grasses, seeds, berries etc until making a kill. If it is a medium sized kill, he will first empty the stomach contents of it’s pre-digested carbohydrates, then the digestive tract. He then eats the organs – liver, kidney, heart etc. He will later eat the muscles and remaining soft tissue, then later, the skin and hair to wrap around the bones. If the wolf or dog’s local resources are rabbit for instance, then he would have a balanced/all in one meal. Ask yourself why you think it is that the largest ingredient in commercial dog food are grains and/or beet pulp or other fillers?

SCARED OF CHANGING?!
Some people wanting to make the change are scared by a) the thought of bones and b) the thought of not giving enough nutrients and ‘upsetting the balance’.

a) bones can get stuck but more likely in the mouth or back of the throat than internally. If the dog chews properly the risk is eliminated. Sharp bits getting stuck or piercing the bowel is another fear. We have never struggled with this and neither has our vet – who is very much in favour of natural feeding. One of Dianne's bitches did have a lamb rib bone caught at the back of the throat, and now feeds her bones crumbled. Allow your dog to eat grass, and if you can feed whole animals – rabbit for instance, you will find furry poohs wrapped around any sharp bits of bone. When visitors see our dogs eating a whole chicken carcass, they are astonished how well they are eaten. The dogs just think it's natural.

b) there is no ‘balance’ over the short period that dog food manufacturers suggest. Dogs do not balance their foods in a day. A balanced meal to them is a rabbit with jacket on one day, or seeds, berries, carbohydrate meal the next, a mouse if they're lucky the next day etc. If the owner feeds enough variety in the home prepared meal – see below for examples, they will adequately fulfil the natural requirements of the dog.
 
There are many articles and publications to help the owner interested in natural feeding. None seem to exist for which complete food to feed. Therefore how can those who do not wish to feed naturally, avoid falling into the multi million pound marketing trap, and what can they look out for?

There is no reason why owners can’t give bones even if feeding a complete food. I’m talking about real butchers bones, not the roast, sprayed with pesticide to stop it going rancid, bones from the pet shop – did you wonder why they smelt so strange? Now you know! DDT – always the healthy option!

If owners really can’t feed naturally which many people struggle with for different reasons, this information below explains how to read labels in order to make the right decision about which complete food to give your dog.

HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT COMPLETE FOOD
The most expensive is not necessarily the best. However, the cheapest is most certainly not the best. Cheap foods are packed with cereal ‘fillers’ which can’t be digested. They exist to make you think you’re giving your dog a nice big meal, whereas what you end up with is a nice big smelly pile. Dogs are not vegetarians. They are carnivores, but we are turning our dogs into vegetarians with a primary energy source of carbohydrate. That is a human energy source, whereas the primary energy source for dogs is fats.

If the food you choose does not have an animal protein in its’ first 3 ingredients, discard it. Choose a food listing a ‘meat meal’, rather than ‘meat’.

By law the largest ingredient must be listed first, so you see chicken as the first ingredient, however, water contributes up to 65% of the weight of fresh chicken or lamb. After water is removed during processing, the amount of actual chicken or lamb is far lower than the cereal.

This (Nutro complete food) graph shows why a ‘chicken meat meal’ (ie the dry weight) contains more than ‘chicken’ on a list of ingredients.

There should be no more than 2 grains in the first 5 ingredients and even then the grains should not be corn of any kind.

CHOICES OF COMPLETE FOOD TYPES?
Large Breed, Medium Breed, Puppy, Lamb, Chicken????

Know what meat your dog needs. If your dog is prone to being tubby (apart from checking his thyroid levels), feed him a chicken based meal not lamb or beef which is more fattening. The opposite is true.

Large Breed was formulated for – guess what, Large breed dogs like Great Danes, Wolfhounds, Mastiffs etc. (not Dobermanns). It is important to grow these fast maturing breeds slowly but with plenty of fats from which dogs derive their primary energy source. The below is from the Aritaur puppy pack.

Growing Pains From 5 months on, you may find your young dog becomes intermittently lame perhaps shifting lameness from one leg to another. This could be Panosteitis (growing pains) and is a temporary condition caused by inflammation in the fast growing ‘long bone’s’ (shin and thigh). You must reduce the protein intake immediately to slow growth down and use a low protein food. Cut any additional meat out and use something else tasty like yoghurt. There is no cure except rest and a low protein intake, but puppy will grow out of it. Rubbing their legs is often comforting for them and keep them warm and dry. In severe cases, your vet may prescribe Metacam - an anti inflammatory. This will alleviate the worst symptoms, but some vets will recommend cage rest – I can’t think of much worse than caging a youngster and Pano’ will pass when the growing is over. If you can slow growth and keep exercise to a minimum of short lead walks, it will help greatly. Be aware that if you consult your vet, they may tell you your puppy has a serious illness – OCD (Osteochondrosis), Hip Dysplasia or other disease which they believe is causing the problem. If a vet did not first suspect Pano’ in a Dobe of 5-10 months on a high protein diet and if he doesn’t ask you what pup is eating and about his exercise or enquire why he has not considered Pano’ rather than something more serious, don’t pay your bill, sack him and change vets. A healthy dog with growing pains is not commercially viable. Vets don’t make money from healthy dogs. To anaesthetise a youngster to examine causes of lameness without considering Pano, verges on malpractice for me. Since feeding naturally, we have had only very minor incidences of growing pains.

I have not investigated every one of the below companies ingredient list. The comments are from our own experience.  Please do as much of your own research as you can, as doing your own research is not as daunting as you may think.
This website has some very good links for information on food manufacturers.
http://www.dfordog.com/food_food.htm

Orijen – recently came across this, genuinely impressed – 70% protein, 30% carbs, 0% grain! Quality ingredients.
Fish4Dogs - Clean, good food with 55% protein – useful for overweight dogs whose owners don’t exercise them enough
Challenge Dog Food – good quality ingredients produced with care in the UK.
Royal Canin, Nutro, & James Wellbeloved are good mid-range food. Dogs do well on it.
Burns make a good ‘clean’ food free from synthetics.
Hills Science Plan - excellent but over priced.
Purina – incredible marketing budget!
Pedigree – wouldn't feed my dogs on it.
Arden Grange. Apparently quite good.
Joe and Jacks – the TV vet seems to have created a decent food. Can’t stand his arrogant, just out of vets school attitude, and opinionated ex wife’s views on dogs, but I digress!
Pascoe’s – cheap ingredients, mostly cereal but no additives etc.
Skinners Field & Trial – cheap and cheerful! Some of their range has colours and preservatives, but F&T range is basic and cheap as it is VAT free for gundog food.
Bakers – 13 different E numbers and loaded with sugar. Nice!
Iams/Eukanuba- we wouldn’t feed if we were paid their marketing budget to do so. Being vastly overpriced makes consumers think they are being wonderful owners. I would encourage them to read labels – primary preservative of Ethoxyquin (see below),was re-labelled when consumers cottoned onto it.

LEARN TO READ LABELS
AVOID like the plague, any food that contains ‘derivatives of vegetable origin’ any ‘derivative’ and ‘by products’. Protein is found in shoe leather, but nutritionally your dog wouldn’t survive on it. Ensure the source of protein is usable. Ground corn, barley, feathers, beaks or chicken heads, feet or intestines are barely digestible protein. Superior digestibility means that your dog will have smaller, more compact stools and a reduction in stool volume.

ADDITIVES, PRESERVATIVES, SYNTHETIC ANTIOXIDANTS
EEC permitted anything, Ethoxyquin, BHA, BHT – no thank you!
It’s important to read labels in the same way as you might when buying a ready meal. If you’re reading this then you would probably avoid eating food sprayed with DDT, packed with colourings or preserved with artificial preservatives yourself. Same goes for your dog.
Choose a food free from additives, preservatives, synthetic anti-oxidants and colours. Complete foods are preserved either chemically or naturally. (Antioxidant means preventing oxidisation – preventing something naturally ‘going off’. Natural Anti-oxidants are usually Vitamins E and C. The shelf life is shorter – so buy a smaller bag. Generally foods using vitamins as preservatives will last up to 6 months.

If a food is synthetically preserved, Burns Pet Foods calculate that the average 25 pound dog will consume between 6 and 9 pounds of chemical preservatives a year. Listed at the bottom are some common food additives in a range of cheap to expensive foods.

The following is a description of food additives/preservatives found in pet food. They are not always named on the food. Sometimes the label may say 'contains EU approved antioxidant' or 'contains EEC permitted preservatives'. One concern is that if a food says ‘no added synthetic antioxidants….etc’, the food could have had those included before processing. This makes identifying exactly what you are feeding very difficult.
Ethoxyquin
This is used as a preservative and is thought to be one of the compounds most likely to cause damage to animal health. Ethoxyquin was developed as a rubber stabiliser. The Department of Agriculture in America lists it as a pesticide. It has been implicated as a cause of many problems including cancer of the kidneys. US Studies of kittens found a wide range of birth deformities caused by Ethoxyquin. Many manufacturers re-labelled their ingredient list sometime ago.
Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT)
Used as a preservative to stop fat going rancid. It has been implicated as a cause of bladder and thyroid cancer and damage to the liver. However, it is not as offensive to the system as
Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA)
Also used as a preservative to prevent fat rancidity. Has been implicated as a cause of stomach cancer.
Feingold (1975) found that antioxidants BHA and BHT contributed to learning difficulties and hyperactivity in humans.
Propylene glycol
It is very closely related to antifreeze. It is usually found in semi-moist foods to maintain the water content and texture. It has been suggested that it causes the destruction of red blood cells. Some studies suggest that cats can become addicted to food that contains this.
Propyl Gallate (E310)
This is antioxidant used to prevent fats and oils going rancid. It is found in chewing gum and meat products. It is banned from children's foods in the US because it is thought to cause the blood disorder methemoglobinemia.
In Dr. Pitcairn's (DVM, PhD) Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, he looks at some of the artificial colourings in pet foods. He states that similar dyes where banned from human foods in the 1970's. The example given is Red No.2 and Violet No.1, which appeared to be linked to cancer, birth defects and skin lesions respectively.
The Asthma and Allergy Research Centre on the Isle of Wight looked at the effects of food additives and colourings and behaviour. In children significant changes in behaviour were seen when the additives (E102, E110, E122, E124 and E211) were removed from the diet for as little as 2 weeks. Does your pet food contain brightly coloured pieces?!
Cereals
If your pet food states 'cereals' as a product, not stating which cereal can be because the cereal content changes with the season depending on which is cheapest at the time.
Brown rice, oats, barley as unprocessed whole grains are high in nutrients and more easily digested.
Wheat is much harder to digest than rice. Many dogs seem to be intolerant to wheat gluten. Because of this many pet foods are now wheat gluten free.
Meat content?
If it sounds dodgy, it probably is.
Chicken meal, Lamb meal etc. fresh clean meat which has been cooked, dried and ground. Refer to the Nutro example of wet to dry weight.

Other ingredients
Soya and other vegetable proteins are difficult to digest.
Dairy products are hard to digest. Lactose is the sugar present in milk. After weaning, dogs and cats have decreasing amounts of lactase (the enzyme needed to digest lactose). Therefore, ingestion of dairy products may cause diarrhoea and/or flatulence as the body has difficulty breaking down the dairy product.
Sugars are sometimes added to cat foods as a flavour enhancer. Sugar will contribute to dental disease
Yoghurt is sometimes used for therapy of chronic diarrhoea in the mistaken belief that the bacteria contained in yoghurt (Lactobacillus acidophilius or Lactobacillus bulgaricus) will colonise the bowel and displace unfavourable bacteria.
Yoghurt has bacteriocidal properties in vitro (test tube) but not in vivo (in the body). Orally administered bacteria in yoghurt does not displace resident or pathogenic bacterial populations in normal or diseased intestines of any animal. The bacteria in yoghurt are generally acid labile (destroyed by the stomach acid), limiting the numbers surviving passage through the stomach. (Research originally published in the Journal of Small Animal Practice Vol. 35). That said, the dogs enjoy it very much.

WHAT KIND OF BONES?... REAL ONES!

Weight support bones - thick fundamentally inedible - marrow bones and knuckle bones; great for gnawing/recreational,

Raw meaty bones – fully edible - rind bones, brisket bones, chicken backs, wings quarters, necks etc on the chicken (remember the first kind – especially true of chicken bones – do not feed COOKED chicken bones to dogs).

Recreational bones help keep the teeth clean and give the dog something to chew on but we generally limit our dogs to around 1- 2 hours per session on these bones as the content will turn cement like in the stomach and be very tough to expel. The edible bones also keep their teeth clean but need to be calculated, depending on meat content, as part of their meal.

NATURAL  FEEDING EXAMPLES
Our dogs are fed on raw meat, a small amount of carbohydrate (in the form of pulped veg, cooked grain - I might do some couscous, millet, spirulina etc or plain wheatmeal biscuit), and an evening meal of a chicken carcass or beef rib bones.

Our food is delivered from Landywoods who supply all we need. Their meats come in 1lb bags, so once defrosted it’s straight out of the bag into the bowl. The carcasses come in bags of 5-7 depending on the size of carcass. Take off neck if it's too big, or feed two if they're too small for one dog. Another excellent supplier is Natural Instinct owned by the lovely Michael and David (who have the lovely Ruby from Dianne, a Nominator daughter). Their website is www. naturalinstinct.com Landywoods is www.landywoods.co.uk. Aritaur owners or those by our dogs are welcome to call or mail to go over what to order or for advice on amounts and volumes. Sorry for sounding mean; our dogs have to be the priority, but the following may help.

WHICH MEAT TO FEED?
Chicken – high protein, low fat
Beef – high protein, medium fat
Lamb – high fat, high protein
Heart – high protein, high fat
Liver – high protein, medium fat
Kidney – high protein, medium fat
Tripe – low protein, high fats
 
EXAMPLE MEALS

Aritaur Tarantella (Jenna) 3 year old very energetic bitch.
Breakfast - 1 lb tripe and 1 lb lamb and tripe, handful of wheatmeal biscuit or ground veg.
Evening – 1 or 2 chicken carcasses.

Aritaur Kalina (Kalina) lean, muscular, 5 year old highly energetic bitch.
Breakfast – 1 lb lamb and tripe, ½ lb tripe or red meat, handful of grain/wheatmeal biscuit or ground veg.
Evening 1 carcass

Aritaur Nominator (Falk) lean, muscular 5 year old, energetic dog in sport work.
Breakfast – 2.5 lb lamb and tripe. Bit of beef and liver mix, handful of grain/wheatmeal biscuit or ground veg
Evening – 1 large carcass or 2 if they're smaller.

Aritaur Histabraq (Bracco), big, muscular 6 yr old, energetic dog in sport work.
Breakfast 1 lb tripe, 1 lb lamb and tripe, handful of grain/wheatmeal biscuit or ground veg.
When not in work (working weight is lighter), so for show, 1 lb tripe, 1 lb lamb and tripe with biscuit.
Evening – 1 large carcass or 2 if they’re smaller.

Aritaur Sweetest Taboo (Kenya), portly 10 yr old lady and her brother Midnight Rave (Caius):
Breakfast – ¾ lb meat from Landywoods, handful of grain/wheatmeal biscuit or ground veg.
Evening - Small chicken carcass.

Knecht Jezebel for Aritaur (Tess), solid, energetic bitch
Breakfast – 1.5 lb meat from Landywoods, handful of grain/wheatmeal biscuit or ground veg.
Evening - Small chicken carcass.

Once every 10 days/fortnight dogs may have a whole rabbit. It will have been frozen for a few weeks to kill parasites but will be fed as it comes - whole. Feeding bones without any covering (jacket) makes it more difficult for the dog to digest. Let your dog eat plenty of grass to aid digestion for the same reason.

Occasionally the dogs all have a fish (entire) – either a salmon head (frozen in summer makes tasty frozen lollies – delightful smell!), or 5/6 mackerel each. Sometimes they have a pigs’ trotter each.

Plus all dogs have table scraps and any bits and bobs going.
Di doesn’t feed hers carcasses, and gives them minced chicken with minced bone, so they are still getting their bone content. I don’t like to feed that much chicken meat especially on a fizzy dog and I like the teeth quality from carcasses, but it’s up to the individual.

We do feed supplements sparingly – Omega 3, 6, 9. Hokamix (like a keepers mix), Flax seed oil, occasional Vit C, Chondroitin, Glucosamine, MSM and Cod Liver Oilfor the oldies. Dried or fresh garlic

Once every couple of weeks, dogs have a meat and bone free day.
Millet (cooked)
Egg
Live Yoghurt
Cottage Cheese
Pulped tomatoes
Pulped veg – whatever’s available – broccoli, cauliflower, greens, carrots, parsnips etc
Pesto – had an old jar to finish off and they loved it, so used half a new jar – not cheap!
Oats
Spinach (covered in yoghurt)
Baked beans

Di and Martin both laughed at me and said why didn’t I just save the bother and do a ‘fast day’, but they loved it and there wasn’t a scrap left. Even Martin was impressed. I reckon it was that Pesto!