4 posts tagged “health”

This is a great site for drilling down to information about ingredients in commercial dog foods - what to look for, what to avoid, how to identify better products.

But what is most useful for me is this "short list" of beneficial food items that include important vitamins, minerals and trace elements for a healthy dog. We are pretty much on top of everything with our home cooked, I find - though after perusing this I've decided to add the occasional egg to Sky's diet... and ongoing is my search for nutritional yeast, which I want for both her and us. (Not too many retail health food options in Athens, that I've been able to ferret out so far, anyway.)
.
The only thing we seem to be mostly missing is this:

Chloride: kelp, tomatoes, celery

and to a lesser degree:

Sulfur: eggs, garlic, lettuce, cabbage

I do include garlic in her cooked meals (just a bit of raw, minced garlic - not a lot), but adding some egg here and there will help with the latter... and I suspect that the chloride is a non-issue, since chloride is found in table salt, which is how we humans get most of ours, and though I don't add salt to her food, I'm pretty sure it's probably included in a lot of the dog treats she gets. However, I'd like to mostly stop using commercial treats for reward training, and try healthier items if possible, so I'll add a bit of tomato to her diet. This is something we always have around, in season, anyway.

So, at this point our usual home cooked meals consist of either turkey/chicken/liver/fish (I'd love to include beef - but we hardly spend the big bucks for beef ourselves - it's become very expensive!) and veg mix (carrot, zucchini and/or green beans, spinach - and soon to include some tomato) and brown rice (roughly 1/3 each, but a bit more veg than meat and rice), plus some grated apple or pear usually, a bit of minced garlic, and a small splash each of olive oil and apple cider vinegar. In addition, she gets a couple of large tablespoons of yogurt separately most days, plus the occasional peanut butter treat or bit of cheese.

If we ate only what we feed her, we'd be in super great shape, I think. :)

At the moment, we're out of kibble (and the only place we've found so far that has minimally acceptable dry food is quite a walk away - and it's hot out!) so she's eating the home cooked for both meals, and I'd actually prefer to feed her only this all the time, but I worry that she will refuse the dry food eventually, which would make things difficult while travelling, say, or if someone else takes care of her.

Dog owners, go ahead and stock up on some cotton balls (100% cotton only) to have around in case of an emergency. This page describes how inducing your dog to eat cotton balls after they've swallowed a sharp object can save his life, or at least forestall expensive, painful surgery. Apparently the cotton will wrap itself around the broken glass, sharp bone, or whatever, and carry it safely through to the other end. And though convincing a dog to eat cotton balls may not sound very easy, these people say that it's quite simple to do, just by soaking the balls in Half & Half (or cream, I imagine), or spreading them with liverwurst. I imagine I'd try peanut butter if I didn't have either of those.

If you ever do have occasion to try this (and let's hope you never do!), be sure to keep a close eye on your pup and rush him or her to the vet if you see blood in the stool, black, tarry stool, or other signs that your dog is in distress.

Sorry! In this post, I linked to the wrong page for The Whole Dog Journal's dry food list (now fixed). Here is the regular approved list (as opposed to the grain-free list I originally linked to).

No, no... She's just fine. Sorry for that. I used the Big Drama title, because if you search for information on what is or isn't poisonous or harmful for dogs and other pets, you can run into so much conflicting and frightening information, with super scary pronouncements about all kinds of foods. For example, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a

lot of fatty foods isn't going to be good for your pet, or you, either. But it shows up on some "poison" lists. As if your dog will keel over after eating a bite of meat with some fat on it. Garlic is listed as toxic on most lists now, despite the fact that many owners have been using small amounts of garlic for decades to flavor their dogs food and/or help repel fleas. Avocado shows up on some poison lists, but there's a dog food that features avocado, and one of my good friends feeds his wonderfully beautiful, super-healthy dogs this food.

Why the confusion? I imagine that a lot of agencies and entities that issue lists like this want to cover any eventuality, and subscribe to the KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) theory. So, instead of telling you that garlic in large quantities, or constant smaller quantities over time can be poisonous, they simply say garlic is toxic. Avocado? Well, here's the only sourced information I could find. It certainly doesn't seem that there's terribly conclusive research on this, but I'd keep avocado skins, stems, bark, leaves and seeds away.

This list seems to me so far to be practical, reasonable, and non-hysterical. The ASPCA has a lot of information, including a list of foods, and plants (toxic and non-toxic) that you can check. Trying to memorize everything won't be possible for most of us, so this is my personal short-list: Chocolate; caffeine; alcohol (duh!); sugar substitutes (Xylitol, specifically, but I'm just staying away from any of them); onions; grapes; raisins; nuts, generally (not all are bad, but a few are, so, except for some peanut butter, I'm just avoiding them); seeds, pits, leaves, stems of most fruits and vegetables (easier just to avoid them, and if you want specific information on a particular item, look it up to see if it's okay). And, I won't be feeding quantities of garlic to Sky, but I won't freak out if she gets a little bit.

Since she's apparently not the least bit interested in ingesting any of the houseplants, I think we're okay there, but before adding any more, I'll check them against the ASPCA list and avoid the baddies.