My Love-Hate Relationship With Dog Food&

Our family includes four dogs.  They eat people food… but without all the additives, preservatives and other things that we humans love… but know are not really good for us.

As I was preparing their food the other day my mind wandered…I got thinking about what people fed their dogs 50 or 100 more years ago.  At 50 years ago my mother-in-law would have been shopping at the neighborhood Piggly Wiggly¹.  I can’t imagine her walking into the grocery store and seeing an entire aisle dedicated to dog and cat food (mind you grocery stores then weren’t on a scale of today’s grocery stores).  So what were dogs fed before kibble and canned dog food was mass produced?  I did some research and this is what I found out:  Bagged, canned and kibble dog foods, which are cooked and processed, have only been around for the last 100 years and only became popular in the United States after World War II.  Therefore my mother-in-law would have found a dog food aisle in the Piggly Wiggly – although not to the extent I believe we see today.  Even with mass produced dog food available, I don’t think it would have been a high value item on many grocery lists.  Regardless of where you lived…a farm, rural community or the city, dog food would have been a luxury item, not a necessity. So again, what were most dogs fed?  If not processed food, then what?  Look just a bit farther back in time…In the 1800’s, before commercial dog food existed people fed their dogs scraps from the table, maybe some eggs, raw bones and meat, or other unprocessed food.  But did dogs eat nutritionally well?  That question is one I didn’t find an answer to.  And cross-referencing a dog’s life span 50-100 years ago to the life span of today’s dog based on the food they ate conjured up no substantial scientific data.

So fast forward back to the 21^st century and the plethora of commercial dog food both canned and kibble. And grocery stores in fact do have entire aisles dedicated to dog and cat food.  There are pet stores around the country where a quarter of the store is dedicated to the nutritional needs of your dog or cat.  How did we as a society of dog loving beings go from feeding table scraps and raw bones to a billion dollar plus a year industry dedicated to the mass production of dog kibble and canned foods?  More than likely the answer is… convenience and money…supply and demand.

How many times had I walked the dog food aisles, looking at the myriad of dog food brands, each one out-doing the other with ingredients, nutritional value, etc., reading label after label and lamenting which one was the best product and would that one be liked by and appropriate for all of my dogs?  I became quite adept at reading and understanding the “list of ingredients” – from those with corn as a top ingredient to ones labeled “human grade” to  “certified organic” dog food.   I still lamented.  A friend suggested buying by price…her philosophy was…if it’s of good quality, the cost will be reflective of that.  Unless you are buying truly low end dog kibble, the cost is fairly substantial across the board.  I even spoke with my vet who sells brands of dog food, all veterinary approved and highly recommended and yes, expensive.   However I still can’t say for certain what exactly is in that kibble or canned food – I can only speculate and place my trust in a manufacturer’s brand name. I do believe there are dog food manufacturer’s who put their life’s effort into producing a high quality, nutritionally balanced dog food, but I personally don’t know which one that is.  To drive that point home there are any number of articles and horror stories about what is purportedly used in the making of commercial dog food.  And the ongoing product recalls only help to solidify the publics and my concerns.

So I decided on another direction.  Many people are familiar with the raw dog food diet, its acronym is, B.A.R.F. (“Biologically Appropriate Raw Food” or as others know it “Bones and Raw Food”).   I gave this a try.  You really need to understand the nutritional needs of your dog.  Just as man can’t live by bread alone, neither can your dog live by raw meat and bones. You need to be comfortable with handling raw food.  And you need to consider the potentially harmful organisms found in raw meat – sanitation in the kitchen is a must.  Also one needs to start out slow when introducing this diet, as in most cases it is a significant change for your dog.  Oddly enough, none of our dogs took to it.  Maybe they felt my discomfort with the thought of eating raw meat…hard to say…but for us, it was not to be.

By now I had developed a real love-hate relationship with my dogs’ food.  If not processed, canned or raw food – what would they eat?  That left me back to where I started…what did dogs eat years ago?  The answer…table scraps…or…home-cooked food.  Now had you asked me about this option two years ago, I would have thought that to be the worst type of diet for my dogs and the most expensive way of feeding them.  As with the B.A.R.F. diet, I had several questions –such as how to handle the nutritional value, what kind of “people” food can dogs eat – how much food to feed?  But in reality, I was simply making it all too complicated .

Dogs are not just carnivores; they are omnivores, eating both plants and animals as their primary food source and 100 years ago, they did just that.

Now instead of standing in the aisle of endless dog food choices, I buy either 20 lbs. of chicken meat (usually thigh meat), turkey meat (usually I buy it ground) or 80/20 ground beef²; and add to that a balance of dog appropriate vegetables, fruits and grains³.  The chicken meat is deboned after cooking⁴.  The veggies and fruits are run through the food processor and cooked⁵. Then it’s mixed together.  I know how much each dog needs in terms of calories so their “hotdish” is packaged for each dog and the lids are marked by name; then it is refrigerated or frozen. I cook about two to three times a month.  Our dogs eat their primary meal once a day in the evening.  And each dog is consistently a member of the clean plate club.  And for those interested…our dogs weigh 60, 50, 20 and 20 pounds each.

As for me – yes, I spend the extra time preparing their food, but on the plus side…I no longer wander the aisles of dog food brands wondering which one to buy, I no longer fear dog food recalls and our dog food bill has actually gone down.  For our family, feeding our dogs in this manner provides us with knowing what exactly our dogs are eating and allows me the latitude to adjust their diets as necessary along with helping them maintain healthy weights.  Most noticeably we have seen increased health in our dogs, from the shine of their coats to their daily constitutionals.  And you can’t put a price on that.

I no longer have a love-hate relationship with my dogs’ food.

¹ Piggly Wiggly is a grocery store chain dating back to 1916.  www.pigglywiggly.com

2 Offering Lamb and Fish are also excellent sources of protein.

³ Dog appropriate foods that I have found and work well for our pack are yams or sweet potato, carrots, celery, tomatoes, peas, green beans, broccoli, parsley, a small amount of garlic, cored apples- dogs cannot eat the seeds, blueberries, cranberries, rice – brown preferred, barley and oatmeal.  Please check this website for what foods NOT to feed your dog: http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/poison-control/people-foods.html

⁴ I save the chicken bones as they are nutrient rich and cook them in a pressure cooker until they crumble between your fingers.  I crush and blend them with the broth and then freeze this – to include in the next batch of dog food.

⁵ A dog’s digestive system is simpler that a human’s, so smaller cooked food pieces are more easily digested and the nutrient uptake is better.

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