Raw Diets For My Dog - Part 1 - Health Plus Digest

Eating raw food isn’t just for humans. In fact many pet owners find that feeding a raw diet to both their cats and dogs results in more optimal health for their companions. Feeding a raw diet to pets may totally exclude all commercial dog foods or cat foods.

Pet owners find that there is a wide range of benefits to feeding a raw food diet to their pets. For dogs this includes no doggy odor, naturally clean teeth much less stools, decreased vet bills, less cost for dog food and it mirrors what the dog would be getting in the wild. Owners of young dogs find that puppies grow at a more appropriate rate. Quick growth spurts caused by calorically dense dog food made for puppies can be avoided. These processed puppy foods will often cause bone disorders and pain.

Individuals have also reported that dogs who were previously sluggish became completely energetic once the raw diet feeding began. They found that allergies completely disappeared and pain from arthritis was significantly reduced. It was easier to maintain better weight control in their dogs and many breeders find that their bitches manage pregnancy better.

Proponents of raw food diet report that commercial dog food usually has fillers as their main ingredient where dogs were meant to have raw meat and partially digested vegetables and fruits as the main ingredients of their diets. Commercial dog foods are also loaded with preservative, colors and salt. While some of these preservatives may make the dog food taste better, because it originally tasted horrible, they also encourage the dog to overeat and load the dog’s body with chemicals causing health problems.

One common question about raw diets is the idea that chicken bones are dangerous. This is very true when the bones are cooked because they become quite brittle and can splinter in the intestines. However, chicken bones which are raw are fantastic because they are soft and bend easily. They break well and dogs are able to chew them for digestion. With raw beef, bones are also very good for your dogs teeth and jaws. Incidents of dogs choking on bones are rare but in order to decrease that greatly, individuals can use large meaty beef bones instead of chicken bones.

Another concern raised by individuals who don’t know too much about a raw food diet is the question of whether feeding raw food to a dog will make them bloodthirsty and more apt to bite. There could be nothing more further from the truth. Dogs bite for a variety of reasons including fear or aggression, anger and poor training but they don’t bite because of the food that they eat.