Healthy meat dog treats & health raw meat main diets are a very healthy way to feed your dog, in 2022

This article looks at the many questions and myths surrounding dog food and what the best complimentary healthy dog treats should be.

It was first published in 2011 – and the facts haven’t changed … just now we have more vegan dog food rubbish to deal with now … so just so you are aware that we haven’t changed our position, we mostly have kept this article as it was, over ten years ago !

Myth 1 – All my dogs need is table food scraps

Unfortunately, this is one of the easiest but non-nutritious dog foods your dog can eat. As your dog is a scavenger (based on its behavior of its ancestor the wolf and wild dogs) it will literally try and eat most things that present themselves as food, and a few things that are not food.

Your dog will often gulp food scraps down because it is programmed to take food when it can get it. It will eat almost everything you give it because it trusts you as its owner, pack leader and provider of food. If it is VERY choosy, it might be partially at the owners enabling …

Whatever you got your dog used to eat early in its life, its gut will have got conditioned to eating, but it doesn’t mean that these scraps are good for it.

Food scraps usually contain hardly any meat, except for that attached to the fatty part that humans don’t want. They will be fully cooked, sometimes overcooked which isn’t ideal. They will have a large amount of veggies and grain (that dogs can’t properly digest) and the gravy or sauce is most likely composed of grains and pepper, refined sugar (that can give it cancer) and maybe onions or something else poisonous to them.

Myth 2 – Supermarket dog food has all the nutrition my dog needs

If your dog was an omnivore or rabbit, that might be true. The truth about most manufactured dog foods is that they are very high in grain and vegetable matter, and are very low in lean meat. If they do have meat they are often the lower cuts of meat or offal. They are likely to have additives, coloring and preservatives.

Why would a commercial company that my supermarket promotes sell me food that is bad for my dog? Well, optimistically I could tell you they do it because they don’t know better. They don’t know your dog is evolved from the wolf and that it prefers to hunt and kill then eat its meat. It has never grazed in a field that a farmer created. The supermarket will also be selling major brands, with major advertising, that has major margins for both parties. The contents of the bags rarely have much to do with it.

The more realistic truth is that the Government has not banned them selling this rubbish yet, Thought there have been enquiries sparked around low end kibble – mostly after many dogs die from accidental poisoning from the kibble brands, Supermarkets are the middle-people that cause most of the dogs in Australia to eat large levels of vegetable matter – by your mostly carnivore dog, because they are a much cheaper ingredient. And yes, unfortunately, most dog food companies are profit driven, so they try to minimize their costs and maximize their profits, at the expense of your dog’s health. The large manager salaries and shareholder demands, dictate all of that.

Myth 3 – This must be good because my VET recommended it

This would be funny if it wasn’t so true. These people and vets rely on the old ‘they did a Veterinary degree so they know better than anyone.’ However you will probably find that most vet courses contain very little on dog nutrition and rarely mention that dogs are evolved from wolves or that they are mostly carnivores. Or accidental partially omnivores – BECAUSE of HUMANS.

You will also find that vets often gain a substantial part of their income from selling manufactured goods off their shelves. It would be very difficult for them to keep fresh meat on premises.

Myth 4 – Wild dogs get a lot of vegetable matter from the contents of their prey’s stomach

This is the closest that vegetable proponents come to the reality of a dog’s diet. They may also neglect to tell you that only some of the wolves or wild dogs get to eat the tasty prey’s stomach. Even if they do, the stomach lining is very tasty, it also includes tasty digestive juices with a small amount of crushed immature grasses partially digested.

Before humans started large scale farming, there were no large scale fields of carrots, peas, beans and all the things we commonly find on our plates. This means that neither the wolves nor their prey regularly had access to the then exotic and varied vegetables. If they did find wild carrots, they were probably substantially different from the type you find on your plate. And the wolf would only ingest this accidently as part of the whole animal meal.

As they are scavengers they will take what they can get, even if the majority of the vegetable passes through them unchanged and without supplying any nutritional value.

But the domestic dog has changed vastly since it evolved!

Sure has! The man has manipulated and selectively bred dogs until their shape and behavior exactly fit their needs. This artificial selection changed the outside of domestic dogs but did very little to their digestive processes. That is why the enzyme that is responsible for breaking down vegetables (carbs actually) is not found in dog’s saliva but only a reduced amount in its stomach.

Unless the vegetable matter is raw, partially digested and crushed, your dog (with its pointy teeth and inability to chew the vegetable) doesn’t stand a chance in digesting this rabbit food.

You are probably also aware that cooking meat destroys many of the enzymes available to your dog in raw meat, removing any nutrition it might actually get in manufactured pet food.

WHAT DO I FEED MY DOG?

Raw meat, from many types of animals, and as much of the whole animal as you can.

From the markets, you can get cheap lean beef, chicken, rabbit etc. If you can get deep sea fish with naturally occurring Omega 3 in their flesh, then get that too, otherwise get your dog onto an Omega 3 oil supplement.

WHAT IF MY DOG DOESN’T LIKE MEAT

There may be some meats that your dog shows allergy reactions to. That is fine, all the meats in the market would not have been readily part of the wolf or wild dogs diet either. However, as a carnivore, the statement that your dog doesn’t like meat is inherently flawed.

What you may find is that after years of feeding your dog anything but real meat, they will take time to get used to having the correct proportions in their diet. All this means is that over a week or a month you can slowly introduce raw healthy carnivore loving meat to your dog! A very small amount of raw crushed vegetable matter is acceptable too.

How do DOG TREATS fit into my dog’s diet?

Well yes, this is where I come into the picture, selling dog treats from a local company, mostly composed of meat with a tiny amount of preservative in some of them.

As these dog treats are MEAT based, with little or no preservative, they can have as much as the want of most of the treats, as long as their main meat diet plus meat dog treats do not exceed their energy intake requirements. That is why taking your dog for one and preferably two walks per day, feeding them meat, and rewarding them with healthy meat based dog treats is the ONLY way to make your dog truly happy.

While I make less profit by buying high-quality meat treats, I find it easier to live with myself, as an ethical dog walker. I enjoy seeing the health improvements of the dogs in my charge.

WHAT specific dog treats are recommended

This depends on your dog’s diet, its exercise regime, stage of life etc.

If you feed your dog a relatively low amount of meat in their diet, then all of the treats are ideal for them. And as wide a variety of animal breeds as possible so that they get a wide exposure to different proteins and their immune system is boosted.

If your dog is a medium chewer, then something like beef jerky or duck is ideal. Beef jerky or roo jerky – a 100% single ingredient treat !

If your dog has a tendency to gain weight, then maybe the kangaroo dog treat range with its low-fat properties is best.

If you already feed your dog 100% raw meat, which is mostly the flesh (doesn’t include offal, tendon, bones etc) then the higher volume treats maybe a good alternative. This is because the higher value treats (high weight per gram) tend to include more of the animal than just the flesh – ie offal. This way your dog will get exposure to the many other parts of the animal with its many different nutrient mixes.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

All the best to you and your dog!

Article by Bruce Dwyer. If you wish to use any of this information please refer to the article as a reference and provide a link to https://www.healthydogtreats.com.au