KIBBLE OR REAL FOOD?

Feeding Fido

–– By SA Tripi ––

So many of us strive to eat well, exercise and take care of our bodies. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d like to live as long as I can and be as healthy as I can be. That goes for my dog also.
Our animals don’t live as long as we do, which is an unfortunate fact of life, so it’s up to us to make sure that they get the right nutrition, which isn’t always an easy thing to do.

When I was a kid, my grandmother had a dog named Pudgy and the dog was a bit like her name. She ate whatever my grandparents ate. Pudgy had a yard to play in and wasn’t taken on long hikes but still got a decent amount of exercise because if we were outside, she was outside. If we walked around the block, she did also. Pudgy loved her spaghetti and meatballs. She ate no actual ‘dog food’ and I don’t remember her going to a vet. She was almost eighteen when she died.

I have had many dogs for over 25 years and they go to the vet twice a year for check-ups. They take heartworm meds, and various other meds if a problem arises. When I had cats, they hardly ever went to a vet and never took medication and existed on their own terms until they got old and died.

The dogs have been a different story. Three of the females lived to be at least 16. One dog’s kidneys gave out and two got dementia. Two of the males had cancer and died at a much younger age than the females. The third male is losing his sight even though he is barely ten and has had numerous problems with acid reflux since he was a pup. Other than that, he is considered healthy by the vet.

I have always fed my dogs good food. Almost a year ago I started wondering what was in this expensive food that I was feeding Ike. There is a lot of ‘meal’ and I’m not sure what that is. What is really in dog food, even in expensive brands?

I was tired of giving Pepcid to my dog Ike, so I started making him homemade food. Ike would probably eat anything, but he really seems to love his ‘real’ meat and carrots, green beans and rice. He no longer needs Pepcid.

If you are going take this route with your dog or cat, I suggest a website that my vet recommended: www.balanceit.com. This is a site run by veterinary nutritionists that hold graduate degrees in nutrition. If you are going to feed them real food, you need to make sure that it is balanced with the proper vitamins and minerals. That is one thing that most manufactured dog food contains. It’s just that there is so much more in those bags that we don’t know about.

There is a lot of literature to help us with our furry friends. Hopefully we will treat their little bodies as we treat our own. An overweight animal is like an overweight kid. Oh, aren’t they cute, people say. No, they really aren’t. They are unhealthy with bad habits. They are a reflection of the humans they live with.
As we choose to be mindful with our own bodies, it is something that we need to do with our pets: good nutrition and exercise but skip the spaghetti and meatballs.

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