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Next to your love and
attention, proper nutrition is the most important thing
you can give your puppy!
Most new puppy owners seem to know this by
instinct. That is why they ask their vet questions like "What
is the best food to feed my puppy? How often should my puppy
be fed? Should I feed bones to my puppy? If so what sort?
What about calcium? What about food scraps?" People with
new puppies do not only ask vets of course. They seek and
are given advice from breeders, pet shop owners, advertisements
on television and from books and magazines. With so many sources
of information, it's not surprising that so many people are
unsure about feeding dogs, particularly puppies.
Who Should You Believe?
 The
answer to this is very simple. To get the answers you need,
you have to ask the pup itself! By understanding what puppies
eat in the wild, you will learn valuable clues as to what
you should be feeding your domestic pup. You will find out
exactly what the digestive system of a puppy is programed
to eat by centuries of evolution.
By looking at young wolves growing up we are
actually observing our young pup's ancestors. If we couple
that with modern scientific discoveries about diet, health
and aging, we are able to produce a realistic, health promoting,
evolutionary puppy diet. From studying the eating habits of
wolf cubs which are seen to be perpetually hungry, subsisting
on raw food consisting mostly of bones and being forced to
scavenge a wide variety of foods, we get vital clues about
successful puppy raising.
- The bulk of a puppy's diet should consist of raw meaty
bones
- All or most of the rest of their food should also be raw
- Puppies should always be kept a little hungry
- They should never grow at their maximum growth rate
- They should be kept slim, lean and hard. Not roly poly,
fat, young puppies
- Puppies should learn to eat everything
When we consider how wolves/dogs were raised
in the 'pre-pet-food' era and compare that to our modern methods
of husbandry, we can only conclude that the changes we have
made to feeding and exercising have indeed been dramatic,
and that their effects on puppy growth have been traumatic.
The degree to which modern dogs experience ill health reflects
the degree to which they are subjected to biologically inappropriate
methods of feeding and exercising. Let's look at those biologically
inappropriate forms of puppy management so rife today.
All the food a modern pup eats is
cooked...
For the first time in its evolutionary history
we are asking our dogs to eat nothing but cooked food. This
is biologically unacceptable and a very dramatic change. It
is most often processed food, usually either canned or dry
food. The cooking process destroys many of the life enhancing
factors found only in raw food. These include enzymes, many
natural antioxidants and other anti-degeneration factors.
All the food a modern pup eats is
based on cooked grain ...
The vast majority of the food eaten by the
modern dog is composed of cooked grain as the most fundamental
and major component of the diet. Another dramatic and biologically
unacceptable change. Dogs have never in their evolutionary
history eaten cooked grain. The results on health are devastating.
Meat meal and rendered fat come next...
 The
cooked grain is teamed up with meat meal (with its damaged
protein) and rendered fat. It is not uncommon to use rendered
fat from domestic animals in pet food - and there are reports
that this is happening - together with flea collars and other
dangerous chemicals such as the euthanasia solution in some
of these deceased and rendered pets.
Aside from the dangerous chemicals it contains,
that rendered fat contrasts strongly with the healthy fat
so full of essential fatty acids that our dog's ancestors
ate. These heat destroyed components are biologically unacceptable.
They do not support healthy growth. They do not support a
healthy life or contribute to a healthy old age. The meat
meal bears very little relationship to the healthy raw meat
eaten by a wild dog.
Now add the chemicals...
Add loads of refined sugar, loads of salt,
chemical colorings - dyes, to make the product look like something
it is not. Add artificial chemical flavorings to make it taste
like something it is not. Add flavor enhancers to make sure
the animal eats something it ought not to. Add chemical antioxidants
(known carcinogens) to ensure the product does not become
obviously rancid.
Now add the legally required nutrients...
These are the currently known to be essential
vitamins and minerals. The legal constraints on commercial
pet foods do not require them to include vitally important
biologically essential antioxidants and anti-degeneration
factors present only in whole raw food. As a result, these
products do not contain many of the essential factors we do
know about such as enzymes, nor do they contain many of the
essential factors we don't yet know about, the ones yet to
be discovered and only present in whole raw natural foods.
The modern puppy diet omits bones...
The omission of raw meaty bones from the diet
of the modern dog is central to the formation of bone disease
in pups. Because the modern pup does not eat bones it misses
out on all the essential nutrients bones supply including
its calcium in perfect balance and form, together with all
the other minerals required for healthy bone formation in
perfect balance and form.
The result is that the modern pup obtains
it minerals in a totally inappropriate form. The modern pup
also misses out on its eating exercise. This eating exercise
is a vital component of the exercise regime designed to grow
healthy disease free bones and joints.
The modern pup does not eat vegetables
or fruit...
Instead it eats dry or tinned processed grains.
Another complete disaster. The lack of crushed vegetables
makes a monumental contribution to the production of degenerative
disease in dogs, including problems such as Hip and Elbow
Dysplasia. The modern pup does not eat the gut contents of
a herbivore or anything like it. As a result it fails to receive
a mass of essential nutrients so essential for its bowel and
over-all health.
In today's world, special foods, 'designed
for growth', have become part of the processed pet food industry.
They say that the foods designed for growing animals must
have more nutrients that support growth compared to diets
designed to maintain a grown animal in good health. This contrasts
with the BARF DIET where top quality whole food ingredients
are used in all the diets. Common sense tells us that our
dog's ancestors have grown and reproduced using the BARF diet
without the benefit of special foods for several hundred thousand
years. In other words, our dogs' ancestors have grown properly,
survived and reproduced on the same basic foods, no matter
what stage of life they were at. Think carefully. Which environment
of diet do you want your dog in? The modern environment of
biologically inappropriate dog food, excessive protein, excessive
calories, fast growth rates, calcium supplements, excessive
exercise and bone disease, or the time honored way which produces
healthy longevity, abundant reproduction and brilliant health.
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