At the time your pup goes home, it will be eating Victor brand food. Review the Set Up For Success post again for more info.
This is not meant to scare you in any way. It is only meant as shared knowledge, and hopefully I can encourage you to ask some questions. What are we putting into our dogs, and is it the best for them?
Things you need to be aware of in your dog food:
AAFCO is great, but do your research and pick your dog food accordingly. The Association of American Feed Control Officials have a standard to feeding trials and a requirement for dog foods. After looking into exactly what they do and why; after reading through research on dog foods, I found things that raised my eyebrows. Let's take a look at what we are learning about kibble.
Feeding Trials
A feeding trial only consists of 6 months. - Is this really long enough?
Only 8 dogs go through the feeding trial and can't lose more than 15% body weight. Only 6 have to live through it. That's right, it is permissible for 2 dogs to die on the dog food trial and the food will still pass to production. - Is this acceptable?
Dogs are examined by a vet before the trial and after the trial. Then they pull a blood sample and only check 4 things.
1) Hemoglobin (carries oxygen),
2) Packed cell volume (how many red blood cells are present - correlates closely to hemoglobin),
3) Serum alkaline phosphatase (enzyme produced when bone is being absorbed),
4) Serum albumin (a measure of protein in the blood).
Where are the liver or kidney functions? Long term feeding has shown that the liver and kidney's have damage from being under stress. Your dogs might survive the food long term, but won't thrive on it - and it will more than likely cause damage when fed long term.
Lastly a dog food does not have to go through a feeding trial as long as the "same family" has completed the trail. Does 'same family' mean all 'grain-free' dog food, all the 'all life' dog foods? Nobody can tell me what "same family" is. They can't, or won't, define it so that makes me a bit suspicious.
Lastly if a food goes through a feeding trial, they do not have to meet the AAFCO nutrient profile.
AAFCO standards are low for active dogs.
For growth and reproduction the AAFCO required standards are:
Protein = 22.5%
Fat = 8.5%
Carbohydrates = none
Again this is a terribly low bar, and we are finding that it can be dangerous. Here's why.
Fats
Fat is an important nutrient for providing energy to muscles (dogs can process this even better than humans). 8.5% is not NEAR enough. Active dogs need anywhere from 30-70% fat depending if they are sprinters or endurance dogs.
Carbs
Carbs are needed for sprint athletes (agility, flyball, hunting), lactating bitches, and endurance runners (sled dogs and racers). Glycogen (sugar produced from carbs) needs to be replenished every day. The jury is still out on if carbs are necessary in maintenance foods, but we know some is needed in active dogs. That said many dog foods will pack carbs into the food as a filler. It's cheap, available, holds the food together, and has a longer shelve life. As a result our normal kibble contains about 4 times the amount any dog should eat. We try to stick to 14 to 20ish %.
Proteins
Proteins in active dogs for endurance and sprint should be 30% +. On the very low side, 24% is required at a minimum for a working dog. More will be needed for the higher energy needs such as sprinting and endurance work.
We are pushing AAFCO to do an All-Life stages feeding trial PLUS meets AAFCO nutrient profile.
What's more is that the dog food companies try to save money in order to make money. In doing so they tend to make mistakes; mistakes that cost pet lives. We'll go through the biggest ones that made headlines, but there are recalls all the time on dog food. It is important to watch the recall's on your brand that you feed, but don't over react. Make https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com a staple on your desktop and check it. Or better yet, sign up for recall notices. This is also a good resource to help research your brand of dog food.
Concerns in diet since 2007
Melamine (2007)
This was an adulterated pet food sourced in China. Melamine is actually plastic. It tests positive for proteins. So it was a cheap way for them to "raise" the level of protein in dog food (they also found it in baby food BTW). It didn't actually raise the level of protein but it did test as if they were higher. Over 8500 pets developed kidney failure. To this day they don't know the total deaths of pets but they know it was hundreds of thousands. 300,000 babies were affected in China as well via formula. Anyway - 5,300 pet food products were recalled.
Grain-free and dilated cardiomyopathy (on going 2017)
If you are unaware of nutritional heart disease in dog food, you really should make yourself aware. DCM is fatal and many dogs have died or are dying from it. Even young dogs (3 yrs of age). IF it is caught early enough and the diet is corrected, some recovery is possible. It is definitely related to grain-free foods, particularly legumes and possibly potatoes. Some thought it possibly was related to taurine (this is questionable still, studies are still out on dogs needing taurine). The FDA has an ongoing investigation on this issue. Taste of the Wild, ACANA, and quite a few others has been implicated.
If you've been feeding grain-free kibble for a while and are concerned, you can test blood taurine at the University of Davis in CA. Then you need to get an echocardiogram. DCM can't be diagnosed by your general vet, it has to be done by a cardiologist.
Megaesophagus from ADVACED Dermocare
Megaesophagus is a pouching of the esophagus. It can be fatal and causes severe quality of life issues. This was an issue in Australian dogs in 2017-2018At the time of diagnosis, there was a 437 times grater chance that the dog ate AD than other foods. Most cases AD was 100% of their diet. Also housemates were also effected. After the recall, the ME cases went down severally. There are no underlying causes yet. There is ongoing research on the cause and they still haven't figured out why. This is a MARS petcare brand (one of the largest producers of dog food in the world).
Salmonella, Listeria, Pentobarbital (drug used to euthanize animals)
Salmonella can be found in raw food, because our human food has a lot of bacteria in it. Wash your dogs dishes daily if you are feeding raw. Keep your area clean and sanitize often. We use a vinegar based cleaner that works well.
Dry and canned foods (MARS, JM SMUCKER and others) have been affected by both salmonella and listeria, so relying on a "big company" that has a staff of nutritionists, is not a safe bet.
Smucker had quite a few recalls on dog food after Pentobarbital was found in the food. The dog food companies have admitted that Pentobarbital was a broader problem and that there are indications that it is wide spread and found in many of our foods.
If you want to research this, visit Google Scholar. Make sure you see who is publishing the article and testing. Pay attention who funded the research, who does the researcher work for, and recognize the point of view of the dog food administration.
Further more, keep in mind that fresh is always better - for us and them. The heat processing of pet foods is known to reduce the bioavailability of essential amino acids and micronutrients.
Also keep in mind that if your dog has an allergy - of 52 tested products 38% of them had mislabeled proteins - and a few of those contained non-specific meat ingredient that couldn't be verified.
Testing of commercial dog food has found an array of things like BPA, Round Up, toxic levels of Vitamin D, and NO probiotics - though it is a labeled ingredient on the bag.
Commercial RAW food options are now more popular - many come recommended. I've never tried any and have not delved into the research of them, but I would approach them with the same degree of healthy skepticism that I do with kibble.
Raw does not have to be commercial. We raw feed our dogs from what we grow and hunt. There is a bit of research and math that goes into feeding this way, but I’ve found that my dog’s teeth are clean (without vet intervention), their stools are beautifully formed, don’t smell, and break down within a couple days (unlike kibble fed poo that can stick around for weeks and stink to high heaven and be soft). We don’t have any problems with anal glands blocking (common issue in dogs when their poo is not formed hard enough to clean the glands during elimination). We also feed less food, the dogs are sated FAR longer (we don’t see as much coprophagia, garbage hunting, or begging for more food). We have less issues with parasites. If we are having ear mite or worm issues – I’m looking at diet first (usually a lack of copper or too many sugars - complex or simple - in the gut).
See more on raw feeding on Perfectly Rawsome.
Our RAW fed recipe
We feed a prey model diet = 78/10/5/5/2 = 78-80% meat/10% bone/5% offal/5% liver/2% fiber- like feather, fur. These cuts are kept from any butchering we do on the farm or harvest from hunts. We raise meat rabbits and chickens for the dogs as well. These two animals have the perfect make-up of the ratio listed above. We dispatch them, then freeze them whole, or fresh if we can. The other cuts are grinded into a clean trashcan or very large bowl and bagged up in 1 lb or ½ lb bags.
LiquidMoon Recipe for Farm Dogs
My big bowl can hold 20ish pounds of meat so that is one batch. I grind it all at the same time.
20# of pork/venison/beef/goat (Sometimes I mix the meats, sometimes I do individual packages – particularly if I’m dealing with a new dog – then I can watch to see if they have an intolerance to a certain protein)
2 C of Apple Cider Vinegar
Wild Fish Oil – Enough to provide 15 mg per pound body weight of DHA: NOTE: I’m finding that is is just as easy to give each dog the dose when fed (many times it’s a squirt from the pump per dog)
½ C Brewers Yeast
1 C Kelp
1/8 C Ginger
¼ C Turmeric
½ C molasses (this has a lot of micronutrients, but if they are struggling with parasites or softer than I’d like to see stools, it's usually because of the sugar content so in those cases, I’d leave this out)
6 eggs with shells
2 C milk kiefer (this is another thing that I will leave out if – when not milking – I find that Geneflora or Fortiflora probiotic works as well, if not better.) NOTE: some dogs do not do well on dairy.
2# organs (heart is not an organ, it’s considered a muscle). Tripe is excellent, kidney, lungs, ½ of this amount is liver.
Fowl backs/legs/thighs/wings/Rib bones are all edible bone. I offer these on Fridays with no other food.
Once every other week, or more depending on our supply, whole rabbit/chicken is offered and nothing else that day. If they are not finished with it by the end of the day it gets disposed of. I make a note and feed only half rabbit next time or a smaller rabbit/chicken.
Dogs are fed by percentage of body weight and body condition. Learn to do the Tissue Tent Test in order to evaluate your dog's body condition. There are dozens of raw food calculators on the web.
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