Sunday 7 October 2007

Healthy food for dogs

We try to make sure Penny eats only healthy food. Often it's from human-grade ingredients, though I don't believe that is always necessary. After all, she's a dog, with a wonderful canine digestive system.

Jabari's Mum mentioned to me the other day that she is trying a new pet food. She said:
For some time now I have been alternating the VAN with the Ecopet roll. First I bought it just to try it out. Jabari really liked it so I checked the site and found that they claim to use only human grade products and the ingredients sound really good and healthy.
There are small and large rolls (also dry food). As it is concentrated, the amount fed is quite small. (It is also locally produced.)

She says Jabari likes the chicken and the peanut flavored ones.

I'll give this food a try. I am a believer in offering a range of food to Penny because I want to provide a 'balanced' diet. It's easy to be influenced by the massive advertising campaigns waged by the mega-corporations selling pet foods. They try to convince us that only they know what our pets need. However, it seems to me that if parents can trust their judgment in raising a basically healthy human child, then pet owners should be able to acquire enough information to work out what a dog needs.

From the moment we brought Penny home and decided to feed as natural a diet as possible, I've browsed dog-feeding sites. Here are some that influenced me:
the barf diet
and barf Australia

Tom Lonsdale on raw feeding
I went to the vet with Penny the other day and when he looked in her mouth he said, "Lovely clean teeth. She must eat lots of bones!" That's thanks to the writings of Tom Lonsdale.

Raw Feeding FAQ and Raw Learning
Heaps of info on these sites.

Holistic health care for people and animals

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello again,
haven't been here for a while. My dog would eat anything, I think. So it is good to know what is healthy and what is poisonous. Onions are a worry as so many people have dogs around at barbecues and feed them leftovers. Penny loves red peppers (capsicums) and will crunch away at the little bits I give her as I cook. I actually think she will eat anything I might give her, so I have to be careful when cooking as she sits there hopefully the whole time.

parlance said...

Hi, Missy, from one 'Penny-owner' to another! Yep, it must be something in the name, because my Penny would eat anything too! (Sure makes it easy to give her medication.)

Amber-Mae said...

Evening Parlence & Penny!

My hooman M always told me that home-cooked food is best for us. Kibbles are not very good becoz they are processed food altho I don't mind eating them...People keep on telling my hooman M that kibbles are good but some say that they are bad & home-cooked food is better. So now, she feeds us half kibbles & half home-cooked food everyday. We get the best of both worlds. Just like what Buddha said, moderation in everything!

Love licks,
Solid Gold Dancer

parlance said...

Hi, Amber-Mae,
Penny basically gets the same food you do, I'd say. We feed some kibble, but not a lot. One difference, though, is that we try to give her a lot of raw food rather than cooked. I put vegetable and fruit scraps through a juicer and mix the pulp and the juice back together. She seems to love it. Mostly her raw food is meat and bones, of course.
Today I went to the butcher to buy her a rabbit. The guy said to me, "Oh, making rabbit soup, are you?" I was a embarrassed to say I was buying human-grade meat for my dog but he replied, "Well, I guess it depends how close to your dog you are."
I liked that. We're very close.

Unknown said...

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parlance said...

Thanks, Ed. I will visit the blog.

Unknown said...

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If you enjoy it please pass the code on to your friends and blog readers.

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parlance said...

Hi, Ed
I tried to do it but the site said the code had expired.