Nutrition Overview | Best Life Canine New

Nutrition - An Overview

Nutrition is a vital part of our dog's success, overall well-being, and longevity.

Choosing a food can be a bit overwhelming.

There are a lot of choices.
Big Corp is VERY good at marketing and spends an obscene amount of money convincing - but usually misleading - campaigns.
We fall for the pretty pics on the bags because we are deeply programmed to respond to marketing and thinking it looks good to us - not if it is true for the dog's needs.

If you would like to explore better nutrition for your dog, or simply better understand how to read the food labels, I can help.

I can help you:

Learn how to read food labels to see beyond the marketing. (Seriously - stop falling for it!)
Select a better kibble option, and recommend good supplements to enhance the nutritional value of the kibble. There is no getting around kibble being an ultra-processed food and nearly 100% denatured. (Think eating McDs daily.)
Learn about and select a quality pre-made raw food, freeze dried food, or dehydrated option. Use as everyday meals, or rotate as a meal of topper to enhance kibble.
Learn how to prepare homemade meals and treats for either full meals or to use as toppers.

I know raw and homemade is not for everyone. However, there are simple solutions to consider adding to your dog's food to help offer a little bit of fresh food variety. A little bit of fresh is better than 100% processed diets.

What does "better" mean?

Overall, "better" means: 1) better sourcing and 2) transparency with ingredients and processing.

Better also means what is within the scope of what you have the resources to provide - time, effort, access, budget.

Don't feel bad if you can't or don't want to do a raw, fresh, or homemade meal. I understand all to well how difficult it can be at time. We feed 5 large dogs - sometimes fresh is out of our scope for time, effort, access, and budget. But we do the best we can with what we have and give ourselves grace to know we are committed to their best nutritional options within our scope at that time.

Sometimes it means dehydrated with toppers, sometimes full homemade, and sometimes its kibble just with supplements and a raw egg.

Now...What do we want to avoid

There are a lot of ingredients to stay away from, so do your dog a favor and read the labels.

Make independent choices for your dog and do not just take what a veterinary office pushes.

Here is the kicker with that...it is not their fault they might push poor quality food. The Veterinarian Schools are not equipped to teach Nutrition courses on a deeper level. They are focused on medicine, not dietary education, so there is simply a limited part of the educational process dedicated to things like Nutrition.

Much like medical school for humans, if one wants to study psychology, nutrition, physical fitness, etc. there are specialties they must pursue to comprehensively learn that subject matter. The traditional nutrition course in Veterinary schools is a curriculum owned, and written, by big dog food companies like Hill's and Purina (actually Nestlé - they own Purina Brands). This is the food students learn about, and unfortunately not much else is studied or provided. Consequently, this is the food they sell in their practice or push to their patients. It is what they know. If your Veterinarian pushes a particular food - challenge them to explain more about the ingredients and why the ingredients are good for your dog.

The ingredients are a bit upsetting in a lot of those blends so we strongly encourage our clients to read the labels, look up an ingredient if you do not know exactly what it is, and gain a better understanding of what is going in to their food.

Many of the ingredients listed are only included to act as a binder during the extrusion process to make kibble. These ingredients are also fillers used to add to the required minimums on the AAFCO nutritional content label, using very cheap ingredients. For example potatoes, grains, and legumes contain proteins and are very cheap.

So while the ingredients allow kibble to stick together it also increases the technical protein level in the food, satisfying the minimum protein content (legally required on the label) with more plant protein versus animal protein. The problem - those ingredients are starches which dogs do not require for their nutritional needs. Those starches convert to sugar in excessive amounts, which in turn lead to metabolic distress, inflammation, and weight management issues - to name a few problems.

Let's look at the not so great ingredients

Animal meal / fat / digest / by-product

If the label does not identify the exact animal source, it is a mix of animals. This is traditionally sourced from expired zoo animals and road kill. Some studies have even found this to come from euthanized dogs from shelters.

See link: Bill banning dog & cat remains - 2022 Ohio

2022 Ohio Bill

Don't know about you but item #4 in this article concerns me because it is discretionary to decide to enforce these laws!!

FDA Article

This one gives me chills, as the former AAFCO President rather boldly calls out that they can use any meat/protein in manufacturing dog food. AAFCO is the sole responsible regulatory body over deciding if the ingredients and the labels on pet food meet minimum requirements.

Former AAFCO President

Corn Gluten Meal / Corn Meal / Corn / Corn Germ Meal / Anything corn

These are a filler and binder with basically no nutritional value for dog. However, it helps boost the technical protein content with a very cheap ingredient, but an inappropriate food source for dogs.

Rice

Rice is also a binder and filler. But, you may be surprised to learn rice contains high levels of arsenic. So when the vet suggests a "bland diet" using boiled chicken and rice to manage GI upset, find something better. This video details much more on the concern of arsenic levels in rice (what's sold to us and used in our pet's food).

Arsenic & Rice

Powdered Cellulose

It's sawdust. Often production leftovers from factory floors repurposed and rendered into the dog food products.

Potatoes

Potatoes are a common "allergen" for a lot of dogs (two of mine are very sensitive to potatoes). Consuming high amounts of potatoes will often cause an overproduction of yeast because it is so starchy and not a bioavailable ingredient for dogs. It is used as a filler and binder.

However, it is not the worst ingredient. Many dogs have an issue with it because they are simply consuming way too much on a daily basis. Potatoes actually have great health benefits, like catechins, a powerful antioxidant.

Cooked potatoes might be a good treat to give your dog on occasion. But they should not make up a significant or regular portion of your dog's daily nutrition.

(Never feed raw potatoes - that's potentially lethal due to the toxic substance solanine. This is mostly neutralized during the cooking process.)

Are Russet Potatoes Good?

Overall let's just avoid starch as much as possible

Those are just a few very questionable and common ingredients to watch for in the food selection. In general you want the starchy type of ingredients to either be absent, or as far down on the label as you can get. The closer to "Salt" the ingredient is, the less of the ingredient they have used. This generally means less than 1-2% when we get beyond or near the Salt ingredient.

The more starchy ingredients used, and/or the higher the carbohydrate content of the food, the more likely we are to experience issues like recurring ear infections, "corn-chip" feet smells, itchiness, digestive irregularities, and symptoms that present like allergies or auto-immune diseases. In short, this is because starch is not usable by dogs and often disrupts the health of their gut, causing excess yeast build up or Leaky-Gut Syndrome.

Did you know the corn-chip smell dogs feet can have is actually a bacteria (Pseudomonas and Proteus) which are harmless but can become problematic.

This can lead to a yeast build up in the feet with all their little feet can get into and lead to increased odor or licking, itching, chewing behaviors. If that is happening, there is too much of this natural bacteria which could be an indication of issues in the diet or needing to clean the feet more regularly with a weekly foot soak.

I hope this helps give you a jump start on understanding the importance of reading labels, asking questions, and doing research. If the vet recommends a food and you ask what the ingredient is, but they can't tell you...that is a sign you may want to skip that food until you do your own research. Or reach out to us for a deep dive in to the food to help you make a better selection or understand how the food is impacting your dog.

Recommendations

Here you will find a few of our preferred food recommendations. Take a look and feel free to ask me questions if you want to have help deciding on a food.

What do our dogs eat

Foods we have used in the past: Zignature, Open Farm, Farmina, The Honest Kitchen, Primal, Blue Ridge Beef, Northwest Naturals, and local made by Aristopets.

Currently, we provide a mix of options for our dogs. We are in a phase of life that restricts our resources- time, effort, access, and budget. We try to provide as much homemade to our dogs as possible. But there are days (or weeks) where that is difficult to do and do it well. So we have decided we need the blend of options.

We keep Farmina on hand but since it is kibble, we use it as infrequently as possible. We also use The Honest Kitchen dehydrated and baked kibble options. When using those options we try to include "fresh" toppers like a raw egg, canned salmon, canned sardines, extra fruit and veggies we need to use up, etc. We also add homemade bone broth, plain greek yogurt, or plain pumpkin to top with nutrients, dietary and digestive aids, and moisture. Kibble Fixer by Four Leaf Rover is also part of any kibble meal.

As I mentioned, we do homemade as much as we can make it work. I prefer to be in control of the ingredients in their food but it is a challenge at times. Mostly because we have 5 to feed and finding enough of what we need can be an obstacle occasionally. We also keep Four Leaf Rover's Meat Mixer on hand. It's a fantastic new product that makes it easy to feed raw or fresh - just add the amount of protein per the bag instructions, stir, and feed! It is an easy and fast option for us and our dogs love it - but we don't do it every meal. Why? Again we feed 5 dogs that need about 12 pounds per day so this gets pricey as well as difficult to find space for that much meat for more than a couple days. And I don't have time to go to the store daily - even weekly is quite a task for me if you have caught on to how busy I am every week!

Here's the thing with homemade to keep in mind...

it needs to be properly balanced. You can't just throw together a steak and a few green beans and call it a day for a dog. But that said, if every meal is not balance it is not detrimental. We want the meals to be balanced every time but if there are a few that are not, it is generally okay. Think "balance over time" rather than every time. How to balance? Just find a reputable recipe that is balanced and AAFCO approved. Your average pet enthusiast blogger likely doesn't know anything about canine nutrition so don't just find an easy recipe on YouTube!

Here is the recipe we started with for our dog's food. This is what we use most often because it is one we have made over and over, our dogs do well on it, and that has simply made it easy. https://drjudymorgan.com/blogs/recipes/how-to-make-homemade-puploaf

When we make our dogs' food, we use the KitchenAid Mixer and Meat Grinder - the only thing I wanted for Christmas last year ha! Adulting - anything that makes my life easier is a gift!

You can also just use a blender or food processor. It is much more efficient than chopping by hand but if only making food for one dog, it is not nearly as time consuming to manual chop. Sometimes we bake the food, and other times we use the Instant Pot or our slow cooker. It all comes down to time for us. That's all.

If using a recipe for homemade, some ingredients may be difficult to find like certain organs, mushrooms, or mussels. Check places like a local International Foods Market, Asian Market, or Compare Foods. We can usually find all of the things like heart, liver, gizzards, mussels, mushrooms, etc. If you go the route of homemade, buy in bulk - like ordering bulk packages of sardines online.

Resources to learn more

I encourage exploring these resources for more good insight on nutrition information, recipes, education:

Dogs Naturally Magazine (their University is where I began my nutrition education a few years back, and are the creators of Four Leaf Rover)

Forever Dog & Forever Life - excellent books by Dr. Karen Becker & Rodney Habib

We believe in offering our dogs the opportunity to live their best life! Why would we not want this for our 4 legged companions we call our best friend?

Dr. Judy Morgan - If you're on social media, I highly recommend following her information. I have one of her cookbooks, Yin & Yang Nutrition for Dogs. Fun fact - she is located right in Zebulon, NC!

Physical, mental, emotional health are all important pieces of this best life. We work with you and your dog to help you achieve this harmony and balance through training, nutrition, owner education, and canine enrichment.