The Dish by Darcy

Hi Darcy, I am confused about feeding amounts. I read in one of your posts raw food is 2% of body weight.

They were all rescues. Darcy, thanks for sharing your expertise. Linda

Dear Linda, I’m not a nutritionist or a vet. I do have a lot of good experiences with my own dogs and have helped thousands of people move to better diets and make their dogs well dogs. We are so lucky to have logical, practical, Mother Nature provided guidelines on our side, it helps us understand what dogs need. If your dog caught a rabbit, what would he be eating? Brain, bones, meat, and whatever was the veggie matter inside that rabbit’s stomach. That’s what we try to simulate when we assemble food for our dogs. Of course, a whole rabbit is easy if you have it available, most people don’t and they assemble dinner from several different groups of foods.

This may help you more than anything. Each dog is different, just like humans are different. Amounts of food mean different things to each body. For instance, if you feed all dogs the same every day, one may gain weight, one may lose weight and one may stay the same weight. As your dogs grow older, they may need less of one thing and more of another. Some people can eat huge amounts of food in a day and never gain weight, that’s not me, if I eat too much, my fat and body mass increases. The individual body determines how the dogs use the food, and how fast, depending on their metabolism and activity.

The guidelines are just guidelines to get you started. Rule of thumb for a raw diet daily is 2% adult, 10% puppy. Here’s the test of how to determine if your dogs are getting the right amount of food. Feel their ribs, every morning. I feel my dogs ribs every time I pet them, it’s a good habit to get into.

How to feel the ribs: Run your fingers across the ribs from head to tail and back again. A dog’s ribs in good weight means that you can feel the ribs easily but they are under a lightly padded layer. The belly should not be fat, but firm and svelte. I don’t generally share other websites but this one is pretty good for showing drawings of what a dog body shape should look like. Click here to go to the site.

If your dogs are fat or overweight from the amount you’re feeding now, cut it down. Add a raw bone with a little meat, like a knuckle or something small enough for them to chew on without getting to eat it. This is for chewing pleasure. It not only helps them feel like they are getting more to eat so calms hunger that they might feel but also increases calmness and mental health. Watching a dog get down and chew on a bone is a lot like watching a person doing what they love to do, it’s total happiness and complete concentration. It does wonders to calm the mind and emotions.

If your dog’s ribs are just right and they are getting plenty of bone chewing and activity, you’re right on with what you’re feeding. Watch each individual dog. You might keep a journal but really, feeling the ribs every day before breakfast will tell you how much food they should get. If you have a fatter dog, give a little less for breakfast. A skinny dog, a little more. You might have to alter food day to day for some until you start to understand how their body uses the food. It’s a lot easier than it sounds and with practice, you’ll know just what each needs. If you can feed yourself, you can feed your dogs.

I remember our Golden Retriever Kari, she was a rescue, too. She was an easy keeper, just like me. She didn’t eat much, chewed a lot!, and had to have tons of exercise to keep her body beautiful.

And then there is Oliver, also a rescue. I don’t know how that guy got so big, he’s over 92 pounds now. He didn’t eat very much until he was about 11 months, like many rescues who go through trying times, he was afraid of food. Before he was rescued, he was alone with his sister dealing with mange and a whole lot of other life threatening issues. My best guess is that she ruled the roost. In the garage alone with his sister and a bowl of food every day, my guess is that she was the stronger dog and personality and she got most of it on her schedule. He was too sick to fight her and probably submitted to her and eventually submitted to food as well. That seems weird but I hear more and more that rescue dogs are refusing to eat. It has to do with trauma in some instances. I believe that was what happened to him. The sister was adopted first leaving him alone but the damage had already been done. He was afraid to eat for a long time and had to be coaxed out of his skinny, skinny state. After a while of living with Kent and eating raw food, his fear of food went away and his appetite kicked in, now he really loves to eat. He eats a lot! He’s still growing and filling out and he’s a highly active boy. He loves to chew! He’s quite the sweetheart.

So, determine again by weight 2% raw food of adult body weight for each day. Then adjust to the dog’s needs. Maybe a little more meat, a little more veggies, a little more chewing. Each might need something else. Lots of chewing, lots of exercise.

Don’t lose sleep over feeding the dogs right. They definitely will not go hungry. Keeping them lean is the hardest thing.

If you need hands on guidance, go to the SitStay Dog Run Forum for raw diet. They are wonderful and helpful. And SitStay.com has some great books on the subject, too. – Darcy

Dear Darcy, I called and talked to you this morning, you can use this in your blog. I read your blog and I met you recently, you’re just like I thought you would be. I have a question that doesn’t have much to do with dogs, I hope that’s okay. My question is, How do you keep your cool, how do you keep from getting mad or hurt? Every once in a while someone will leave a nasty comment directed at you, how do you deal with that so easily? I must have anger issues because when someone talks to me or about me like that I give them right back what they gave me and we all feel bad for a long time, sometimes forever. I’ve watched you get better and better at answering the hard stuff. You’re better than me. Any help is welcome. I wish to be a nicer person. By the way, I said I’d let you know how I’m doing, I lost 25 pounds in three months by quitting fast food, you encouraged me to do that.  I’ve sworn off drinking soda now too. I was drinking three cans a day. I saw the fat drinking video. YUCK. A fan, Deb

Dear Deb,

Congratulations on your weight loss! It’s amazing what a diet change can do for a body and so quickly, isn’t it! I’m glad that you want to be a happier person, you’ll find that the fat drops off even more quickly when that happens.

The drink soda and be fat videos and commercials are pretty yucky but true, they should have included fruit juice with sugar added, too. I’ve preached it before, anything with added sugar, corn or corn syrup is going to turn to fat and lie to your brain, for us and our dogs. Our brain gets confused when we add sugar and processed foods to our body, it doesn’t know any more when we’re full so we continue to eat. Our body can’t process all that sugar so it stores it as fat. Nobody but the most active can run off all that sugar every single day. Sedentary people get bigger and bigger. Drink soda, eat processed food, add fat to the belly and internal organs. It’s not all your fault. The guys who market that stuff know what makes people tick and they use you against yourself to fill their bank accounts. The only way to naturally lose the fat is to stop putting sugar and processed foods into the body, eat a simple natural diet, and start moving again. When I was growing up and when my kids were growing up, soda and eating out once in a while were treats. Today people eat out all the time and drink soda instead of water with meals and for snacks. I know lots of people who are hooked on soda pop and juice. I see them growing bigger and bigger around the middle every year, some of them suffer depression and diabetes. It’s not hard to link all that processed food and sugar to fat. The doctors and undertakers have been very busy since the onset of fast food and soft drinks. I’m glad that you’re thumbing your nose at all of it. You go, Girl!

Oh, boy. On to the anger issues and criticism.

The first thing I do is look at the criticism. Was it constructive? Was it well meaning and helpful? I try to find something in it that I can learn from. Sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I don’t see anything helpful at all. Those are those criticisms who come from people who don’t like themselves or other people very much. Remember high school cliques? It’s like that, I think. People who criticize without love and good intention behind it usually belong to a set of persons who support that kind of attitude. It’s meanness and unhappiness. Those people don’t feel substantial until someone else is unhappy. It’s been like that forever and will continue to be like that until everyone works their heart and tongue only with love and not with hate or anger.

I’m not better than anyone else and it hasn’t always been this way for me. Although I’ve always been a pretty happy person and tried to answer with kindness, there have been times that I felt like I needed to defend myself against my critics and did. There was never one time that it made me feel good so realized I had to find a better way for my own self preservation and peace. I’ve learned how to better handle criticism in whatever form it comes.

There are still times that my feelings get jolted and when that happens, I go to my happy place for a while. What is my happy place? It’s the quiet place inside of me where only peace exists. There are no arguments, hurt feelings, self worth issues, anger, sharp tongues, hate, criticisms… only joy and peace. When I come back from there, it all seems so trivial and that’s where I answer from. Here at The Dish I answer with the dogs in mind, if the criticism might hurt a dog, I do try to give the best answer that I can. And sometimes I don’t answer. I don’t have to defend myself from those who would like to hurt me.

What is my quiet place? I meditate daily and because I do that, I have an immediate and constant link to that quiet place even while I am walking and working. Scientific research has been done recently on the effects of meditation on the human brain. They have found that people who meditate on a regular basis are happier than those who don’t meditate. When we meditate, a certain spot in our brain is activated, it’s in the left frontal cortex, it’s like the joy activity center of our brain. When this part of the brain is activated on a regular basis, we produce less of the stress hormone cortisol, we develop a buffer against fear and panic signals, and we recover faster from negative events. They’ve even found that people who mediate don’t have depression. It’s the best equalizer.

I’ve had my share of failings in this life and most of it was due to my bad choices and my tongue, I’ve learned that joy is the only real opposite to everything that could go wrong or make me feel bad. I choose joy.

Going to my quiet place when someone has made an effort to hurt my feelings gives me a way to step back and look at what happened before reacting. Sort of a consider the source kind of thing. Usually the source is not who I want to pattern my life after so my reaction is calm and forgiving, even to trying to give them a way to back out and make it right again. That doesn’t mean that I can’t answer the criticism or attack, it does mean that I can answer calmly and with intelligence. I don’t have to stand up for myself. Just because someone else thinks I’m wrong doesn’t make them right. Sometimes I am wrong, those are the times I learn something new, accept it, and thank that person for giving me that gift.

I don’t have revengeful thoughts racing through my head about how to get even with someone who hurt me. I don’t have worries or doom poking at me on a minute by minute schedule. I don’t have depression. I don’t worry about the future although I do plan for it. I don’t worry about the past. I live like the dogs do, in the moment. My thoughts are clear and bright and happy. Sometimes I think I’ll just burst with joy, no matter what else is going on in life…. and life does keep happening. We just don’t have to be so affected by it that it steals our joy. I often burst into song. That’s not very pretty to listen to but I sing like no one is listening. GBG

Give yourself permission to be beautiful, inside and out. Pray for those who criticism you. Try to never let a cross word or an untruth cross your lips, then you don’t have to feel defensive about what you’ve said. Accept criticism that is given to you with a kind heart. Learn to meditate. Find your happy, quiet place. Accept your peace and spread it around. It really is a nice way to live. Worry free and joy filled.

Pray for me. I put myself out there every day and that often invites criticism. Some days the critics can be pretty harsh. So far, I’m only human and thank God that most of my Readers are wonderful, loving people. LOL! – Thanks, Darcy