The Dish by Darcy

“Dear Darcie, I have been feeding our girl Nature’s Variety most of her 5 years now but I’m wondering if I’m feeding her too much (a full 1 1/2-2 patties (the hamburg-sized ones) per day and she’s clearly a few pound heavier than she should be (maybe 3-4) and should I EVER be feeding her even a a decent kibble (Innova Evo) for her teeth to have something to chew on besides the raw diet?
Any answers are greatly appreciated. NO vets around here are pro-raw.
THANKS!!!” Abby

The simple answer to your question is that either you’re feeding her too much food for her individual metabolism or she’s not getting enough exercise to burn it up.

Most vets that I know don’t like raw food for dogs either. That’s such a puzzle to a practical person like me. One vet told me with a straight face years ago that if he told his patients to feed raw food like we do, he would go broke, he wouldn’t have any patients any more. He was doing a check up on our seventeen year old Golden at the time. I suggested that he become a holistic vet, a well dog doctor. Nope, he said, I just don’t think there’s any money in that.

Another vet told me that raw food will make dogs dangerous and bloodthirsty, they’ll become aggressive and attack their owners. Hmmm. Really. Watch for the video in this blog, I’ll show you dinner time at our house. It’s all very civil and it’s all raw. And so far our dogs have never attacked us or eaten us for breakfast.

Doesn’t it seem more than odd to you that a doctor in the work of helping dogs would think that way? Shouldn’t they really know more about dogs than that? Don’t they really have the dog’s wellness at heart? Ask them where they grew up, city or town, and where did they get their nutritional education. Most of them tell me that they grew up in town, so they never saw animals doing what they would naturally do if people weren’t feeding them, and they learned what “good” nutrition was from the big dog food companies who gave the lecture at their vet school that one Wednesday afternoon. That brand is usually the food they carry in the office, too. Go figure.

Most veterinarians focus on drugs, vaccinations, and surgery and I’m glad that science has come as far as it has. I don’t want to discount the good it does or the skill they provide when it’s necessary. I do think that too much is too much though and that’s sad for our dogs. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were more vets who concerned themselves with the wellness of the whole dog instead of just focusing on  fixing the results of bad foods, bleached rawhide, and too many drugs? I think the answer to this is that some of them are in it for the money, some  simply forgot why they wanted to be a vet in the first place, to make the world a better place for animals, and some just don’t know any better…yet.

Rule of thumb for raw food: Adult dogs will eat 2% of their correct body weight each day. Puppies will eat 10% of their correct body weight each day. Keep reading for more information, it’s not just that simple, but it almost is.

All of us burn calories at our own rate. Like people, some dogs can gain weight just by looking at food, like me and ice cream.

Truly the best way to maintain weight is portion control and exercise. I like walking and swimming for me and my dogs. We eat good and simple foods for the best nutrition, pound for pound. If I eat too much and don’t move to burn it, I gain weight.

My opinion about your question about kibble is, I don’t feed my dogs kibble (dry dog food). I like raw food for them. They occasionally get a cereal type cookie for a treat, but it’s a treat. Read the labels on dog food. Many of them start with “corn” and then two or three more grains. That stuff turns to fat in most bodies, unless there are miles and miles of high energy exercise involved every day.

Here’s a good way to monitor your dog’s weight without a scale. Feel your dog ribs every day for the rest of their lives. It’s easy. You say good morning every morning, do it this way. Rub your fingers over their ribs, one hand on each side of the dog. You should feel a very thin layer of fat under the skin and still be able to feel ribs easily. That’s perfect.

If your dog is obesely fat, you’ll feel a thick layer of fat, you won’t feel any ribs at all. If your dog is too skinny, a smaller person’s fingers will fit between the ribs without pushing. Both too fat and too skinny are health hazards for dogs. Fat dogs are looking at heart disease and countless other ills down the line. Too thin dogs may be having a problem getting enough nutrition. Without good nutrition, we can’t think straight, act appropriate for our species, and we don’t feel good. Do remember that some dogs, just like people, are naturally thin or a bit heavier. Lean dogs tend to live longer, just like people.

I feed raw food to my dogs, Nature’s Variety raw frozen has the bones ground in so it’s a very good food. I don’t give my dogs cooked commercial foods, except canned Tripett Tripe. I like that because it’s an easy way to feed tripe to my dogs without needing a place to store fresh tripe. My dogs get a lot of fresh raw chewing bones, too. For chewing pleasure, get some femur bones or any bone that your dog can’t chew into pieces with some meat on them. Only the strongest dogs can chew up a femur bone but they can get the marrow and the chewing lasts a long, long time. Chewing is essential to the mental well being of a dog.

Most dogs can eat raw chicken bones, raw turkey bones, raw beef bones, raw lamb bones, raw deer bones, all without any troubles. They are excellent sources of nutrition. Know your dog and how he chews. Swallowing a raw chicken wing raw has never been a problem for my dogs, but swallowing shards of a raw beef rib could be for some dogs, those can be sharp.

There are many good kibbles made today and I’m not against feeding them. We carry some of them here at SitStay.com. Read the labels before you feed. If the first ingredient is corn, in my opinion, it’s not a good food for a dog. I live in the great cattle state of Nebraska, God’s Own Cow Country. Corn is fed to cattle to add tenderness to your meat. If you like a good steak, the one with the fat marbling, the stuff that makes it tender and juicy, that came from a steer who stood day after day and ate a meals of corn.

If your dog is fat or gaining weight, check your food first. If the food is not mostly grain but has a good choice of meat in it, check the exercise the dog is getting. If that’s okay, too, if your dog spends at least an hour walking and runs and plays part of the day, that’s pretty good exercise. More is better if they are in good health.

If your dog is fat or gaining weight and exercise is not an issue, your dog could be sick or have an underlying illness like heart problems or kidneys. Have your holistic vet check them out. Please don’t let your vet talk you into giving your dogs drugs to make them healthy unless there is no other way. Try a more natural approach whenever you can. Drugs seem to make things worse instead of better, and there may be side effects. Know what those are before you start the drug. Raw food has changed the sickest dogs into the most well of dogs. Often it’s simply a change to good nutrition.

There is another thing that could be happening to your dog, you didn’t say how much she should weigh so let me give you this. If your dog is not eating enough, that can cause a fat gain, a weight gain. Our bodies are like machines, we need fuel to operate properly. The human body and our dog’s bodies, too, will store fat if our brain tells us there is a famine or one on the way. If you dog’s brain is telling the body that there isn’t enough food because they aren’t getting enough food in a week’s time, the food will be stored as fat for the day when there won’t be any more food to eat. The brain is a marvelous thing.

My older girls are in great shape. Dancer will be 14 this summer and is 50 pounds. Tilli will be 13 early in fall and is 65 pounds. They each eat the same amount every day: 1 pound of raw food. That’s two patties of Nature’s Variety raw frozen food. (I designed that food years ago and I still love it. It has changed a little bit through the years, it’s still one of the best commercially ground foods available, it does include the bones.)

Two percent of 50 is 1 pound. Two percent of 65 is 1.3 pounds. Both eat 1 pound of raw food each day.

So feeding is not an exact science. You have to touch and watch your dogs to know how much food they need. Watch those ribs daily, adjust food intake daily according to the ribs (it works for people, too), and make sure that the food you feed is nutritious. No empty calories for dogs.

A last thought. If you’re training, figure the treats into the dog’s daily diet, adjust meal time amounts. Use nutritious treats, not that stuff that has all those names of things you can’t pronounce. Read labels. Know what you’re putting into your dog’s body. You’re in control of that. Make sure you know if someone else is sneaking food to the dogs aside from meals. That’s okay in our house but we have to know so nobody over eats.

I always say, “If Nature intended for dogs to eat cooked food, they’d have pockets for their matches.”