Dr. Earl Mindell's Nutrition and Health for Dogs

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uring more than thirty years of writing about health and nutrition, hundreds and maybe even thousands of people have thanked me for giving them the information they need to lead a healthy, energetic life. I have found that once a person learns how the food he or she is eating affects every aspect of life, and then experiences the difference when positive lifestyle changes are made, there’s no going back.There is nothing like optimal health to convince a person that diet, exercise, clean water, and taking some supplements works wonders.

As I learn more about the nutritional needs of dogs, I find that confusion and misconceptions abound. Few people, including veterinarians, realize that a dog’s body functions much the same as a human body and has similar nutritional needs.You could probably go into your refrigerator right now and make a nutritious, balanced meal for your dog.

The commercial dog-food industry is a multi-million dollar business that primarily depends on hiding the truth about what is good nutrition for a dog. For example, many in the dog-food industry have perpetuated the myth that your dog is healthiest and happiest when she gets the same food every day. That’s no more true than it would be for you.Your dog thrives on a variety of fresh foods, including fruits and vegetables. If you compare your dog’s nutritional needs to the ingredients in the majority of commercial dog foods, you will understand why dogs are dying younger than they should and are plagued by chronic illnesses.

The foundation for your dog’s good health is the same as it is for you—good nutrition, exercise, clean water, and love. For optimal health, you can build on that foundation with specific food and supplements. I’ll tell you about the specific nutritional needs your dog has that are different from yours, and how to keep her immune system strong.

It is also important to support your dog nutritionally against those illnesses that she might be predisposed to genetically. Just as with people (one family may have a high incidence of cancer and another a high incidence of heart disease) different breeds of dogs are genetically predisposed to certain illnesses. In this book you will learn which illnesses your breed is prone to and how to avoid or delay the onset of the more common illnesses.

The focus of this book is on how your dog’s body functions nutritionally, what your dog’s nutritional needs are, and easy, flexible, affordable ways to keep your dog in optimal health through all phases of her life.

The nutritional information I’ll give you is a guideline for formulating a diet and supplement plan for your dog. Each and every dog is different and has different nutritional needs. I’ll explain to you why each nutrient is needed, so you can create a diet for your dog’s specific needs. The recommended amounts to feed are also meant to give you a general sense of what’s appropriate for that size of dog.What your dog actually eats needs to be balanced for her unique combination of age, level of exercise, and individual metabolism. In the same way, your dog’s multivitamin-mineral supplement doesn’t have to exactly fit the recommended dosages (we are very grateful to Dr. Beverly Cappel-King for providing these) as long as they are close and contain the proper balance of vitamins and minerals.

You will find that as you pay closer attention to your dog’s health, your bond with your best friend will become stronger, and that having a dog in your life will become an even greater privilege and joy than it is now.

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ou are what you eat. It’s a common saying that few people take seriously, and yet good nutrition is the foundation for good health. If your dog doesn’t have a soft, shiny, clean coat, eyes that are bright, clear, and alert, clean teeth, pink gums, and a lean, muscular body, then she is not in good health.The good news is that you can restore and maintain your dog’s health through proper nutrition.

Most commercial dog food is low in nutrients and high in additives and preservatives. Dog-food companies are not required to make human-grade dog food, meaning it is not fit for human consumption; and yet, with a few exceptions your dog’s body functions much the same as yours and has similar nutritional requirements for optimal health.

A dog isn’t conditioned to complain about her aches and pains as we are, and she will instinctively hide physical problems, because in any pack of animals the predators look for the weakest members. That is why it is important to do a quick, head-to-tail health check of your dog each month. Start with the head and look for clean teeth, dark pink gums, bright clear eyes, and clean ears.Work your way back, looking for any signs of weight gain or loss, a soft, shiny, clean, mat-free coat and a clean underbelly free of fleas and flea dirt. As you’re going over your dog’s coat, take note of how it smells. Unless she has recently rolled in something potent, it should not have any odor.That doggy smell is a sure sign of ill health. Last, and the least desirable, check your dog’s rear end to be sure it is clean, with no sign of worms.

If your dog doesn’t pass the health check, a simple change in diet could bring her back to optimal health. If your dog shows any signs of ill health, including subtle changes such as a dull, dirty coat, it is a good idea to first bring her to your veterinarian for a thorough health check. In this chapter, you will learn what to look for in a commercial dog food and what to steer clear of. I will take the mystery and labor out of home-cooked meals and help you integrate fresh foods into your dog’s diet. In later chapters I will also give you feeding guidelines for special needs, such as obesity, recovering from illness, and pregnant and nursing dogs.

If you are not feeding your dog an all-natural, human-grade dog food and are going to change to all-natural food or home-cooked meals, make the change slowly.Time after time I have had people tell me they tried home-cooked meals or that all-natural stuff and it made their dogs terribly sick with diarrhea and mucousy stools. What made the dogs sick was their body’s attempt to detoxify from the toxin-filled food they had been eating. The dogs’ bodies were struggling to come back to a natural state by getting rid of all the chemicals and preservatives that had been accumulating.A gradual change to a natural diet will detoxify your dog gradually, creating less of a shock to her system and fewer side effects, such as diarrhea.

Each dog is a unique individual with specific nutritional needs. Although golden retrievers look alike and generally have similar personalities and health problems, each golden retriever has different dietary needs depending on how her body processes foods, their activity level, age, genetic make-up, environment and a whole host of other internal and external factors. In this chapter, I will give you nutritional guidelines to use as a starting point in tailoring a diet to specifically meet your dog’s needs. As you gradually introduce new foods to your dog, watch her carefully for any negative or positive reactions. Keep an eye out for things like changes in her coat, eye clarity, energy level, and weight gain or loss.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN CHOOSING A COMMERCIAL DOG FOOD

Although there are more than 300 pet food manufacturers in the United States with moer than 11 billion dollars a year in sales, your choice of truly high-quality foods is extremely limited. Most commercial dog foods are canned, semi-moist, or dry. Semi-moist can be eliminated from your list of choices because it is very high in sugar and other flavor additives that have no nutritional value and are addictive. Canned and dry dog foods are your remaining choices, with dry foods being the most popular because they are less expensive, less cumbersome, and easier to use. Here are your three most important criteria in choosing a dry dog food.

The first thing to look for is meat that is human grade or United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspected. USDA inspected meat is, by definition, fit for human consumption. Optimally, buy a dog food made of organic, human grade, or USDA meat. Organic meat comes from animals raised without the use of antibiotics, growth hormones, such as estrogen, or steroids. If the meat is not USDA or human grade, it is most likely coming from diseased, drugged, and decaying animals, including dogs and cats.There are many reports of rendering plants throughout the United States that receive dead dogs and cats, process them into meat meal, and sell them to dog-food manufacturers. These animals are most likely riddled with diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, and kidney and liver disease. Sodium pentobarbital, which is used to euthanize dogs and cats, survives the rendering process and will be in the meat meal that is sold to the dog-food manufacturers. A rendering plant in Baltimore has been known to process more than 1,800 animals a month, including dogs, and sells their products to Alpo, Ralston Purina, and Heinz pet food companies.This meat can be listed on the dog-food label as meat meal or meat and bone meal.

The second criteria in choosing a dog food is to look for natural preservatives. Check the label for the antioxidants vitamin E and vitamin C. Stay away from chemical antioxidants such as ethoxyquin, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). Ethoxyquin is a chemical that is manufactured for use in making rubber and preserving animal feed. It must be labeled as a poison by the manufacturer, is listed as a pesticide by the Department of Agriculture, and has been banned from use in human food.The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) lists BHA and BHT as chemical hazards in the laboratory.They have been linked to various forms of cancer, most commonly bladder, kidney, and liver cancer.

Natural antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, are the best preservatives because they are natural to your dog’s body and she can use what she needs and easily excrete any she doesn’t need.

The third criteria for dry dog food is freshness. Look for a brand with a maximum shelf life of six months. Just as you look for the expiration date when you buy milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese, start looking for the date on the bag of dry food. Look for a bag that is under three months old and please don’t buy a fortypound bag of food for your Chihuahua. By the time a toy breed eats forty pounds of dog food, it will be stale and rancid. Rancid fats and oils cause oxidation, a process within your dog’s body in which unstable oxygen molecules, known as free radicals, attack healthy cells in an attempt to stabilize themselves. The healthy cell becomes unstable from the attack and is now a free radical looking for a healthy cell to stabilize it. Free-radical damage contributes to allergies, arthritis, cancer, eye disease, heart disease, and kidney disease. The smell of rancid oil in dog food is often not detectable, which makes the date on the bag your only indicator of freshness. Some dog-food companies put the date the food is made on the bag and some put the expiration date on the bag.The person you buy the food from should know which system the company uses. Buy enough food for a maximum of one month and either keep it in a dark, dry area in a tightly closed container or close the bag tightly. Canned dog food may not have an expiration date on it, but the other two criteria are the same: human grade meat and natural preservatives. Ideally your dog should be eating fresh, naturally preserved food made with meat that you would put on your dinner table. See Resources in back for a list of dog-food companies that fit these criteria. I have indicated the companies that use organic meat and would highly recommend that you feed your dog organic meat if it is available in your area.

HOW TO READ DOG-FOOD LABELS

Dog-food labels are just as confusing as people-food labels so you aren’t going to try to read and understand each ingredient.You can scan the label and look for red flags.

The ingredients are listed in descending order by weight.The ingredient that weighs the most is first but is not necessarily the primary ingredient. If you add a cup of beef and a cup of oats, the oats will weigh significantly less than the beef.

Meat should be the first ingredient. If the label doesn’t specify the type of meat, such as beef, chicken, or lamb, cross that food off your list. If the meat is simply listed as meat, it could be dog, cat, or a decaying raccoon someone found on the side of the road on the way to work.

Steer clear of by-products.They can be any part of the animal except for the meat, hair, horn, teeth, and hoofs, which means it could be feathers, feet, and heads. Minced feathers and feet won’t directly hurt your dog, but their nutritional value is highly questionable.

Meal and digest are fine. Meat meal is chopped or ground meat, bone, and organs. Poultry meal is chopped or ground meat, bone, and skin. Digest is meat that is pre-digested through a chemical or enzymatic process.You wouldn’t want your only source of meat to be digest, so be sure there are additional sources, such as meal.You also want meat that is naturally digested with enzymes—not chemicals. If the shelf life of the food is six months or less, you can feel confident that the meat is naturally digested and doesn’t contain chemicals.

The next ingredients listed are usually the grains and fats. Look for whole grains, such as ground brown rice. Avoid terms like hulls, mill run or by-products.These are the waste that’s left after the grains are processed for human consumption. Ironically, what is considered waste is the most nutritious part of the grain, but it still doesn’t give you the complete balance of nutrients that whole grains do.

Fats should be specifically identified. It should say beef fat or poultry fat, not simply animal fat, and it should be naturally preserved, usually with vitamin E.

The rest of the ingredients can range from a simple list of vitamins and minerals, which you will recognize after reading this book, to various plants, such as vegetables, herbs, and kelp.

Stay away from beet pulp. If you see beet pulp on the label, cross that food off your list. Beet pulp is another common ingredient in dog food that would be thrown in the garbage by the sugar-beet processor if the dog-food manufacturers didn’t buy it. Many dog-food manufacturers add beet pulp to their dog food in an attempt to satisfy the myth that the harder a dog’s stool the better.Your dog’s stool should not be rock hard, it should be soft and slightly formed.As beet pulp passes through the intestine and the colon, it absorbs water and swells up to ten times its dry state, which causes it to pass very slowly and produces hard stools.

Diarrhea for more than a day or two is one of the few early indicators you have that your dog has an intestinal disorder. An artificial stool hardener, such as beet pulp, will put you days behind in identifying and treating an illness. Beet pulp also has a high sugar content. Dogs get just as addicted to sugar as we do, and it also makes them fat, hyperactive, and diabetic.

Gastric torsion is one of the leading causes of death in large and giant barrel-chested dogs, such as the basset hound, Bernese mountain dog, bloodhound (leading cause of death), boxer, briard, bullmastiff, Chinese shar-pei, chow chow, Doberman pinscher, English setter, German shepherd, Gordon setter, greyhound, Irish setter, Labrador retriever, Russian wolfhound, Saint Bernard, Scottish deerhound, standard poodle, and weimaraner. The exact cause of gastric bloat and torsion has not been determined, probably because there is not one exact cause, but many breeders believe that feeding dry food without adding water is one cause. Dry food fed without water absorbs water from the stomach and swells. Adding beet pulp will cause additional swelling and additional risk. (See Chapter 8 for more on gastric torsion.)

You have probably studied the guaranteed analysis on pet food labels, scratched your head, and wondered what it should mean to you. Because there are no regulations on the quality of ingredients in dog food, unless you know the ingredients are high quality, it is useless information.The guaranteed analysis lists minimum or maximum percentages of ingredients, such as crude protein, fat, and fiber.The catch is, they don’t have to tell you exactly what sources the protein, fat, and fiber come from. Lots of foods contain protein, but your dog’s ability to absorb and use protein varies. Eggs are a great protein source because your dog’s body will absorb and use all the protein in an egg. An old leather shoe is a poor source of protein because your dog’s body can’t absorb the protein in an old leather shoe, and yet it could be legally listed on the ingredient label as meat by-products and could be included as a source of protein. If the food contains high-quality ingredients, then you can use the guaranteed analysis to narrow down your choices of dog food by finding a brand with optimal amounts of protein, fat, and fiber.

If you are going to feed your dog dry or canned food, be sure all the ingredients have nutritional value for your dog, and also add a variety of fresh, live foods every day. Contrary to what the dog-food manufacturers would like you to believe, a variety of nutrient-rich foods is the best way to give your dog a balanced diet.

HOME-COOKED MEALS

Many people shy away from home-cooked meals for their dogs. They don’t know where to start, they think it will be too time-consuming or they are worried that their pets won’t get proper nutrition. Preparing homemade food does take more time than throwing a cup of dry food in a dish, but not much more, and it is really very simple.

Your dog is an omnivore, meaning she eats both animal and plant foods. In the case of a dog, the need for animal food is predominant. The approximate nutritional proportions for a dog’s healthy meal are 25 percent organ meat (liver, kidney, heart), 25 percent muscle meat, 25 percent grains and 25 percent vegetables. For example, for a fifty-pound dog, one meal might consist of one-half cup liver, one-half cup ground beef, one-half cup minced or grated carrots and broccoli, and one-half cup brown rice and oats, sprinkled with a multi-vitamin/multi-mineral supplement.

Ground meat is an economical and easy source of muscle meat. Buy the ground meat that is packaged by the store because meat that is packaged in the store usually means it was ground in the store.This reduces the risk of contamination that occurs in large meat-processing plants or in transporting the meat. As much as possible, try to vary the type of meat you feed. This will give your dog a variety of nutrients and help reduce the chances of developing an allergy to one type of meat. If you can find bones with lots of meat on them, that is a healthy, fun way to feed muscle meat to your dog. To avoid splintering, always feed bones raw. I don’t recommend poultry bones. Although it is unusual, Dr. Beverly Cappel-King has treated several dogs that have punctured their intestines eating poultry bones.

If your dog is lazy and inactive, you might want to avoid turkey, and if she is hyperactive you might want to try adding turkey to her diet. Have you ever wondered why, after a turkey dinner, you never want to do the dishes or play a game of touch football, you just want to take a nap? Turkey contains the amino acid tryptophan, which acts as a mild sedative.

If possible, try to find an affordable source of organic organ meats. The liver and kidney are the organs that filter waste from the body and toxins can accumulate there. If you have a grocery store nearby that sells organic meat, the butcher may be able to lower the price if you buy in bulk. If you don’t have a big freezer your friends may be interested in organic organ meat for themselves and/or their dog(s).Your local health food store may also know of a source. If you can’t find an organic source, it is best to skip the organ meats.

If you feed your dog raw meat, which is the healthiest way to do it, freeze the meat in meal-size packages and take out enough each morning for the next day and put it in your refrigerator.

For the carbohydrate portion of the meal, buy whole grains, such as amaranth, barley grits, brown rice, buckwheat, millet, oats, whole-wheat couscous, or quinoa, a whole grain that is high in protein.Your dog’s saliva doesn’t contain the starch-digesting enzymes that humans have so she can’t digest large pieces or quantities of starchy food. Add some extra water, and cook the grains a little longer than you would for yourself. If you can see grains in your dog’s stool, that means she isn’t digesting them and they need to be cooked longer. Cooking breaks down the starches in the grains, making them easier to digest. You can cook enough for a week at one time.

Most vegetables are good for your dog. Dark-green leafy vegetables and orange, red, and yellow vegetables are the most nutritious. Onions should be avoided because they contain a substance called n-propyl disulfide, which alters and eventually destroys the red blood cells of dogs, causing hemolytic anemia and sometimes death. If your dog has arthritis, try avoiding vegetables from the nightshade family (eggplant, peppers, potato, tomato), as these vegetables can sometimes aggravate arthritis.

Either slightly cook the vegetables or, to preserve the enzymes, chop or grate them finely and serve them raw. I often just give my dog a little bit of what the rest of the family is getting for dinner and leave some in the fridge for the next morning. After all, dogs aren’t the only ones who should eat their peas and broccoli.

You don’t have to be strict about the food proportions you give. Older dogs who have never eaten vegetables may not have a taste for them unless they’re well disguised in a little butter or olive oil. Dogs fed vegetables early in life will be more inclined to eat them plain and raw. Every dog’s needs are different and will vary throughout her life. Those quantities are a guideline. If she tends to leave grains in her dish, cut back a little on the grains. Meat, grains, and vegetables are the basics. After those, any whole nutritious foods can be added, such as beans, cottage cheese, eggs, fruits, unsalted nuts, and yogurt.

How much food to feed each day will also vary with each dog. Just as every person’s body uses food differently, so does