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Feeding your dog fresh

According to its advocates, apple cider vinegar (ACV) is one of the least expensive, most versatile, and most effective canine health aids.  Applied topically it’s...

Many dogs enjoy and benefit from consuming milk and other milk-based foods without any ill effects. Follow these tips if you'd like to add dairy products to your dog's diet.

The question of how best to feed dogs stimulates great debate and evokes strong emotions among dog folks. (Yes, this an intended understatement.) One of the most contentiously defended viewpoints in recent years is that dogs should not be fed diets that contain digestible carbohydrate (starch). Two primary arguments are used to defend this position.

There are many different ways of feeding dogs – commercially prepared dry, wet, semi-moist, freeze-dried, and frozen options, as well as home-prepared diets that are cooked or raw, including both BARF (bones and raw food) and prey-model methods. Because feeding can evoke a strong emotional response in the human who fills the food bowl – in our world, food is love, after all – our reflexive response is often to assume that the way we currently feed is the best way.

Vitamin D deficiencies in dogs can cause health problems over time, but so can an oversupply. Because vitamin D is fat soluble, it accumulates in body fat. Overdoses can be toxic and even fatal, but some vitamin D is necessary to a dog's health. Vitamin D will aid in the absorption of calcium and phosphate, increases bone cell activity, influences the formation and growth of long bones, and speeds the healing of fractures. Adequate D levels may help prevent heart disease, joint inflammation, skin and coat problems, cancer, vision problems, depression, mental illness, infections, inflammatory bowel disease, dental problems, hyperparathyroidism, and kidney disease.

When it comes to that most primitive part of us, there's nothing as basic as blood. In virtually every culture across the planet, blood represents the stream of life itself. Because its looping path always leads it back to the heart – that great repository of emotion – blood has come to represent all that truly matters to the human spirit: passion, heritage, mortality, atonement, commitment, sacrifice, even our connection to the divine.

When Ella, a five-year-old Norwich Terrier, first came to live with me a few months ago, she weighed a svelte 10.8 pounds. But within two months her weight had ballooned by almost a full pound, and there was no way you could call her anything but plump. How could this happen? How could I have let my new dog get fat – me, the one who perpetually preaches the benefits of keeping dogs lean? And what the heck was I going to do about it? The answer is that it happened because I’d never owned such a small dog before, and it turned out I was massively overfeeding her, particularly when I counted all the treats she was getting. And I would do whatever it takes to get her back to the weight she should be, and keep her there. Here is what I learned during my struggle to help Ella lose weight.

What could be better than curing your dog's cancer? That's easy! How about avoiding the illness in the first place? No one has done any clinical trials or statistical studies that prove you can prevent cancer in at-risk dogs. But common sense and clinical experience make a strong case for avoiding anything that exposes an animal to known carcinogens or weakens the immune system

When we decided not to vaccinate Caleb, our Bouvier des Flandres, against anything other than rabies, my friend Janice and I knew we ran a risk that he might develop a dreaded disease. We also knew that vaccination doesn't always protect against disease, and believed it sometimes causes illness. We felt the home-prepared BARF (bones and raw foods) diet we fed him would help his body fight off many health problems. Naturally, we hoped that Caleb would never come down with anything serious like canine distemper virus (CDV). But, when he was three years old, we had to face and overcome exactly that challenge.

Imagine seeing your dog exhibit some strange symptoms, rushing him to the vet within minutes, only to have the vet proclaim his case to be hopeless and recommend euthanasia. For too many dog owners, that's the story of bloat, an acute medical condition characterized by a rapid accumulation of gas in the stomach.