Personalized, Balanced Nutrition for Dogs

Monday, October 26th, 2020
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What many of you may not know is that Monica and I are not only passionate about canine nutrition, but we also avidly pursue optimal health for ourselves. Nutrition is a passion that has really connected us to not only help dogs, but there’s always an underlying hope that seeing a dog thrive on fresh foods, may inspire the dog parent to include more healthy foods in their own diets!

 

Being passionate about human nutrition as well as canine, has turned me (Jody) into a bit of nutrition/wellness podcast junkie! Sadly, it’s pretty common for most functional health/nutrition podcasts to reiterate how unhealthy the majority of the human population is— Read more Personalized, Balanced Nutrition for Dogs

Chicken, Quail and Duck Eggs For Home-Made Dog Food Recipes

Monday, August 3rd, 2020
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Eggs hold the number one spot on the biological value (how readily a digested protein can be used in protein synthesis in the cells of the organism) scale.  Along with other nutrients, they’re a great source of choline which plays roles in fat transport and metabolism, muscle movement, memory, neurotransmission, DNA synthesis and cell structure and messaging.

 

With all three varieties of eggs more available these days the nutritional differences between them, including their costs may impact your decision about which to choose for your own dog.

 

Comparing one type of egg to another is best done by weight because duck eggs are larger than chicken eggs, and quail eggs are very much smaller. Read more Chicken, Quail and Duck Eggs For Home-Made Dog Food Recipes

When to Feed Home-prepared Diets for Kidney Disease

Sunday, January 12th, 2020
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We’ve had excellent results with our diets for kidney disease and want to share why and how that happens for most dogs – not all.  This is almost always a case of ‘timing is everything’

 

Kidneys act as a filtering system by getting rid of toxic waste products. They balance the body’s fluid content by reabsorbing immense amounts of water into the blood, produce hormones that help to make red blood cells and help to control blood pressure.

 

The food that your dog eats is broken down and part of this breakdown, along with the normal breakdown of body tissues becomes waste that’s sent to the kidneys for removal. When kidney function is compromised, the wastes build up can cause nausea. Read more When to Feed Home-prepared Diets for Kidney Disease

Adjust Diets For Dogs On Medications

Tuesday, August 12th, 2014
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There are times when medications can’t be avoided. In fact, sometimes they must be for life, and it’s these situations that tend to bring the toughest side effects to deal with. But! – dietary manipulation can go a long way to helping the body cope better, and even reduce the risks. Let me use our dog, Tori, as an example. I have a love-hate relationship with Prednisone because it’s saved her life, but it certainly has side effects.

 

Tori started showing odd signs when she was about ten weeks old. I’d call her, and she’d turn her head in the opposite direction. She could hear well in that no sound escaped her, but her response was strange. Read more Adjust Diets For Dogs On Medications

Older Dogs

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012
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I have a “thing” for older dogs. Ok, I seem to have a thing for all dogs, but the older ones really get to me because they’ve given us their entire lives with pure love and abandon. So, I want to talk about what we can do to make things better for them from a dietary perspective.

 

First and foremost, be sure the dog is healthy by having a complete blood count (CBC) and super chemistry profile done every six months. The ageing process is speedier in dogs, so in dog-years, six months is a fairly long time. A lot of things can change during this seemingly short period, and dietary manipulation can address quite a few of them, so it make sense to do it sooner rather than later. Read more Older Dogs

Can Diet Be Related to Skin Problems in Dogs?

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
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If I had to pick one thing that drives me batty about home-prepared diets, it’s the willy-nilly feeding promoted by certain book authors and chat groups. Don’t get me wrong. Feeding a varied diet can work well, but when it doesn’t, it’s usually just when you’re feeling pretty cocky about it. The dog can start to break down. And I do mean break down!

 

Feed a home-prepared diet that meets the recommended allowances for dogs (per the NRC), and this simply doesn’t happen. Here are some scenarios of how and why the willy-nilly method might look great as well as the how and why of the break down – followed by a story to explain my little rant: Read more Can Diet Be Related to Skin Problems in Dogs?

Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Dogs

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
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Also referred to as IBD, dogs with this disease have common symptoms although not all dogs will experience the gamut of them. Diarrhea, mucus in the stool, a sheath that looks like a sausage casing around the stool, vomiting, weight loss, noisy tummy sounds, refusal of food, hiding after eating…basically, a lot of obvious signals that the gastrointestinal tract is in bad shape and the dog feels poorly.

 

Most cases of IBD include food allergy which is why changing the diet to one or two foods (fresh foods, not commerciall diets) the dog has never consumed before usually works very well.  An allergic reaction includes inflammation and when the gut is inflamed, permeability often results. Read more Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Dogs