Thursday, March 11th, 2021
Anti-inflammatory phytonutrients, prebiotics, fiber, healthy fats – what’s not to love?
Daily smoothies can be healthy for both the dog parent and the dog if the ingredients are safe and add nutritional value. It’s not a lean source of veggies for dogs, but there are benefits that might make it a worthwhile trade-off now and then. For example, my dog eats pretty much anything and has a passion for bitter greens but try giving him celery and he backs away as though it might attack him. Since I’d like him to receive the benefits, giving him a bit of my smoothie (which doesn’t taste at all like celery) works well.
Read more Green Smoothie Recipe to Share with Your Dog
Monday, October 26th, 2020
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
Monday, August 3rd, 2020
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
Thursday, April 5th, 2018
We love this recipe from Wendy Pak who is an amazing foster mom with Pause4Change in Calgary. This method saves us from having to buy a dehydrator – and the treats are so versatile! For more tips, and discussion, join us on FB
Sunday, August 16th, 2015
Many dog owners in my world are concerned about every warning they receive via newsletters, articles, blogs, and not concerned about some things I think they ought to be. For instance there’s a naturally occurring substance called oxalate which is found in many foods. In combination with a genetic predisposition, excretion of calcium through urine, and some other issues, this can cause calcium oxalate bladder stones – but, it’s not likely unless you have a breed known for these stones. Foods that are high in oxalate also happen to be high in remarkable anti-oxidants and phytochemicals.
Read more Are You Avoiding Healthy Foods For Your Dog?
Tuesday, November 25th, 2014
If the weekly questions in my in-box are any indication, there’s a lot of confusion out there about diets for liver disease. Here are some facts that can help you sort things out. I’ll try to keep it simple.
There’s more than one reason for a dog’s liver enzymes being high (blood test results panic a lot of dog owners). Just because enzymes are elevated doesn’t mean the dog has a liver disease. It might be the case, but it’s not a given. Sometimes enzymes go back down on their own without any dietary changes, and sometimes even without medical intervention. There are speculations as to why this happens to one dog and not another, but your best bet is to stay calm, listen to your veterinarian and don’t start throwing all kinds of supplements into the dog out of panic.
Read more Canine Liver Disease
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014
Eggs, milk products, fish, and meat (in this order) have the highest biological values, so it goes without saying that your dog would do well to eat these. What about the other foods, though?
Fruits and veggies that offer high amounts of phytonutrients (also called phytochemicals) can benefit in many ways from working to reduce inflammation to providing antioxidants that help fight cancer. All fruits and veggies provide some of these good things, but some are more powerful than others. Read more Mega-Nutrition To Share With Your Dog
Tuesday, August 20th, 2013
Not every dog going through chemo has bad reactions, but a lot of them have one thing in common and that’s an aversion to eating. In the many years that I’ve been working with dogs and diets to help them, cancer patients are arguably the ones who taught me most about behavioral changes. Owners are understandably overwhelmed by the diagnosis of cancer, the schedule back and forth to the vet for treatments and follow-up, expense and ongoing fear. So, when the dog refuses to eat, it seems like all the effort and progress made to this point was pointless. But we don’t give up. Although there isn’t a one size-fits-all-solution, at least one (and hopefully more) of these things can help your dog: Read more Feeding a Dog During Chemotherapy
Saturday, November 24th, 2012
There was so much response to my FB post about dog feces that I want to show you this scoring system, too. That’s right – there are scores that you can point to when conversing with the vet. In fact, I think it would make conversations easier if all vet offices provided this. Purina’s made it easy. Now it’s up to vets and their clients to use it.
Dogs with GI problems are more likely to produce # 4 – #7 prior to the condition being under control, but eating something (food that doesn’t agree with the dog, leaves, and whatever else dogs gobble down without the owner noticing) can cause this as well. Read more What’s Your Dog’s Poop Score?
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012
You’re feeding an over-the-counter (OTC) venison diet…or are you? It turns out that some commercial diets labelled as containing venison as the only meat source, can include other things that may trigger an allergic response. “Three of the four over the counter (OTC) venison canine dry foods with no soy products named in the ingredient list were ELISA positive for soy; additionally, one OTC diet tested positive for beef protein with no beef products listed as an ingredient list. One OTC venison diet was not found to be positive for soy, poultry or beef proteins. However, none of the four OTC venison diets could be considered suitable for a diagnostic elimination trial as they all contained common pet food proteins, some of which were readily identifiable on the label and some that were only detected by ELISA.” Read more So You’re Feeding a Venison Diet – Really?
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
Here’s the thing: It’s all about what the supplement is attempting to address, how safe it is for a dog, and the purity of it as well. So, what exactly are you using the supplement for? To address joint problems, digestive problems, balance a home-made diet, or are you adding supplements as a proactive measure?
First thing first. Your dog needs a balanced diet and how you go about doing that is a matter of belief system. For some, it means commercial foods and only commercial foods (no “people food”). In these cases, add supplemental taurine if the food doesn’t include it, and you might need to add a joint supportive supplement (glucosamine with chondroitin for example) if the dog has osteoarthritis, and it’s probably a good idea to add wild salmon oil and a bit of vitamin E as well. Read more Which Supplement Does My Dog Need?
Thursday, January 5th, 2012
Many of the dogs I work with have urine pH that’s too high or too low. In most cases, the urine has crystals in it and in some, the dog develops urinary tract stones. I wrote a post about the different types of stones and their formation here, and received a number of questions from readers that I want to address now. The most common was about the great swing in urine pH over the course of the day. Say you check first thing in the morning and find that pH is 5.0, check 2 hours after a meal and find it’s 9.0. Which one should you go by when you’re trying to get the pH at a nice and steady 6.5 which is an ideal number? There’s a measurable alkaline tide that you should consider. It goes like this:
Read more Your Dog’s Urine pH
