What is the best food to feed my puppy? How often should my puppy be fed? Should I feed bones to my puppy? If so what sort? What about calcium? What about food scraps?
The answer to this is very simple. To get the answers you need, you have to ask the pup itself! By understanding what puppies eat in the wild, you will learn valuable clues as to what you should be feeding your domestic pup. You will find out exactly what the digestive system of a puppy is programed to eat by centuries of evolution.
By looking at young wild dogs / wolves growing up we are actually observing our young pup's ancestors. If we couple that with modern scientific discoveries about diet, health and aging, we are able to produce a realistic, health promoting, evolutionary puppy diet. From studying the eating habits of wolf cubs which are seen to be perpetually hungry, subsisting on raw food consisting mostly of bones and being forced to scavenge a wide variety of foods, we get vital clues about successful puppy raising.
The bulk of a puppy's diet should consist of raw meaty & bones
All or most of the rest of their food should also be raw.
Puppies should always be kept a little hungry.
They should never grow at their maximum growth rate. Slow growth will reach the same final target (final height) just a few month later.
They should be kept slim, lean and hard. Not roly poly, fat, young puppies
Puppies should learn to eat everything
When we consider how (wild) dogs were raised in the 'pre-pet-food' era and compare that to our modern methods of husbandry, we can only conclude that the changes we have made to feeding and exercising have indeed been dramatic, and that their effects on puppy growth have been traumatic. The degree to which modern dogs experience ill health reflects the degree to which they are subjected to biologically inappropriate methods of feeding and exercising. Let's look at those biologically inappropriate forms of puppy management so rife today.
All the food a modern pup eats is cooked...
For the first time in its evolutionary history we are asking our dogs to eat nothing but cooked food. This is biologically unacceptable and a very dramatic change. It is most often processed food, usually either canned or dry food. The cooking process destroys many of the life enhancing factors found only in raw food. These include enzymes, many natural antioxidants and other anti-degeneration factors.
All the food a modern pup eats is based on cooked grain ...
The vast majority of the food eaten by the modern dog is composed of cooked grain as the most fundamental and major component of the diet. Another dramatic and biologically unacceptable change. Dogs have never in their evolutionary history eaten cooked grain. The results on health are devastating.
Meat meal and rendered fat come next...
The cooked grain is teamed up with meat meal (with its damaged protein) and rendered fat. It is not uncommon to use rendered fat from domestic animals in pet food - and there are reports that this is happening - together with flea collars and other dangerous chemicals such as the euthanasia solution in some of these deceased and rendered pets.
Aside from the dangerous chemicals it contains, that rendered fat contrasts strongly with the healthy fat so full of essential fatty acids that our dog's ancestors ate. These heat destroyed components are biologically unacceptable. They do not support healthy growth. They do not support a healthy life or contribute to a healthy old age. The meat meal bears very little relationship to the healthy raw meat eaten by a wild dog.
Now add the chemicals...
Add loads of refined sugar, loads of salt, chemical colorings - dyes, to make the product look like something it is not. Add artificial chemical flavorings to make it taste like something it is not. Add flavor enhancers to make sure the animal eats something it ought not to. Add chemical antioxidants (known carcinogens) to ensure the product does not become obviously rancid.
Now add the legally required nutrients...
These are the currently known to be essential vitamins and minerals. The legal constraints on commercial pet foods do not require them to include vitally important biologically essential antioxidants and anti-degeneration factors present only in whole raw food. As a result, these products do not contain many of the essential factors we do know about such as enzymes, nor do they contain many of the essential factors we don't yet know about, the ones yet to be discovered and only present in whole raw natural foods.
The modern puppy diet omits bones...
The omission of raw meaty bones from the diet of the modern dog is central to the formation of bone disease in pups. Because the modern pup does not eat bones it misses out on all the essential nutrients bones supply including its calcium in perfect balance and form, together with all the other minerals required for healthy bone formation in perfect balance and form.
The result is that the modern pup obtains it minerals in a totally inappropriate form. The modern pup also misses out on its eating exercise. This eating exercise is a vital component of the exercise regime designed to grow healthy disease free bones and joints.
The modern pup does not eat vegetables or fruit. Instead it eats dry or tinned processed grains. Another complete disaster. The lack of crushed vegetables makes a monumental contribution to the production of degenerative disease in dogs, including problems such as Hip and Elbow Dysplasia. The modern pup does not eat the gut contents of a herbivore or anything like it. As a result it fails to receive a mass of essential nutrients so essential for its bowel and over-all health.
In today's world, special foods, 'designed for growth', have become part of the processed pet food industry. They say that the foods designed for growing animals must have more nutrients that support growth compared to diets designed to maintain a grown animal in good health. This contrasts with the BARF DIET where top quality whole food ingredients are used in all the diets. Common sense tells us that dogs in the wild have grown and reproduced using the BARF diet. In other words, our dogs' ancestors have grown properly, survived and reproduced on the same basic foods, no matter what stage of life they were at. Think carefully. Which environment of diet do you want your dog in? The modern environment of biologically inappropriate dog food, excessive protein, excessive calories, fast growth rates, calcium supplements, excessive exercise and bone disease? or the time honored way which produces healthy longevity, abundant reproduction and brilliant health return?
Raw meat & bones, raw veggies, goat's milk, educated supplements and some room for true quality giant breeds dog food.
