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Originally Posted by gracielove  Somehow Gracie has remained healthy eating the food we have chosen to prepare for her. There is a lot of information out there. Vets do not even agree on what is best to feed our pets. There are hundreds of pet foods out there that claim to be "vet approved." Our vet is happy with our dog's state of health. Gracie still even has beautiful clean white teeth without having to have them cleaned every year.
There are some basic nutritional needs that our pets have. It's not rocket science. When I feed them only home prepared food they get an all natural food based nutritional supplement in it. I was able to raise healthy happy children without a human nutritionist having to tell me how to feed them. You learn basic nutritional facts and go from there. Just like with the dogs people have basic nutritional needs. We have found that the closer to the original form a food item is - the more natural nutrition is still in that food item and the easier it is for the body to assimilate that nutrition. The synthetic vitamins and minerals that are being put in many foods (human and pet) to make up for what is lost in processing are not able to come near to matching the nutrition derived from food in its natural state so using food based supplements instead of synthetic is important. |
We went over some of the effects of not having a balanced food in my vet assistant classes. Dogs are much different then humans and require different things. When dogs aren't getting everything they need it can cause significant bone loss. I have seen dogs with jaws that just break, weak dogs and dogs who have lost many many teeth because they aren't getting the right supplements to keep them healthy. Balance it is a great site because they give you free recipes from vet nutritionists and you can buy the supplement there. If you have a dog with health issues they also can help you but you have to pay and they talk to your vet.