My name is Robyn and I help people with their dog's nutrition. There are many reasons why a pet parent may decide to feed their beloved pet a commercial brand of pet food. They are convenient to purchase, available straight off the shelf from the supermarket or pet store, they come with feeding instructions and offer varieties that meet the needs of budget considerations. Each meal is manufactured
to be complete and nutritionally balanced and are available in dry, semi-moist and canned styles. When fed in the correct proportions, these commercially manufactured pet foods have been designed to provide sufficient quantities of each required nutrient. A pet food that is out of balance, with too much or too little vitamins or minerals, may cause toxicity or a deficit and in this context, nutritionally complete and balanced commercial foods have been developed to provide all the pet’s nutritional needs to survive. The convenient, easy to feed and widely available dry dog food does, however, have some disadvantages. Questionable ingredients are in the brightly designed, not always honest packaging, enticing vulnerable pet parents to buy their product. After high heat processing, commercial dry dog food is nothing more than a ‘dead’ food. Proteins have been denatured, any beneficial bacteria are dead and natural digestive enzymes inactive. Synthetic vitamins and minerals are added back into the food in an effort to replace some of the lost nutritional value and to ensure their formula complies with the “complete and balanced” AAFCO standards. The alternative to commercial foods is one of the natural feeding methods or a homemade diet for which there are many recipes (some better than others) and they will require a little research from the pet parent as to what to feed and how much. To assist the novice fresh food feeder transition away from commercial, off the shelf dry food, I am able to assist and guide you when constructing a balanced meal plan.
