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| Please Note: This website is not the official website of the
Flint River Ranch Company. This site is owned and operated by FRR Independent
Distributors ID#DZQ4 and 101013603. Any pricing and policies, including
discounts, claims and contributions to American Brittany Rescue, may not
necessarily be those of the Flint River Ranch Company and are supported by
the distributor who owns and operates this site. If you are already a customer
of Flint River Ranch and this is not your original distributor or their website,
you should contact your original distributor or Flint River Ranch company
at (800) 354-6858 to place your order. |
Do you know what you are feeding your
pet?
| Poor quality pet foods are common in grocery stores and even in specialty
pet supply stores. They may be tempting to purchase because of the
inexpensive price tag for what claims to be a "premium" pet food on the label,
but what is really contained in your pet's food may surprise you.
The use of by-products in pet food is common practice, even among
prescription diets such as Hill's Science Diet foods and perceived premium
brands such as Iams and Purina "Beneful". By-products may include connective
tissue, beaks and bones, all of which have lower nutritional value and more
"filler". If the ingredient list says "meat by-product meal", that can mean
that it contains meat, bones, and other assorted parts of ANY animal (excluding
fur and teeth, except as may "reasonably" be expected during manufacturing).
In the worst case, this can mean DOGS and CATS that were euthanized and
then sold as a source of "protein" are included in your pet's food. In
February 1990, San Francisco Chronicle writer John Eckhouse published an
exposé titled "How Dogs and Cats Get Recycled into Pet Food" that
disturbed many people with its detailed accounts of this practice. While
this may not be a universal problem, it is worth avoiding foods that contain
by-products and don't specify the type fo meat used.
Another problem with the meat and grain used in most pet food is that
they are not approved for human consumption. That means that the ingredients
in pet food are what was rejected from the human food stream for various
reasons. Meat is often rejected because the animals were already
dead/dying/diseased/disabled (the 4 D's). Grains can have mold or other
contamination. So your brand of dog food may contain chicken meal or lamb
meal as the main ingredient, but if the animals from which the meat was taken
were deemed unfit for human consumption, do you really want to feed it to
your pet?
Finally, many brands of pet food still use BHA, BHT, or ethoxyquin as
preservatives to give the food a long shelf life. Ethoxyquin is actually
classified as a pesticide by the EPA, so why would we feed it to our pets?
Although there have not been any conclusive studies done, many breeders and
vets believe that the accumulation of these chemicals over a dog's lifetime
contributes to cancer and other illnesses that are so prevalent in pets today.
You can avoid all of these detrimental ingredients by feeding a premium
pet food that contains only human-quality ingredients and lists specific
sources of protein and no by-products. The food should be naturally preserved
with Vitamin E (often listed as "Mixed Tocopherols") and/or Vitamin C.
Flint River Ranch manufactures a line of premium pet foods that meet and
exceed these standards. Their formulas contain no corn or soy, which
are poorly digested by dogs. The food is oven-baked to improve digestability
so more nutrients are available from less quantity of food. Some formulas
contain additional digestive enzymes and probiotics which promote digestive
health. The quality of Flint River Ranch Pet Food can be seen in the improvement
of your pet's coat, skin, energy level, and overall health.
-Katharine Knappenberger, Independent Distributor# DZQ4
Note: This article may be reprinted and distributed only with my
permission. Please contact
me if you wish to share this article with others. I can provide
a printer-friendly Word document for this purpose. |
BONES AND RAW FOOD
An alternative to commercially available dog foods is home-prepared meals
of either cooked or raw foods or some combination of the two. DO
NOT FEED YOUR DOG COOKED BONES AS THEY CAN SPLINTER AND CAUSE INJURY TO YOUR
DOG. You can supplement your dog's diet with RAW chicken
wings, RAW beef marrow bones, RAW chicken/turkey necks, livers, gizzards,
hearts, etc. Most dogs can handle much more bacteria in their food
than people can since their digestive tracts are much shorter. Sometimes
I mix RAW ground Turkey with cooked or raw vegetables and rice. If
you decide to feed an entirely natural/raw diet, though be sure to do your
homework to get the balance right and don't forget to give a
multivitamin and flax oil or other oil supplement
since many dogs won't get enough from their food unless you include fish
in their diet. There are several schools of thought when it comes to
raw diets and I have done some reading on several of them and have also discussed
them with other dog people, including breeders and trainers.
There are also some arguments against feeding a raw diet, so be sure
to check out both sides of the story before you decide what's best for your
dog. See the links below.
The following books and links provide
information about raw diets:
 |
The Holistic Guide
for a Healthy Dog, Wendy Volhard and Kerry Brown (new edition
June 2000).
I have found Wendy Volhard's regimen of
supplementing my dog's diet very useful. She clearly presents the
scientific background for each of the components necessary for a complete
nutrition including dietary supplements of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes,
plus lots of information on homeopathic remedies. I have a tough time
believing the chapter on Kinesiology, but otherwise this book provides a
thorough, well-researched introduction to natural nutrition. |
 |
Dr. Pitcairn's
Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, Dr. Richard
Pitcairn and Susan Pitcairn. |
 |
Natural Nutrition
for Dogs and Cats - The Ultimate Pet Diet, Kymythe
Schultz.
This book provides some basic information about feeding a raw diet without
the sweeping allegations made by Dr. Billinghurst (see below). The
dietary recommendations are very similar to Billinghurst's at a fraction
of the cost of the book. However, she does not provide the extensive
background as Wendy Volhard does in her book. This is a good place
to start, though. |
 |
Give Your Dog A
Bone, Dr. Ian Billinghurst. (Available from the
Dogwise
pet books catalog).
I have read portions of this book and had difficulty staying with it,
particularly because the author makes broad generalizations about the faults
of commercial dog foods without providing scientific evidence to prove his
points. The diet he proposes also seems much less thoroughly researched
than Volhard's, although his theory that dogs in the wild ate mostly raw,
meaty bones does seem attractive as the reason that dogs should not eat
exclusively commercially prepared dog food. |
 |
Canine Nutrition:
Choosing the Best Food for Your Breed of Dog, William D.
Cusick.
This book presents information on which sources of nutrients are best for
different breeds of dogs, and for a fee Bill will prepare a custom recipe
for your dog. He focuses mainly on cooked foods, as opposed to the
other books listed here which all recommend feeding raw diets.
Visit Bill Cusick's Website at:
http://home.att.net/~wdcusick/ |
Katharine Knappenberger - FRR Independent Distributor #DZQ4
Greg Knappenberger - FRR Independent Distributor #101013603
kathy@healthydogfood.com *
greg@healthydogfood.com
Phone: 302-235-7012 * Wilmington, DE
Pawprint Graphics Provided
By:Fuzzy Faces Free Doggy
Graphics
Copyright 1999-2006 Katharine Knappenberger.
|