Seeking the Perfect Diet for Your Dog

Here at the offices of Who Rescued Who?® we are beginning the confusing, hazardous, fraught-with-danger journey of trying to develop a dog food.  Our focus is on rescue dogs and their special nutritional needs.  All dogs are different, some with allergies and sensitivities, but our experience with dogs rescued from homelessness presents us with something more than just a big windmill at which to shake our lance.  Malnutrition from abuse, neglect or homelessness is our white whale.  All the while we search desperately for a 12 step group to help us with these overburdened and mixed literary allusions.

Lady Stetson was a mess when Diamonds In the Ruff
rescued her (photo by Stephanie Capps).

My personal experience adopting two pit mixes with skin conditions inspires me.  The stress of homelessness and even the shelter, as loving and warm as it may be, is often an insurmountable barrier to alleviating irritating skin problems.  These maladies magically disappeared once my dogs were in their forever home, finally secure and relaxed.  But what of the pup who languishes in the shelter for months or years?  Can a dog food help?  

I remember sitting at a table in Tucson, AZ some years ago and my lovely host telling me, as our pups frolicked in her desert-landscaped backyard, that the food I was feeding my darling adopted children was made with the rubber from car tires.  Like my diet at the time, which consisted of a great deal of

Tires taste bad and are not nutritious.

generic cheese puffs and cola, I had been purchasing inexpensive food for Joey and Elli because I was A) Broke and 2) Young, lacking knowledge, and trusting in dog food manufacturers.  It was the kibble equivalent of cheese puffs, I decided, and cheese puffs are of dubious origins and seem to skirt the lines of being actually edible.  I was clearly too young to have hairy children.

Her words resonated with me and I immediately switched their food to a more expensive brand that made a lot of claims that were hard to resist.  I noticed an improvement in the sheen of their fur fairly quickly and stuck with that brand for many years. 

My dogs lived until they were 14 years old, which seems to be the average; much too short but full of joy.  On the other hand, my family had a standard poodle in the seventies that ate the cheapest brand dog food available and supplemented it on her own with garbage, poo and yard trimmings she’d find when she escaped from our yard.  She’d feign deafness and run several yards ahead of us screaming kids in frantic pursuit as she ran along plucking little goodies from the neighbors’ yards and garbage cans and rolling in the leavings of other animals until her poodle curls glistened with an olfactory buffet of unspeakable horror, until we finally caught up with her.  She lived until the ripe (I use that term intentionally) old age of 18.  

Today as I peruse the internet I am more confused than ever.  The websites contradict one another.  Two articles were particularly striking and seemed reasonable:  The Dog Food Project (www.betterdogcare.com), written by Sabine Contreras, a canine care and nutrition consultant, and the Wysong website (www.wysong.net), written by R. Wysong, DVM.  Dr. Wysong is selling pet products and thus is motivated to steer you toward his own philosophies, but as I read through the article The Pet Food Ingredient Game, the information seems sensible.  The two authors disagree in their philosophies regarding non-human grade ingredients such as roadkill and 4D ingredients (just learned this nugget: 4D meaning dead, dying, downed or diseased).  It may seem like a trivial concern, and selfish, but my mind went straight to the fact that I have a super kissy pit bull and I just don’t want those things in her mouth.

Puerto Rican strays on the beach.  Some were so
malnourished it was hard to determine their breed.

Dr. Wysong reminds us of our dogs’ roots; running wild, hunting and scavenging, ingesting “prey, carrion and incidental fresh plant materials and even some fur and feathers.”  Meat that is not human grade, according to Wysong, is not necessarily lacking in nutrition.  It may be gross, but it’s healthy.  He reasonably states that a variety of fresh, whole natural foods for a carnivore is ideal, as well as fresh air, clean water, exercise and a whole lotta love.  Sound advice.

Contreras points out that dogs don’t live that way anymore and that in the wild they had the option of eating a whole chunk of carrion; nutritious bits and not-so-good bits like feet (or cheese powder) and that the key is investigating whether the ingredient called chicken has nutritional value or is just a ground-up beak.  She states that dogs live longer and suffer from fewer health problems in their domesticated environments in which we do the hunting and gathering at the pet store.

Turbo thinks a whole lotta love is the best ingredient.

Ultimately their points of view aligned.  Rationality and reason must steer us as we choose a dog food for our companions.  Variety seems to be key, supplementing kibble with fresh, natural, truly human grade ingredients (not to be confused with Soylent Green) can make up for any nutrients your base food may lack.  Be wary of trendy, hyped ingredients and fads.  Research.  When in doubt, call the manufacturer.

Kiki Nusbaumer

Who Rescued Who?®