We share our homes and our lives with our furry friends. We
spend special time with them on walks and errands, and many of us allow them to
sleep with us in our beds. We share a
lot of things. Unfortunately, our
wonderful companions share many of the same diseases and health issues. The more I read about this, the more it
saddens me, because I feel so much of it is preventable.
These blogs are designed to sift through all that’s out
there and bring simple, usable information that will benefit your dog and
you! Our pets are an important part of
our lives, as is evident by the multi-billion dollar a year amount we spend on
them. It’s also vital to make better
choices for yourself…after all, you need to be around to care of your loving
companions! Some of that mindset comes from my upbringing and the other part
from my personal trainer background, and two and a half decades of studying
nutrition.
So, what is necessary for good health? First, a good
nutritional foundation. It really starts
there. Junk in, junk out. My hope is that as you read these various
articles I post, you will become more aware of what your dog really does need
on a daily basis. A new awareness that
not just anything will suffice. There’s
a whole lot of information ‘out there’.
Knowing what and who to trust can be frustrating, confusing and even
overwhelming. It’s an ever changing,
seeming revolving door of one thing one day, then something else the next. What’s a person to believe?
We also need to understand, as much as our lives are shared,
there are differences. It’s imperative
to know where the line is drawn. I will only touch upon it here, and I will be
blogging more about it in future articles.
There is a lot, and I don’t want to overwhelm anybody with too much
information at one time. While whole
grains are an important part of the human diet, it’s not necessarily a
requirement in the canine diet. The need
to focus on quality protein and fats are the mainstay for your dog. In my opinion, dairy products should only be
organic in the diet….for doggies and people.
Why? Because ‘commercial’ dairy typically contain what is called Bovine
Growth Hormone (BGH). This is given to
the cows to assist in larger yields.
Antibiotics are also a part of their ‘diet’. A cow with an infection in an udder is not
beneficial to a dairy farmer. BGH has
been found to cause premature breast growth in girls as young as 5 years old!
Both of these are passed along the food chain to whomever consumes it…no wonder
we’ve developed a resistance to most antibiotics!
We seem to be raising a whole generation of overweight and
obese children…and even more adults.
Even with all this food we have access to, we suffer terribly from
malnutrition. It’s rampant. Over 1/3 of
adults in the United States are considered obese. Along with this problem comes heart disease,
stroke, type 2 diabetes and even cancer.
We’re out of control, and unless we put the brakes on, we’re headed for
disaster! And our canine buddies seem
to be following suit. 55% of them are overweight
or obese (according to 2010 statistics)
So you think, ‘my dog won’t eat healthy’! Well, I get razzed about what
I feed my dogs from my co-workers. Their
comments are, ‘my dog wouldn’t eat stuff like that!’, my response is, ‘how do
you know? Have you fed them that way?’
No, of course they haven’t. Give
‘em a week at the Chaplin Doggie Diner, and you’d have a ‘new dog’! Even picky
eaters like it here! Adjustments periods
are needed for change…we don’t want to make changes too quickly. It’s necessary to allow time to introduce new
foods to our furbabies to make sure they don’t have an allergy or adverse
reaction. We need to be flexible, and
our attitude toward these changes need to be positive. It can be done, on both
sides…human and canine. The deciding
factor will be, how much are you willing to invest in your health and that of
your loved ones, including your dog?
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