By Ian Billinghurst

319 Pages - Paperback

Product # 950

Contents

1. Modern Dog Feeding Myths
   
2. The Questions of Cooked or Raw Foods
   
3. Knowing Your Enemy – Commercial Dog Food
   
4. Common Problems with Home Produced Food
   
5. Food – What is in it?
   
6. Food Separation and Combination
   
7. Bones as Dog Food
   
8. Meat as Dog Food
   
9. Organ Meat as Dog Food
   
10. Green Leafy Vegetables as Dog Food
    
11. Fruit as Dog Food
    
12. Grains and Legumes as Dog Food
    
13. Dairy Products as Dog Food
    
14. Eggs as Dog Food
    
15. Table Scraps as Dog Food
    
16. Useful Additives
    
17. Feeding Your New Puppy
    
18. Feeding the Adult Dog
    
19. How Much Food do I Feed My Dog?
    
20. Getting Your Dog Started on it’s New Diet
    
21. Feeding Your Dog Vegetarian Style
    
22. Feeding Your Dog for a Healthy Old Age

This is a book about feeding dogs. It will show you in simply language..

• How easy it is to feed dogs.
  
• How to feed your dog for maximum lifelong health.
  
• How to save money on dog food and help protect our environment.

You will learn how to use bones, food scrapes and other food items, cheaply available from your local supermarket to produce a bright, active happy dog, with a minimum of health worries.

It also challenges a widespread belief that dogs should eat processed dog food. A belief that dog nutrition is a dead issue. That the dog food companies have made the need for a book such as this totally unnecessary.

Thirty years ago this book would not have been necessary. Thirty years ago, Australian dogs were fed on bones and leftover. Everybody knew how to do it. It was common sense. As a consequence, most Australian dogs were very healthy.

That method of feeding dogs is now lost knowledge for many dog owners. It disappeared in the med 60’s when processed dog food became popular in Australia. In America that knowledge had largely disappeared by the mid-thirties.

When I commenced my veterinary training in the early seventies. I did so with a background of feeding dogs on boned and scraps. However, my five years of professional training taught me that I should encourage my clients to use scientifically balanced commercial dog food. Apparently it was the best way to feed a dog.

This lead to confusion. I had no personal experience of feeding dogs on processed foods. The results was, I was never quite sure what advice, I should hand out to clients. This was difficult because the questions – “what should I feed my dog?” – turned out to be the most common question I was asked.

However, I decided that the best defence was attacked, and turned the question around. I started to ask people what they fed their dogs.

Meantime, I began to feed my own dogs on commercial dog food, something I had never done before.

Over a period of about two years, my formerly healthy dogs began to suffer numerous problems. Nothing major at first but it was obvious that big trouble was looming. At first it was minor skin problems, runny eyes, scurfy coats, annoying itches, sore ears, anal sac problems, smelly coats, smelly faeces, smelly mouths, dental problems, the need for constants worming ect. However, with time it became reproductive problems and growth problems.

The embarrassing thing was that my own dogs for the first time ever, were suffering exactly the same sort of problems as my clients’ dogs!

For me, this was a new experience. Before I became a vet I lived in the country where our dogs lived on a steady diet of rabbits, raw bones, and table scrapes.

Back than, my dogs were neither wormed nor vaccinated. They became pregnant with no problems, and gave birth with ease to large litters. They were healthy dogs with a minimum of fuss.

However, all those health problems my dogs were developing did tie in with the answer I was given when I questioned people concerning what they fed their dogs. I discovered that most people had exactly the same experience. Those who fed commercial dog food, had dogs with problems. Those who fed mostly bones and scrapes had healthy dogs.

Over a period of eighteen years in small animal practice I have continued to ask that same questions. I have asked that owners of both sick and healthy dogs what those dogs eat. The answers remain the same. Most of the sick dogs are fed either commercial dog food or badly designed home cooked food, while the really healthy dogs eat raw meaty bones, plus healthy food scraps.

Looking back on my experience with commercial dog food, I find it interesting that it took me as long as it dig to realize what was happening. However, when I did, it did not take me long to make some change.

In an attempt to do the very best by my dogs, and return them to a more common sense method of dog feeding, I began to read about so called “natural diets”. It soon became obvious that the natural diets I was reading about were in essence, what I had always fed dogs. Bones, and healthy food scraps.

The bulk of their diet became raw meaty bones including lamb and raw chicken. The rest was mainly table scraps including left over vegetables, gravy, scraps of meat, fruit and small amount of cereals such as rice, mashed potatoes and pasta. We added eggs, liver, kidneys, vegetable oils, honey, brewers yeast, kelp powder, cod liver oil and occasionall vitamin supplements.

I encourage my clients to do the same.

Here are the books that I think every dog owner that is interested in the health and a natural diet for their dogs should own. These 5 books will forever change the way that you look at the health and care of your dogs.

Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats by Kymythy R. Schultze

Grow Your Pups With Bones by Ian Billinghurst

The Nature of Animal Healing by Martin Goldstein, D.V.M.

Give Your Dog A Bone by Ian Billinghurst

The Barf Diet by Ian Billinghurst