Healthy food for dogs
Our pets’ diet is as important as our own. Do you give your pet a healthy diet? Do you know what food is healthy for a dog?
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A good diet is synonymous with health and well-being. That’s why, the more natural and balanced our dogs’ diets are, the better their bodies work and the more their quality of life and life expectancy increase.
Dog owners are becoming increasingly aware of this, and so is the desire to feed our pets a diet more in accordance with their nature. But, before starting to change their diet, it is important to be well informed and know about the animal’s nutritional needs and their state of health. It is essential that the guidelines for the new diet are set by a vet specialising in canine nutrition.
Healthy eating for pets
A natural diet doesn’t mean giving your dog the leftovers from your own food. It means preparing a diet especially for them, more in line with what the animal would eat in nature and always taking the dog's characteristics into account, including age, state of health, nutritional needs, activity, size... This is why it is essential for a veterinary nutritionist to design the diet.
There are various ways of giving your dog a healthy diet and they are all valid. In each case, it is about choosing what suits your dog and your lifestyle best, in addition to the time you have available to be able to prepare their food.
But, how do you choose? The Barf diet, a natural cooked diet and diet based on traditional Chinese veterinary medicine are different systems that can help your dog to be healthier, provided you choose the one that best suits their needs. Let’s find out what these diets consist of and what their benefits are.
We can define the Barf diet (biologically appropriate raw food) as a system based on giving the animal raw foods, as they would find in nature. This includes meat, offal, organs, muscles, meaty bones, eggs and, in fewer quantities, fruit and vegetables.
This diet provides many advantages, including avoiding chemical additives and processed foods, eliminating tartar, helping the dog to relax thanks to chewing the foods, preventing allergies and intolerances or reducing the risk of heart diseases. Care must also be taken, however, including being vigilant when they are eating bones and the bacteria that some raw foods can contain.
Natural cooked food is an alternative to the Barf diet for those who don’t want to give their dogs raw foods, for dogs that are intolerant to them or for those who don't want to give them bones. It is a healthy option that provides similar health benefits to the Barf diet, but the food is given cooked at low temperature and chopped, which prevents the growth of bacteria. In both cases, you must take into account the animal’s nutritional needs.
The diet based on traditional Chinese veterinary medicine is a therapeutic way of feeding which is administered in a personalised way for each dog, after a holistic diagnosis of the animal carried out by a vet who specialises in this subject. This diet can be chosen simply as a prevention and improvement of health; as a treatment for skin problems, allergies, arthritis..., or as a combined therapy to supplement treatment for a disease.
