This is particularly interesting to me, as I became aware dogs can eat legumes shortly after I got my two rescues.
Their typical died consists of a mixture of green or yellow split peas, pressure cooked for 43 minutes, then blended to a medium-thickness liquid, and cooked brown rice. This then gets mixed with raw mince (typically kangaroo or chicken), and grated / finely chopped raw vegetables consisting of one or more of the following: carrots, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage. They also get raw meat bones (lamb, kangaroo, chicken), as well as raw eggs. Oh yeah, they also low apples, particularly fujis, and berries. So the mixed food I make often contains chopped apples or frozen mixed berries.
I generally never feed them the same ratio, or same things consistently. Some weeks the mix I make them will have no peas, another week no rice, another week no meat. They often skip meals, or have fast days where they get no food only water and exercise, as I believe dogs are opportunistic scavengers well suited to gorging and fasting.
I rarely feed them any off the shelf dog food.
I can see the difference when I feed them off the shelf food, as their poops turn to, shall I say, shit. Whereas the mixture of cooked peas and rice, plus raw veg and meat and bones, makes their poop easy to pass, and well formed.
With regards to dry dog food, canned dog food, and those dog-roll things... Can you imagine eating nothing but dry dog food most your life? Or nothing but canned food most of your life? Or nothing but luncheon meat / devon most your life? Tell me that isn't going to have long term health consequences.
Have a look at the chart in the article ( https://www.fda.gov/files/dog_food_formulations_in_dcm_repor... ) where it says Review of the canine reports shows that most reports were for dry dog food formulations, but raw food, semi-moist food, and wet foods were also represented.
Edit to add: also, the 'more natural' diets indicated by the article are these niche pet food formulations that try to be more natural, but are just as cooked / processed as any other similar type of pet food, and potentially worse because, as others have pointed out, these niche brands lack the longitudinal research capacity of the big brands. Whereas my formulation is, as many have pointed out when they see what I'm making for my dogs, pretty much exactly what I eat: fresh raw and cooked vegetables, meats, and beans. If a fairly natural diet of raw and cooked foods kills me and my dogs, we're all fucked and might as well give up now.
> With regards to dry dog food, canned dog food, and those dog-roll things... Can you imagine eating nothing but dry dog food most your life? Or nothing but canned food most of your life? Or nothing but luncheon meat / devon most your life? Tell me that isn't going to have long term health consequences.
Would be pointless for me to try to imagine this, I'm not a dog and my physiology is quite different. Humans have one of the weirdest diets out there because of our formative years as a species and need a varied diet. Some species like the Koala eat 1 thing for 99% of their diet and any major type of variety would cause them severe health issues.
With better studies than our current nutrition sciences (and ethics restrictions) can produce we could find out exactly the nutrients that a human needs every single day to be at optimal health and could package it up as a dry pellet food substance. You would be perfectly healthy eating such thing, many people would avoid it though because of the monotony of it. Once again though this can't be extrapolated to dogs, my dog fought me tooth and nail yesterday in order to try and eat some random dog diarrhea we came across on our walk; our eating habits and preferences as a species are just very different.
> Their typical died consists of a mixture of green or yellow split peas, pressure cooked for 43 minutes, then blended to a medium-thickness liquid, and cooked brown rice
That's starting to sound like Beyond Meat's recipe!
Their typical died consists of a mixture of green or yellow split peas, pressure cooked for 43 minutes, then blended to a medium-thickness liquid, and cooked brown rice. This then gets mixed with raw mince (typically kangaroo or chicken), and grated / finely chopped raw vegetables consisting of one or more of the following: carrots, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage. They also get raw meat bones (lamb, kangaroo, chicken), as well as raw eggs. Oh yeah, they also low apples, particularly fujis, and berries. So the mixed food I make often contains chopped apples or frozen mixed berries.
I generally never feed them the same ratio, or same things consistently. Some weeks the mix I make them will have no peas, another week no rice, another week no meat. They often skip meals, or have fast days where they get no food only water and exercise, as I believe dogs are opportunistic scavengers well suited to gorging and fasting.
I rarely feed them any off the shelf dog food.
I can see the difference when I feed them off the shelf food, as their poops turn to, shall I say, shit. Whereas the mixture of cooked peas and rice, plus raw veg and meat and bones, makes their poop easy to pass, and well formed.
With regards to dry dog food, canned dog food, and those dog-roll things... Can you imagine eating nothing but dry dog food most your life? Or nothing but canned food most of your life? Or nothing but luncheon meat / devon most your life? Tell me that isn't going to have long term health consequences.