Whole Pet Nutrition

10/27/2023

I wanted to take a moment and introduce myself - I'm Tamara.

I am a passionate raw-feeding dog mama and veterinary professional. After seeing the positive benefits of raw diets and becoming an outspoken advocate of fresher-feeding, I began looking at educational opportunities. I am working on my multi-year certification in Small Animal Natural Nutrition through CIVT (a holistic pet school), and have completed my first 100-hr course, Natural Animal Nutrition.

I know that the information that you receive from your veterinarian, your pet-store, your friends, and online resources often give you conflicting information - and I'm here to help you bridge that gap.

I'm here to talk you through - how a diet can improve allergies/skin/digestion, choosing the best diet for your puppy or senior, how to help your pet lose a couple of pounds, what you can be adding to your pet's current diet, or help you build a balanced diet custom to your pet and their needs.

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10/26/2023

It's no secret that I LOVE raw diets - we've seen it help so many dogs - from weight loss, to skin issues, to digestive struggles and allergies.

There are a few important things to keep in mind - choosing a diet that meets the nutrient requirements appropriate to your pet's age and and species, ensuring quality control measures (to reduce the risks), and use the same cleanliness protocols you do for any raw meat in your home :)

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10/24/2023

Gently-Cooked pet food can be a great option to look at (especially if you have a senior or sick pet)- it's super palatable (pets love it), it has a good moisture content, and if you have concerns about bacterial risks with raw food - this is a great option to look at.

You can either buy cooked food or make it yourself - but know that all recipes are not created equal and it's very important to ensure that you're feeding a balanced diet prepared by a nutritionist (that's me!)

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10/20/2023

If you are feeding kibble - we highly recommend you have a look at air-dried pet food. It is equally as convenient and shelf stable, but experiences less nutrient loss because it's not heated (so similar benefits of raw).

The cost per bag can be substantial - but you are often feeding small quantities as it's incredibly nutrient dense. It's always important to look at the cost of feeding your pet per day, not per bag as different foods require you to feed different amounts.
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10/17/2023

Let's talk....canned food!

Canned food is a less processed (compared to kibble) option - with lots of moisture (VERY important for cats, specifically), usually with more protein compared to kibble, but it can often be very expensive to feed, with bigger pets needing multiple cans per day.

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10/03/2023

We love using lick mats(or a Toppl) to add enrichment to mealtime

09/27/2023

First on our list of Pet Foods to look at is....kibble.

Kibble is a convenient diet to feed, but is ultra-processed (heated at high temperatures multiple times), this is especially true if diets include "meals" as those ingredients are processed to become meals before they even start to become kibble. Kibble is often sprayed at the end of it's manufacturing to preserve it and prevent oxidation, however, when a bag is opened (and worse - if left open), it will begin to oxidize and eventually become rancid. This is why we highly recommend tightly sealing your bags of kibble and ensuring you purchase the right size bag so that it is used within a month of being opened.

There is a significant range in quality and in price when it comes to kibble diets, so let's discuss how to look at your options:
- sources of protein (is the protein coming from high-quality meats and organs, or soy/grains?)
- highly supplemented for nutrients or do the nutrients come from whole food?
- are the fruits and veggies listed before or after the minerals and vitamins - if it's after, there are minimal amounts of them in the diet!'
- How much of the diet is protein? fat? carbohydrates?
- look at how much of the food that you need to feed per day and how this ties to the cost of feeding. To do this: find the grams you need to feed per feeding, calculate how many feedings are in the bag, and then take the cost of the bag and divide it by how many days feedings are in the bag. Sometimes, you will find that the more expensive or high quality food, will actually cost you less per day because you are feeding less!

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09/26/2023

Now we're going to look into the different types of foods and what to consider when you're looking at feeding that diet.

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09/24/2023

NRC is the nutritional guidelines that AAFCO and FEDIEF (Europe) is based on. The NRC (National Resource Council) has been around for many years and updates their "Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats" book by reviewing the research that has been completed on nutritional requirements of pets in recent years. While most people are familiar with the table of required nutrients - there's actually an entire textbook that includes the supporting reasoning for their recommendations.

One thing to consider is that most of these recommendations and research is that they are mostly going to be based off of processed diets (kibble, canned) because that's where most of the research is being done, and fresh diets can have a different absorption rate than processed diets - but of the resources that currently exist to help ensure your pet's diet is balanced; we believe NRC is your best best

09/21/2023

AAFCO is commonly used as the reference point for pet food companies as the guideline for the nutrient profile of what a "complete and balanced" diet is for your pet.

There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to AAFCO:
- the guidelines are based on synthetic supplementation in kibble diets; and do not consider the bioavailability of nutrients of a fresh diet (commonly this plays into Zinc and Vitamin E)
- they are not an actual governmental body - they cannot approve or ban pet foods; have no labs, no investigators, etc - so there are little to no checks into the AAFCO statement on a bag and if the food inside does match that statement
- Feeding trials - Purina, Hills, and Royal Canin often mention completed feeding trials (and we were very excited to see Big Country Raw complete one recently!); but what does a successful feeding trial mean? The criteria are - must be completed on 8 dogs for a 6 month period (except growth diets which only are for 10 weeks); 6 of those 8 pets must not show nutritional deficiency or excess, no pet can lose more than 15% of it's starting weight (but weight gain is not considered), and 4 blood values are taken at the end of the trial (just 4!)

So again - AAFCO statements can be a tool to help you assess the nutrients in your pets diet; but it also has flaws - we believe that it's very important to assess all tools critically that you use - to make the most informed choice possible. Do we think it's important to meet nutritional standards? Of course; AAFCO the perfect tool for that? not necessarily.

09/20/2023

Who is WSAVA? WSAVA is a global veterinary association that other associations are members of. We do awknowledge that three of their main industry partners, are - Purina, Hills, and Royal Canin; so we expect to see biases here, but I think the WSAVA guidelines can still be used to help guide you (when that bias is taken into consideration.

How would I use these guidelines?
1/2: Do they employ a nutritionist and who is formulating the diets? I am combining these two questions together because when you're looking at pet diets; we want to look at who is formulating those diets and how they are deciding what is going into that pet food? Are you comfortable with the accreditations and approach that this company uses?

3: What is the quality control process for ingredients and
finished products? Where are they making this food? How are they ensuring that the ingredients are being handled and processed in a way that keeps you and your pets safe? Do they do any testing? How clean is their facility - does it meet appropriate standards?

4: Nutrition Adequacy Statement: To what standards is the diet formulated to - is it to AAFCO standards? To NRC standards? "complete" is not a regulated term - how are they ensuring that your pet is going to be consuming the nutrition that they need

5. Calories in the portion: To take this further, we want more than just calories - but we also want to know the protein, the fat, the carbs, and the minerals (especially calcium and phosphorous!) in the diet. This ties to - how do we know that our pet is eating an appropriate diet if we don't know what the diet consists of

6. Contact information : Is there a phone number, email address, etc for if you have questions or concerns about the diet.

7. Who makes the food: This really ties with multiple points above about ensuring that the food is being prepared in a way that you are comfortable with. Always research the manufacturing company if different than the pet food company!

09/18/2023

Welcome to the start of our series giving you important information on how to choose the best diet possible for your pet.... we’re doing this series because there are endless diet choices that you have available to you....

08/29/2023