For thousands of years dogs roamed the ancient world. They made their homes on the Savannahs of Africa, the plains of India and the forests of Eurasia and the Americas. Packs of dogs swirled through every type of terrain in every climate. They ate what they could wherever they could. Food came from three sources - prey, scavenged and grazed items. Prey would be mainly herbivores - rabbits, deer, sheep or antelope. Scavenged food would be leftovers from the big carnivores; lions, bears and puma for example; dogs acting here as natural tidiers for the leftovers of messy carnivores. Coprophagia (eating faeces) would also offer nutritional scope. Grazed food would include nuts and apples, berries and other wild fruits in season. Grazing would only be a small part of the diet, but would be a significant proportion, especially in summer.

Dogs would hunt in packs. Prey would be devoured with nothing remaining of the carcass after the meal. The soft organs or 'viscera' were the first thing to be eaten. Herbivores (rabbits and deer) have a large gut continually full of chewed and partially digested vegetable matter. Cereals were present, but only as a small proportion. This would be eaten next. The muscle (meat) and bones would then be eaten. Bones, skin and hair would be the final course - nature's way of cleaning the teeth after a large meal.

Man has fed dogs for about forty thousand years; dogs help with the hunt and man rewards them with some of the leftovers the dogs are only too happy to eat. Life is easier for both species with this arrangement; man gets a useful hunting companion, dog gets a pack mate who feeds them a broad ranging diet without them having to do as much work to catch it. All very cosy until man got busy with things like agriculture, then developing society then industrialization and latterly caught up in the consumer society. When this happened, man kept a dog as a pet. He no longer hunted and so had less raw meat to share with his trusted friend.

Commercial Diets

Commercial food producers, with lots of poor quality meat, gristle, viscera and cereal by-products that they could not hide in sausages, came up with a novel idea to sell it - put it in tins and call it 'dog food'. For the first time in history, people could buy food specifically for their dog. The idea caught on. Soon people forgot that they just used to feed their dogs raw meat and bones and all the scraps - a broad range of foods minimally processed to maintain the food's value.

Convenient Disease

So why do we feed it to our dogs? Convenience, in a word - convenience. But how convenient is it if your animal develops a persistent itch or eczema, dental problems or smelly breath, inhalant allergy/atopy, colitis, food hypersensitivity, lethargy, dull and scurfy coat, kidney disease or rheumatoid arthritis?

Raw Food

Dogs should eat, as far as possible, a raw diet; raw meat, liquidised raw fruit and veg and raw bones. It is simple to feed and, logically, it is what dogs were, and are still are, designed to eat. Here's how it works:

The Rules:

• Dogs should be fed on a variety of raw meat and bones. Just sticking to one meat source is no good - you don't get all your nutrients. Do not feed pork. If your dog has a skin or bowel problem, do not feed beef initially until you know that this will not cause hypersensitivity.  
• Quantities - for every 10kg weight, a dog should eat about 100-150g meat and twice this volume in fruit and veg. This is only a guideline to start. If your dog is gaining weight, reduce quantities, if they are loosing, increase.  
• For every handful of meat, feed 2 handfuls of liquidised raw veg*. A bit like the old 'meat and two veg' adage! If you do not think you can feed the variety, contact the practice and we can supply a very good supplement called Pet Plus for Dogs (contact the practice to be sent some). Nuts, herbs and cooked beans should be added to the 'veg' portion.

• Feed raw bones once or twice weekly. (RAW bones are easily chewed and digested. It is very unlikely, but not impossible that bones will get stuck in the gut. If you do NOT give bones to clean teeth, however, a general anesthetic for dental work is very likely). NEVER FEED COOKED BONES.  
• Feed offal (either kidney, heart, lung or liver) once a week instead of meat. Remember, wild animals come with offal alongside the meat. It is a necessary part (however distasteful) of a balanced diet. Vary the organ meat weekly.  
• Do not feed cereals (mixer biscuits or treats). * Take any veges, especially green leaved ones, fruit and salad items and place in the liquidiser. You can use just one or two ingredients at any one liquidising, but make sure you have variety from week to week. Blend to a rough broth. Add some water to give a liquid texture, if necessary. Pour on the meat in a 1:2 ratio by volume, meat to veg. If your dog is ill or old, you may take a few days to more gradually change the regime to raw.

How to bend the rules:

• If you cannot bear to feed raw meat, very light cooking in olive oil to 'seal' the juices is ok. Meat should be rare when served.  
• Liquidised raw veg will last for 48 hours in the fridge, so you can do the blending only 3x weekly, but remember it looses it's goodness pretty quickly after liquidising. If you cannot do this daily, consider using rice as an alternative. Pasta is no good as it is made from wheat. If you cannot give a variety of veg and fruit, then you will need to feed a supplement.  
• An oven baked mixer biscuit can be used to fill out the diet once or twice weekly: feed 1/3 meat, 1/3 veg and 1/3 biscuit.  Do not use any cereals if you are trying to avoid grains.  
• If you cannot bear the thought of raw bones, the AMP minces such as Chicken dinner, Turkey Dinner and Rabbit Dinner contain finely ground bone to give Calcium. Some chews are needed in the diet to clean the teeth though.

Scares:

Certain authorities are concerned with feeding dogs raw food. They claim, without any good evidence that this can lead to the infection of dogs with pathogens that can pass to people. Dogs are able to cope with a certain level of contamination of their food that cooking would otherwise kill. They can eat such food and not be more of a threat to human health than a dog fed on a commercial diet. Indeed, if a dog is fed regularly on a raw food diet, they will be healthier and better able to cope with bugs transmissible to people. If you have any concerns, or have very young or very old or immunodeficient people in your household, then your best advice would be to talk with your vet or other health professional.