Complete & Balanced Matters

What you feed your dog really matters—it affects their internal health, external health, and behaviour.

This applies to all foods, but let’s look at raw, for example:

The trendiest thing to feed your dog at the moment.

If you don’t make a pretty, colourful enrichment bowl of food, you’re not "cool."

Actually, wrong. As cute as they are, they could be doing more harm than good. In fact, if you are feeding complete and balanced food, those toppers could be making your dog’s food unbalanced again. And if it isn’t balanced, adding those toppers won’t necessarily make it balanced.

You can’t out-supplement a bad diet!

The most common deficiency in dogs is Vitamin D.

Those at the highest risk are those who feed:

• 80/10/10

• Poor quality kibble

• Unbalanced home-cooked diets

When choosing a high-quality balanced food, look for FEDIAF-approved companies. They’re not always amazing, but they have to meet certain guidelines, which is better than feeding an 80/10/10 without any knowledge on how to correctly balance it.

Look out for falsely advertised ‘complete’ foods. Just because 80 + 10 + 10 = 100 doesn’t mean it’s 100% complete. And if you’ve been told ‘just add fruit and veg,’ RUN.

The next thing I’d say to look out for is the protein you choose to feed. Hypoallergenic is plastered on most bags, but what it actually means (and should mean) is less common proteins that are less likely to cause an allergic reaction: venison, duck, lamb, and camel. I personally always feed less common proteins because they’re naturally better. Raw chicken is the cheapest to buy, and for a reason—it’s overproduced and most likely to cause reactions or flare-up allergies. So when you choose a good, balanced raw made from a non-common protein, you realize raw isn’t actually that cheap. (If it is, check the fat content.)

I’ve seen so many puppies fed an 80/10/10, and it’s so wrong. Puppies are growing rapidly, and they need a good-quality, balanced diet to thrive and grow properly. 80/10/10 contains too much bone, especially for a pup. Those white, crumbly poos you love picking up? That’s actually a sign of constipation and too much bone.

Do your research! 🤍