This should be one of the most vital articles on your dog that you can read. For you are probably aware of mass advertising for various commercial dog food brands, but these are products made for a price point, to maximise profit. They are over HALF made of grains or vegetables that have low positive nutritional value – except for fibre for stools.
You might even be aware of the ‘digestive brands for ‘sensitive stomachs’ – but you should also be aware that most of these products still have a LOT of additives, from colours, to sugar and salts etc.
This article is about informing you of choosing your treats wisely and how they can boost the value of ANY dog food, far beyond what any commercial dog food can provide. You just choose your own price point and frequency.
What people consider dog treats function are.
This is often a massive misconception. The word ‘treat’ suggests something sugary, that should be given in limited supply, because it’s bad for you. Because that is what humans often consider a treats to be, and often what they buy for their dog.
Many commercial dog treats are just filler with sugar oil and salt. They work years in the lab in billion-dollar companies to disguise plant food into a formulation that will fool a dog into eat it, to eating a lot of it. To be addicted to something unnatural that will make a company richer. It has nothing to do with a natural food, or anything that a dog needs. THAT, is the kind of thing that gives a ‘treat’ a bad name. and why people still expect that to be
What actual healthy alternatives for dog’s treats will your dog enjoy?
This is probably one of the very few things about meat prices going through the roof during the 2024 cost of living crisis. People are starting to value it more. The value it should have.
But unfortunately, this is happening at the same time that human health experts are saying that people shouldn’t have more than three or four meat-based dishes per week.
The little secret here is that over 300-400 thousand years, humans purposely evolved their diet and digestive system to being a true omnivore, from more of a carnivore. Humans still have relatively the same amount of stomach acid and intestine length that they used to before the evolution, but developing the ability to properly digest grains and plant mater to have the amylase enzyme in their mouth and stomach, means that they could fully process plant matter.
There is no doubt in, in-depth medical journals over why human’s digestive biomes can better process plant matter than they used to, but the many centuries and now the much longer life expectancy along with a more sedate lifestyle for many people even early in their lives probably lends itself to making it easier to digest ground plant matter than meat (for some people).
How long is that intestine I hear you ask? The short portion of the human intestine is about 6 m (20 feet) long, and the large intestine only about 1.5 m or 5 feet long. The combined length being 25 feet.
Your dog meanwhile only evolved from wolves about 20,000 years ago. And they mostly retain the digestion of a wolf, that mostly kills and eats its meat-based prey. They have pointy teeth for ripping rather than grinding. Much less amylase, high stomach acid environment (to Fastly digest meat) and much shorter intestinal tracts to quickly expel the meat and any bad toxins that might come from wild raw meat.
Compared to human (omnivores) Wolves (carnivore) intestinal length is around 3 – 4.4 m. (10 feet to 14 feet). These animals are often as big as human adults. Meanwhile a domestic pet dog’s intestine is often only about 2 m (or 7 feet) (because most dogs are smaller than of a wolves’, (but dogs have the same carnivore system as the wolf).
How to improve your dog’s digestion with dog treats.
Many commercial dog treats have been blamed for making digestion worse. Things like grain-based treats, just add more carbs to your dog. The empty calories can just cause flatulence, bloating and many other unpleasant side effects.
Rawhide cheap imports that are not single ingredient, can cause allergic reactions or bowel blockages.
To improve a dog’s digestion, and actual provide nutrition to your dog, you will want to go back to basics, what the dog was evolved to eat. Meat, offal and a small amount of bone.
You don’t have to feed bone if you are concerned about splintering or the marrow being too “rich” for your dog. But virtually none of the current commercial dog foods come anywhere near an appropriate amount of animal-based protein (like 80% by dry weight) that your dog needs. They would be lucky to get 40% protein (and probably half of that form plants. Because aafco only requires 18% protein, from any source for ingredients to be called dog food.
Besides providing the very important function for building muscle, heart and brain in your dog, animal protein is very bio-available to them. This means that on a percentage basis, your dog can easily digest and use the protein they are provided by animal meat.
Some meats are higher bio-availability than others, but they are almost all high bio availability than plant matter (uncles it is unnaturally highly processed like some soy products that some companies are trialling as a cheap meat replacement.
Meat will also have different enzyme mix in a dog’s stomach to digest it, and different “good” bacteria in the intestine to extract the final few prized amino acids to use as building blocks in your stomachs body. Meat is set up to have the right profile mix of amino acids, so that the limiting amino acid, in the set of crucial “ESSENTIAL amino acids” can ALL be used by your dog’s body.
CONCLUSION
You might not be aware of terms like essential amino acids or bio availability, because these are terms that companies that many sell you plant matter as dog food don’t want you thinking about.
They will talk about glossy coats, low allergy, low protein (for dogs with specific organ diseases).
The point is, if you are going to feed your dog any dog treats, why wouldn’t you want to provide something that has a positive effect on them, that they absolutely love, and addresses the imbalance of low meat content in most dog foods?
You can still hang onto buying your favourite brand of dog food. And perhaps consider reframing the term dog treat, as dog supplement.
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