At the Natural Canine we highly recommend feeding some form of home-prepared diet. Home-prepared diets may include

cooked diets
raw diets
combination of cooked and raw.

Raw food diets are very popular but there is much confusion surround their safety and how to feed them.

Over the 30 years we have been studying diets and feeding our dogs home prepared diets (Teddy lived to be 19 and Molly and Becky are 12!) we feel there is no 'perfect' diet for all dogs. We have seen many, many dogs imporve with raw, cooked and combo diets (combo diets, by the way are a combination of raw and cooked foods) - we have also heard of dogs who will not tolerate or have worsened when fed raw foods.

Individuality. The key point is that all dogs are not the same! Each dog is an individual so you need to make sure the diet matches your dog. Age, lifestyle, health and genetics all play a role.

Rocket Science? If this is beginning to sound complicated don't give up! It's really quite easy. If you would like to try a raw food diet here's how to begin.

Raw Diet Basics The chart below is a guideline for how much meat and vegetables to feed.

Young and Active dogs	Senior dogs (over 7)
75% Meat / 25% mixed vegetables	40% meat / 60% mixed vegetables

This next chart tells you what kinds of meat and vegetables are good

Meats to feed	Vegetables/fruit to feed
Beef, poultry, lamb, bison, fish (no skin)	carrots, pumpkin or winter squash, summer squash, peas, sweet potatoes, beets, kale, chard, apples, blueberries

Supplements: We highly recommend our Green Power - it is the ONLY 100% Organic, concentrated source of vegetables. If you are only going to add 1 supplement, make it Green Power. Also consider our Essential supplements - these kits includes Green Power, fresh pressed Flax oil (we order often and keep it in the fridge) and sea calcium.

Let's go! For an active dog 50-60 pounds here's a recipe (feed twice a day):

1/2 pound (about 1 cup) raw beef, ground or chunks
1/2- 3/4 cup mixed vegetables
Add these supplements - GreenPower, Flax Oil, Sea Calcium.

Mix and server at room temperature

How to prepare - the meat is easy! Put it into the bowl. Dogs love to wolf down larger chunks or ground is fine. If you feed any bones they MUST be uncooked and they MUST be ground (otherwise use our Sea Calcium)

Now the vegetables - first, dogs do not chew their food - they basically test bite to make sure there are no bones and then down it goes - their stomachs are very powerful muscles and full of strong acid. Food does not stay too long in the stomach so there is minimal time to 'digest'. Vegetables fed in large pieces, therefore, provide LITTLE OR NO nutrition.

So what do we do? Run all your veggies through a food mill or food processor to pulverize them. This is very important.