Our Health-Food Eating Dog

I am all about training Tyson these days. I really want him to be a well-behaved dog, properly socialized, etc. I think Lainey (which lives with my parents now) is a great dog, but definitely not perfect and I wish I would have done a few thing differently with her... Anyways, this leads into my story......

The other day, I ordered some books on training your dog. One of the books is titled "11 things you need to do to keep your dog happy and healthy". Chapter 1 is over what to feed your dog. Well, I have already bought Tyson some Natural food that I thought was OK- not complete crap, stuffed with chemicals and artificial dyes. Chapter 1 of this book talks about how disgusting the pet food industry is and how is got started... which is interesting! Basically the grain companies have moldy or old grain that they can't put into the people products and the meat industry has meat from diseased animals, deceased animals, or just left overs that they can't use. Way back when.... the grain and meat industry got together and decided to mix their old/left-overs together and call it "pet food." On top of that... the food is stuffed with preservatives (chemically based) and artificial dyes. Not good for pets, just like this would not be good for humans.

This book emphasizes how the #1 killer of pets these days is cancer... probably from the food we are giving them. They say we should be feeding our pets "people food" (chicken, beef, veggies, etc). The guy who wrote this actually cooks for his dogs everyday. Well, you know me, I immediately chop up some broccoli and zucchini and serve it to Tyson.... do you think he eats it? NO. I mixed it with his dog food and here is a picture of him trying to dig through the bowl and pick out his dog food- not veggies. The broccoli and zucchini ended up all over the house :) pretty funny.

One thing I have given him that he LOVES is hard boiled eggs. I serve them to him with dinner every night. And this book does recommend ONE commercialized brand that is actually "human ingrediant certified" or something like that- which I am guessing means, we could eat it and not get sick. It is called Innova and Tyson will be switched to this after he finished his current bag. You can look it up online to see what pet stores it is sold at close to you. With this food, feeding them some people food should make them happy, healthy pups!!!!! Recommended is: oats, brown rice, chicken, beef, etc. and fruits (not all) and veggies too!

Also interesting- what you CAN'T feed them: Chocolate, grapes, raisins, mushrooms, onions, macadamia nuts, deli meets (hot dogs, pepperonis, ham), anything deep fried, anything that is really spicy, anything with lots of salt, gravy, fat, sugar.

So I guess this was an informational post- but I personally found this info very interesting. If anyone is interested in this book, I have it on my computer and can email it to you. Some of it is a little over the top, but all in all, it has some great info :) PS- we are soooooo excited because Tyson finally knows what "shake" is. We have been working on it over a week and he did it today- so proud!