Canine Clinic

You may be poisoning your dog, unknowingly, a little each day. Know what you are feeding. Do you understand the ingredients label?

There’s an old saying "You’re never too old to learn". This has never been more true than with pet nutrition. By-products, bha, bht, ethoxyquin, iron oxide, manganese sulfate ... if you don’t know the meaning of these terms, you may be in for a shock.

Fifteen years ago, I lost a great setter because of liver and kidney disease. A veterinary internist introduced me to the world of pet nutrition and I found it was a factor in my dog’s death, because of what I had fed her. I decided the least I could do was to try and prevent a recurrence in the future. I began searching for an "all natural dog food", one without the harmful chemicals, one that was highly digestible, one that contained no by-products. They were virtually nonexistent. It became obvious to me the animal’s health was not a primary concern of most pet food companies. Thus the beginning of my obsession with pet nutrition ...

Since then I have researched every avenue, I have toured facilities that produce pet foods. Using my setters I helped two major dog food companies with their research while developing their formulas for an "all natural food".

Any food eaten by your dog must be processed and the waste disposed of by a vital organ, the liver. A pet food containing chemical preservatives may be harmful to the dog’s liver. This is no different from what occurs naturally within ourselves. Every drink we take of the chemical alcohol includes this process. If we continue to overindulge, cirrhosis of the liver occurs and we either die or need a liver transplant. Neither our dogs nor we can survive without this vital organ.

You may be poisoning your dog, unknowingly, a little each day if you are feeding a chemically preserved food. I did and she died at a young age ...

Feeding your dog a high protein food year-round is the equivalent of running your furnace all year. It produces excess heat and overworks a vital organ, the kidneys. Perhaps you’ve seen a dog with a "hot spot", a sore that he constantly licks. This is actually an excretion of excess protein through the skin. A dog’s system has no way to rid itself of this excess heat (produced by high protein) other than panting. This makes an animal uncomfortable in hot climates.

One of the top all-age field trial handlers in the nation never feeds his trial dogs more than 24% protein. His animals are among the best conditioned, biggest running, and win as many championships as anyone in the United States.

Today, as a kennel operator and breeder of performance dogs, diet, health and longevity are the most important ingredients of my operation.

Medical technology and treatment have improved. The human life span is many years longer than our ancestors. This is due in large part to nutrition and medical science. The same applies for our animals; however, you and I control their destiny.

The association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) is the governing body delegated by the FDA to oversee animal feeds. All ingredients listed are required to be as specifically defined by the FDA. You will see excerpts from the AAFCO manual, 357 pages long, which defines the ingredients ...

On page 62 of the AAFCO manual it states "the purpose of this association is to safeguard the health of man and animals. A list of substances acceptable as feed ingredients must be established including their designated names and definitions. Standards should be set for substances determined to be unsafe in feed."

It should be evident after this "quote" there is no government agency at work protecting our animals. They even admit allowing unsafe chemicals in animal foods.

Many dog foods utilize chemical preservatives, either Ethoxyquin, bha or bht. These chemicals may be harmful to your animal. These preservatives are used to preserve the fat. It is the cheapest way to prevent rancidity and it gives the food a minimum shelf life of one to two years. The food you fed this morning may be two years old.

The alternative to chemical preservation is natural preservation, using vitamins. Vitamins, or natural preservatives, are more costly and they reduce the shelf life to 6-9 months. The "natural" way to preserve food is with vitamin E or "tocopherols".

They also use Ethoxyquin as an ingredient in an herbicide and rubber preservative.

Documents which I possess reveal a conversation between the FDA and Monsanto, the maker of Ethoxyquin. It states, and I quote, "that Ethoxyquin is harmful and deleterious and that no amount of retesting could convince him or others in his division otherwise. It seemed quite obvious to them that Ethoxyquin could not be fed safely to mammals for a long period of time ..." (Source Natural Pet, Jan.-Feb. 1994)

Bha and bht, the other chemical preservatives, during independent laboratory research show a marked increase of certain types of cancerous tumors ... (Dog World, Dec. 1993.)

Why feed your animals these chemicals, admittedly proven to be harmful which can only hurt their performance and shorten their life? There are alternatives ... All natural foods are the answers ...

Listed below are excerpts from the AAFCO manual, defining the ingredients. Page 157 defines by-products.

Paragraph 9.3: "meat by-products is the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents."

Paragraph 9.10: "poultry by-product meal consists of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered poultry, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers except in such amounts as might occur unavoidably in good processing practices."

The chart lists 29 foods and their ingredients.

Ten (10) list by-products as one of three main ingredients.

Nineteen (19) list the chemicals Ethoxyquin, bha, bht as the primary preservative. AAFCO requires all foods to contain trace mineral such as iron, copper, manganese, aluminum and others. What they don’t require is that these minerals be chelated so they can absorb them. Most pet foods use mineral oxides or sulfates.

If you picked up a handful of very small pebbles and fed them to your dog, it would be the equivalent of feeding them oxides and sulfates. They do not equip a dog to absorb these minerals unless they are in a "chelated form." This process enables these minerals to be readily absorbed by the dog’s intestinal tract and bloodstream.

An "all natural" food will enhance your dog’s performance in many ways — fewer stools, firm stools that are nearly odor free.

Last February D. F. (Hoppy) Hopson of Alvord, TX, contacted me. This 76-year-old gentleman is one of the most respected men in all of the field trial world. He told me he had two dogs qualified for the NBHA National in March. His dogs could not run over an hour and he was concerned with their overall health. I suggested he try a few bags of an "all natural" endurance food. He told me that after seven days on the new food he was running his dogs two hours off horseback with energy to spare ...

Hoppy recently conducted an experiment with weaning age puppies. He placed in front of the puppies three bowls of different brands of food, two with by-products and one an "all natural". The puppies consistently chose the "all natural food" and left the others.

A quality feed does make a difference. Hoppy now feeds an “all natural” food to all his dogs, more than 130 at last count.

I attended the Region 7 summer meeting in Waco, TX. There I listened to Gary Pinalto speak on winning the National Championship. The first topic he spoke of was nutrition and the fact that without a good quality food his dogs could not perform at championship level.

It should now be apparent that no one is looking out for our animals’ well-being except their owners, and a few concerned pet food companies.

Suppose that during your next stop to gas up your vehicle, you see a station with a sign that says 50 cent gasolines. You immediately drive in and notice a disclaimer that says this gas contains ingredients that may be harmful to your engine. Are you still going to fill ‘er up?

It seems to me that these animals who provide us with countless hours of pleasure and memories that will last forever deserve, at the very least, a healthy, chemical free diet.

[Note. If you would like a copy of the reference material cited here, please send a self addressed envelope to Croqkett Kennels, Rt. 1, Box 20x, Bowie, TX 76230.]

The preceding appeared in the Nov. 4, 1995 issue of The American Field.