Give Your Dog a Bone by Dr. Ian Billinghurst

Author:Dr. Ian Billinghurst [urst, Ian Billingb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dogwise
Published: 2012-03-02T08:00:00+00:00

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Organ Meats as Dog Food

USELESS OFFAL OR VALUABLE FOOD?

Because it is readily available and cheap, large numbers of Australian dog owners regularly feed their dogs liver, kidney, brains, tongues, ox cheeks etc. Butchers often put together packs of this material specially for dogs.

The question is, is this a good idea? Are such things valuable food for dogs? What nutrients do dogs get when they eat organ meats? If dogs are supposed to eat this sort of food, how much should they get and how often should they get it? What are the dangers of feeding too much organ meat to a dog? Are there different stages of life when extra will be required? Which is more nutritious for a dog, cooked or raw organ meat? Is there any danger to a dog’s health if it eats organ meat raw? What about human health?

These are the sorts of questions that people ought to be asking when it comes to feeding offal to dogs. The answers are important. By understanding what these products contain, and how they can help or possibly harm a dog, allows dog owners to feed or not feed such products with greater confidence.

• In the wild, dogs eat organ meat from the animals they kill on a regular basis. In fact, internal organs are one of the first things a wild dog eats following a kill. Internal organs form an essential and vital part of a wild dog’s diet.

• Modern dogs have similar requirements. Modern dogs consuming these products as part of a sensible diet have superior health to dogs that do not eat them.

This was illustrated graphically by a dog which visited us recently because of a skin problem. This poor dog’s whole body was covered with thickened, inflamed, infected, oozing, crusting skin. The owners told me that the skin would often clear up and stay healthy for months, then suddenly, the problem would reappear:

The basic diet of this dog was dry dog food. Recently it had been eating one specifically formulated to improve the coats of show dogs. Clearly the product was not doing what its makers claimed it would!

After questioning, it became apparent that the dog’s general health, including its skin, improved whenever it was fed a product called "dog’s delight". This was a concoction put together by the local butcher and consisted of a mixture of livers, hearts, kidneys, brains, tongues and off-cuts of various meats including pork and lamb and beef.

• This mixture was rich in high quality protein, B Vitamins, Vitamin A, some Vitamin C, essential fatty acids and zinc. That particular mixture, if fed often enough, adequately compensated for the deficiencies of the dry dog food.

This is a common situation. Many folk manage to balance their dog’s diet quite nicely in all sorts of ways, including the use of organ meats, without really understanding what they are doing. On the other hand, some people feed organ meat as the major part of their dog’s diet. Such dog’s eventually become ill.

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