This is really critical ‑ common, commercial foods are not adequate. A great diet will help restore health to ill pets and often prevent health problems. The best diet to feed is a balanced, supplemented, homemade diet. After all, what is best for you – prepared, canned, boxed foods that meet the minimum daily requirement, or the freshest, least chemically treated vegetables (and meat)? Good nutrition guides include Dr. Pitcairn’s New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, The  Natural Cat: A Complete Guide for Finicky Owners, Steve Brown’s Unlocking the Canine Ancestral Diet; Hofve and Yarnall’s the Paleodog; Becker and Taylor’s Dr. Becker’s real food for healthy dogs and cats; Taylor and Brown’s See spot Live Longer; and Basko’s Fresh food and Ancient Wisdom, “It’s for the Animals “Cook” Book, Cat Care Naturally – Celeste Yarnall, Naturally, The Ultimate diet, See Spot Live Longer, Reigning Cats & Dogs: Good Nutrition Healthy Happy Animals, and now many others.

Many other good books, tapes, Whole Dog Journal & web sites are listed in the references.

Do you use just one cookbook or nutritional guide? Your animals need the same individualized consideration. An excellent tape on commercial pet foods and the raw meat diet is by Jean Hofve of API when she spoke at the Holistic Veterinary Medical Association’s Annual conference in 2000. A new article on the regulatory mess in the pet food industry is at http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/784/Patrick06

General Nutritional Guidelines

I Do Not Even Cook For Myself

What About Quality of Ingredients?

Great Links About Feeding Fresh Foods

And these link to blog posts on nutrition – be sure to sign up for the RSS feed so you can get updates on food recalls and other great information, some on feeding.

Switching to a raw food diet

Meat Sources 

Food Recalls

Fresh Local for a reason 

Good books on feeding fresh

Please make comments and post feeding questions on the blog pages, so we can start some dialog.