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Explanation of the advantages of feeding your pet a healthy and enjoyable diet - Succeed with Healthy Animals. Also refer to canned pet food, dry food, table scraps, emotional health, variety, byproducts, corn meal, onions, chocolate, Ron Kurtus, School for Champions. Copyright © Restrictions

Give Your Pet a Healthy, Enjoyable Diet

by Ron Kurtus (3 November 2001)

What you feed your dog, cat or other pet will help determine the animal's physical, as well as emotional health. Regular food is often better than canned pet food. Feeding only dry pet food may not be that healthy and can be very boring to the animal. Variety in food may be a better for the physical health, as well as emotionally for the animal.

Questions you may have include:

• What about canned pet food?
• What about dry pet food?
• Should you feed them leftovers?

This lesson will answer those questions. There is a mini-quiz near the end of the lesson. Animal Health Disclaimer

Canned pet food

If you look at the label on canned dog or cat, the thing that stands out the most is the expression "animal byproducts." In other words, they are parts of an animal that is not necessarily fit for human consumption.

Animals know what is bad

When my cat catches a mouse or other varmint, there are certain parts of the body they she does not eat and will leave for me to clean up. If following her instincts says not to eat such things, perhaps it isn't good to have similar material ground-up in her cat food.

Dogs are not as fussy and seem to eat almost anything they find, even pieces of plastic and road kill. But there are times when the food just doesn't smell right and the dog will reject it.

They know what they like

Watch the different in feeding your animal real meat, such as chicken, turkey or beef, compared with eating canned pet food. If they gobble it down, the chances are that it is much better for them.

Dry food diet

Some people feed their pets only a dry food diet. That is certainly more convenient. The idea is that the animal will get all the required nutrients in the dry food. But that is questionable, and it may rob your animal of a great pleasure in life.

Look at label

If you look on the label of the dry cat or dog food, you will see that most of it is corn meal, fortified with vitamins. That may be sufficient, but it certainly is not natural.

Psychological effect

A large additional factor is the psychological effect such a diet has on the animal. How would you like to eat the same meal every day--supplemented by vitamin pills--day in and day out? It wouldn't be long before you would get extremely irritable, and perhaps even anxious from such a diet. How do you think the animal feels?

Variety is good

Although pet food companies and even some vets advocate the same daily diet, I believe that variety is the spice of life, as well as the best way toward good health.

In fact, I even followed that with my pet rat. Instead of feeding her only pellets every day, she received a varied diet of grains, vegetables and even meat. If there were some things she didn't eat, I would not include them in the diet.

Leftovers

You often hear the warning that you shouldn't feed your pet table-scraps. I think that depends on what type of food is left over. Certainly good pieces of meat and some vegetables are not harmful and even good for the pet.

Mixing good leftovers with regular animal food gives your pet a little better diet than what is in the can.

Of course, there are some human foods that animals should not eat. Chocolate and onions are not recommended to feed your pet.

Summary

A good, well-rounded diet will enhance your pet's health. Regular food is often better than canned pet food, and variety in meals may be a better for the physical health, as well as emotionally for the animal.

Answers to Readers' Questions

Variety is the spice of life

Resources

The following are resources on this subject.

Websites

Pet Health Resources

Books

Top-rated books on Pet Diet

Miscellaneous

Mini-quiz to check your understanding

1. What can be wrong with canned pet food?

2. What are disadvantages of a dry food diet?

3. What type of leftovers are bad for dogs?

If you got all three correct, you are on your way to becoming a champion in having a healthy pet. If you had problems, you had better look over the material again.

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Give Your Pet a Healthy, Enjoyable Diet