An Owner’s Guide to a Happy, Healthy Dog
By Marjorie Walsh
I’ve been cooking for dogs for a very long time. Long enough to remember when the idea was considered eccentric at best and irresponsible at worst. “You can’t feed a dog real food,” people would say, as if the entire species had somehow survived for thousands of years without the invention of the extruded kibble pellet.
The truth, of course, is rather different. Dogs are remarkably adaptable omnivores who have evolved alongside human beings, eating more or less what we eat, for the better part of fifteen thousand years. The commercial dog food industry is barely a hundred years old. Your dog’s digestive system has not received the memo.
This guide is not an argument against all commercial dog food — some of it is perfectly good. It is, rather, an attempt to help you understand what your dog actually needs nutritionally, so that whatever you choose to feed, you do so with your eyes open. And if it nudges you towards cooking something real for your dog occasionally, so much the better.
Kiko, our Bull Terrier, was our most enthusiastic test subject. He had opinions about everything.
A Dog’s Life, Then and Now: A Brief History of Feeding
When dogs were wild, they devoted a considerable portion of their day to hunting — and the rest of it to sleeping off the effort. For approximately three thousand years after domestication, dogs ate whatever was left for them at the end of a human meal. It was a scrappy, opportunistic existence, and they thrived on it.
In 1922, a group of American businessmen had a rather brilliant idea: horsemeat unsuitable for human consumption could be converted into dog food. Thus was born an industry. Gradually, complex formulas and elaborate ingredients came into vogue, and by the mid-twentieth century it had become received wisdom that feeding a dog anything other than food from a tin or a bag was at best misguided and at worst dangerous.
The commercial pet food industry is now worth billions. It is also, it must be said, largely unregulated in ways that would alarm you if you thought about it too carefully. The labelling requirements are minimal, the ingredient sourcing is opaque, and the gap between what the packaging implies and what is actually in the tin can be considerable.
None of this means all commercial dog food is bad. It means you should read labels, ask questions, and not simply assume that because something is sold for dogs it is therefore good for them.
The modern dog no longer needs to hunt for its dinner, but mealtime remains one of the central events of its day. Routine matters enormously — a consistent feeding schedule supports good digestion, stable blood sugar, and, frankly, a calmer dog. Whatever you decide to feed, feed it at the same time each day. Your dog will be grateful, and considerably less likely to stare at you with that particular expression of martyred hunger that Bull Terriers have perfected.
Dietary Components and Your Dog’s Health
A dog’s dietary requirements are not dramatically different from our own, which should perhaps not surprise us given our shared evolutionary history. The key components are proteins, fats,
carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. The proportions matter, and they vary with age, breed, size, and activity level.
Fats
In canine terms, fats mean energy — and dogs need rather a lot of it. Fats are the most efficient energy source available, providing more than twice the calories per gram of protein or carbohydrate. They also support healthy skin and coat, cushion internal organs, carry fat-soluble vitamins, and make food taste considerably better.
A good dietary target is 25 to 30 percent of total food calories from fats. Essential fatty acids — linoleic acid in particular — cannot be synthesised by the dog and must come from food. Linoleic acid should account for approximately 2 percent of total daily calories. Good sources include chicken fat, fish oil, and flaxseed.
If your dog’s coat is dull, dry, or excessively itchy, a fat deficiency is often the first thing worth investigating.
Proteins
Proteins are the building blocks of muscle, tissue, enzymes, hormones, and the immune system. Dogs require significantly more protein than humans — generally 18 to 25 percent of total diet for an adult dog, and higher for puppies, pregnant or nursing females, and working dogs.
Animal proteins — meat, fish, eggs, dairy — are more bioavailable than plant proteins, meaning the dog can actually use more of what it ingests. This does not mean plant proteins have no value; it means that if the first ingredient on a dog food label is a plant protein, you should look more carefully at the rest.
Carbohydrates
Dogs have no strict dietary requirement for carbohydrates — unlike humans, they can synthesise glucose from proteins and fats. That said, carbohydrates are a perfectly good energy source and most dogs digest them well, particularly cooked grains and vegetables.
The grain-free trend that swept through pet food marketing over the past decade has largely been found wanting — there is little evidence that grain-free diets benefit most dogs, and some evidence linking certain grain-free formulations to heart problems. Unless your dog has a diagnosed grain intolerance, there is no particular reason to avoid them.
Vitamins and Minerals
A varied diet generally takes care of most vitamin and mineral requirements without supplementation. The exceptions worth knowing about are calcium and phosphorus — which must be in the right ratio (roughly 1.2:1) for proper bone development — and vitamin D, which dogs obtain primarily from food rather than sunlight, unlike us.
One nutrient stands alone in the veterinary literature as the single most important addition to a dog’s diet: liver. Every vet I have ever spoken to agrees on this. Liver provides concentrated amounts of vitamin A, B vitamins, iron, and other nutrients in a form dogs can use efficiently. A small amount of liver — not too much, as it is extremely rich — once or twice a week is one of the best things you can do for your dog.
Major Considerations: How to Avoid Deficiencies
The concept of a “balanced diet” is one of those phrases that gets repeated so often it begins to lose meaning. What it actually refers to is ensuring that your dog receives adequate amounts of all essential nutrients over time — not necessarily in every single meal, but across the overall pattern of feeding.
Veterinary nutritionists now tend to speak of “daily requirements” rather than “recommended allowances,” which is a more honest framing. These requirements vary considerably between individual dogs depending on age, breed, size, health status, and activity level. The numbers on a bag of dog food are averages, and your dog may not be average.
Energy
Energy — calories — is the foundation of everything else. A dog that is not getting enough calories will pull energy from its own muscle mass. A dog getting too many will become overweight, which carries its own considerable health risks.
The simplest guide to whether your dog is getting the right amount of food is to look at and feel your dog. You should be able to feel the ribs without pressing hard, but not see them. There should be a visible waist when viewed from above. These are not complicated assessments, and they tell you more than any feeding chart.
What to Avoid
Some foods that are perfectly safe for humans are toxic to dogs. The list that matters most:
- Chocolate — contains theobromine, which dogs cannot metabolise. Dark chocolate is most dangerous.
- Grapes and raisins — can cause acute kidney failure, even in small amounts. The mechanism is still not fully understood.
- Onions and garlic — damage red blood cells, causing anaemia. Cooked is just as dangerous as raw.
- Xylitol — artificial sweetener found in sugar-free products, is extraordinarily toxic to dogs.
- Macadamia nuts — cause weakness, tremors, and hyperthermia.
- Alcohol — obvious, one would hope, but worth stating.
- Cooked bones — unlike raw bones, cooked bones splinter and can cause serious internal injury.When in doubt about a specific food, ask your vet. The internet is full of confident but contradictory information on this subject.
Choosing the Right Food. The most reliable way to judge whether a food is working for your dog is to watch what happens when your dog eats it. Is your dog always hungry shortly after meals? Is the coat dull or the skin flaky? Are the stools consistently formed? Is your dog at a healthy weight and full of energy? Your dog is, in the end, your best diagnostic tool. Dogs cannot tell us in words when something is wrong, but they are remarkably good at showing us — if we pay attention.
How a Dog’s Mouth Actually Works. It may come as a mild surprise to learn that a dog’s mouth is built for an entirely different style of eating than a human’s. A dog picks up food with its front teeth, tosses it onto its tongue, and the tongue rolls it to the back of the mouth where it is swallowed more or less whole. Dogs do not chew the way we do — their jaw cannot move laterally. This has practical implications. Small, uniform pieces of food work better than large chunks. Texture matters to palatability — most dogs prefer food with some substance to it rather than a uniform paste. And contrary to the old belief that dry kibble ‘cleans teeth,’ most kibble shatters on contact and does nothing of the sort.
A Few Practical Tests for Commercial Food. If you are evaluating a commercial dog food, these are reasonable minimum standards: - Reject any food where the moisture content exceeds 78% — you are paying for water.
- Look for a guaranteed calcium content of at least 0.5%.
- The first ingredient should be a named animal protein — “chicken,” “beef,” or “salmon,” not “meat derivatives” or “animal by-products.”
- At least one whole grain or complex carbohydrate should be present.
- The ingredient list should be short enough that you can read and understand it.
A Final Word
Feeding a dog well does not require a degree in veterinary nutrition. It requires paying attention, reading labels with a degree of healthy scepticism, and trusting what you observe about your own dog rather than what the packaging tells you to think.
If you cook for your dog, even occasionally, you will know exactly what is in the food. There is something to be said for that.
Kiko, who ate extremely well for his entire life, lived to fourteen. For a Bull Terrier, that is a very good innings indeed.
You Owe Me.
— Marjorie Walsh, Lucies Farm