Unlocking the Canine Ancestral Diet

"Steve Brown has a dog food company in America. He’s a great chap and he’s really the one who did a lot of the analysis into what wolves are eating in the wild — what percentage of protein and carbohydrate and fat and what sorts of proteins, carbohydrates and fats they are. He then compares it to manufactured processed food and points out what the differences are. He did the research, a bit like Vicky did, because he was making the food and he wanted to know. It’s a short book, but it contains the original research which, if you’re interested in the subject, is always nice to know: To go back to the source, as it were. Yes. He’s got recipes in there as well and eating plans. Exactly, all raw. Initially people were a bit thrown by the idea, because it was new. But, if you think about it, dogs in the wild aren’t planning five servings of vegetables per day. They are killing prey and eating it or scavenging, and they get the balance over time. If you take that attitude to feeding your dog, thinking about what’s likely to happen to it in the wild, you realize it might not eat for two days. In fact, dogs can go up to a week in the wild without eating. So, actually, if you’re just giving your dog raw meat and bone, in roughly the right proportion, you can’t really go wrong. And then you think, well, from time to time a wild dog might find an egg, so I’ll throw in an egg. Or from time to time they might find some fish, so you could give them a tin of pilchards. A lot of people with the recipe books make it seem awfully complicated but it’s much easier than it looks. It’s as much art as science."