Ok so where do I get more info in nutrition

Does anyone have any suggestions about where to get info about balance nutrition. People have posted about calcium, etc., and I don't know where to look for info. I will talk to my vet. I thought about mxing prescription kibble, or dog food in with his homemade food and hope this will help with long tern effects. I want my churchill to have a quality life and I need some help. Any suggestions would be helpful.. This forum is great for info and I appreciate all suggestions. Thank you friends.

Most vets know almost nothing about nutrition. It isn't covered much in vet school, and some of the kibble companies "sponsor" a lot of the info sessions, training, etc.

Good resources:

http://www.dogaware.com

http://www.b-naturals.com/
Look at the tab for the newsletters and recipes - I'm not particularly recommending (or particularly not recommending) the products.

If you can find Donald Strombeck's (DVM) ORIGINAL book, it is a great resource. The new edition that was actually written by someone else has a major error that is well covered in the Amazon reviews.

http://www.thebark.com/content/conversation-donald-r-strombeck-dvm

http://www.amazon.com/Home-Prepared-Dog-Cat-Diets-Alternative/dp/0813821495

Here is the problem one and you can read many reviews that describe the error:

http://www.amazon.com/Home-Prepared-Dog-Diets-Patricia-Schenck/dp/0813801192/ref=pd_sim_b_9

A brilliant friend gave me a new nutrition book for Christmas, but it's at my neighbor's house so I'll have to go and get it before I post the title and author.

Pat

Copied this (with permission) from an email sent to me by another brilliant person:

Stombeck DID put his book online.

http://www.dogcathomeprepareddiet.com/index.htm

http://www.thebark.com/content/home-prepared-dog-and-cat-diets-book-available-free

Guys - this is PRICELESS and free, and notice the photo of the Cavalier. In the yahoo kidney diet group (of which I'm one of the moderators - but I'm not at all the diet expert, I serve in other areas) this book is the "Bible" that is used to help folks figure out how to feed their dogs with kidney disease. Oh, and you can learn to do this for free; you don't have to pay a "nutritionist." In these diets for NORMAL dogs, bone meal powder is the source of the calcium. For dogs (and cats) in kidney failure (and I have one now) we must limit phosphorus as the kidneys aren't able to clear this and the toxins build so that is why we use calcium carbonate. Also, we don't give multi-vitamins in kidney failure but rather give single vitamins as some multis contain things that are hard for the kidneys to clear. (We also give subq fluids daily, but that's another subject that most of you thankfully don't need to know.)

Pat

Agree with Pat. Those are really helpful links as well! What prescription food is he on? I have yet to find one that is worth buying. If you can find a holistic vet in your area, I highly recommend checking them out if you want to talk to someone about nutrition. They are kind of the nutritionalists in the dog world. Many do not recommend alot of the Hills prescription diets out there. You can often get the same (prob better) results with some much better quality premium brands available often used in combo with some natural supplements. Good luck!

"According to the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) there are 32 veterinary medical colleges in the United States and Canada. Our sampling of nine veterinary school undergraduate curriculum requirements found only 5/9 schools required 3 credits in animal nutrition while 4/9 schools required 0 credits in animal nutrition to graduate. Total credits to graduate varied from 46-79 per school." Source: www.aavmc.org

http://rawfed.com/myths/vets.html

http://www.optimumchoices.com/vet_school_nutrition.htm

Find a holistic vet in your area
http://www.holisticvetlist.com/

I have Monica Segal's books - The Canine Kitchen and Optimal Nutrition
http://www.monicasegal.com/catalog/product.php?cPath=25&products_id=66

It's a very good book with both the information and resources required to formulate a diet and some recipes. It goes into cooked, raw, and combination diets.

I find the recipes have rather a lot of ingredients that I can't easily get where I am but the information is there to formulate your own diets and I don't think they have to have so many ingredients.

I found formulating to be rather overwhelming and I have settled for the time being on supplementing their kibble with homecooked.

I am going to check out some of the links posted above as well.

We use nutritiondata.com to build recipes and it's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. The program lets you build a pantry and you can formulate recipes with their website and it will give you a nutritional analysis. I never used many ingredients for just one recipe but would have several diets with different kinds of meat and carbs so I could change things around.

Pat

I recommend these books:

Natural Dog Care: A Complete Guide to Holistic Health Care for Dogs, by Celeste Yarnall

Dr. Pitcairn's New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, by Richard H. Pitcairn D.V.M. and Susan Hubble Pitcairn

The BARF Diet (Raw Feeding for Dogs and Cats Using Evolutionary Principles), by Dr. Ian Billinghurst

and this webpage: http://www.cavalierhealth.org/diets.htm#Home-Prepared_Diets