How Best To Feed a Pet Dog in Tough Economic Times

Dogs are amazing pet animals closely related to the wolves and some school of thought even consider them as direct descendants of the wolf family. Dogs are canivores by their biological organisation but years spent in domestication living in association with man has weaned them from a strict meat only diet.

The feeding habits of man has been over thousands of years generously incorporated into their dietary lifestyle and certain food sources which wouldn't properly fit into the dietary needs of their wild undomesticated species like the wolf have become normal food for our canine Fur-friends, the dog. Amongst the classes of food required for man's optimum nurshiment, one particular food class vital to both man and dog is the starch(a polysaccharide carbohydrate).

Dogs have good tolerance for starchy diets and their digestive systems have become fit for metabolising starch to provide them with the simple sugars needed for meeting up with their daily food calorie requirements.

When we think of dog food, our thoughts accompanied with vivid images races fast to cans of dog food with colourful labels arranged on the shelves of a vet's shop. What we fail to realize that the domestic dog has been feeding healthily for thousands of years before the invention of processed or otherwise so-called special canned dog foods.

To feed a dog properly, all that is needed is to have a knowledge of the basic daily nutritional requirements of our canine Fur-friends. This is not to say that the canned specialized dog foods on the vet's shelf are useless, far from it. They are just ok as long as they don't make you max out your credit card and your dogs health is not compromised. The main problem I have with the canned dog foods are that they are expensive and they might contain more than healthy dozes of preservatives.

So if you happen to come from a poor economic clime like Nigeria, my own country, I bet you'll be much too glad to be able to put up a cheap and healthy feeding regimen for your pet dog than what the food aisle of a vet shop offers. The main practice for feeding dogs in Nigeria by most low income pet owners is to give leftovers from the family meals to the dogs but sadly, most are not doing it right by taking into consideration the nutritional requirements of their dogs particularly the vital food class, proteins.

Being that Nigerians in the majority are poor people, most can hardly afford a modest requirement of animal protein for themselves so most Nigerian leftover meals are mostly bits of starchy food, vegetables and a few bones with hardly any bits of flesh left at all. With that said, it is far from being a hopeless situation for the low income pet dog owner.

HOW TO SUPPLEMENT ANIMAL PROTEIN IN YOUR DOG'S DIET
There are two great ways to source for animal protein for your dog's diet if your leftovers cannot meet up with it's daily protein requirements. The first is to source for them for a very negligible to absolutely no cost at the high class fast food restaurants whom are too glad to find in you and your dog a means of depleting their enormous piles of leftovers that would cost them a fee from the garbage disposal team. Most fast food restaurants are frequented by above middle income earners and the rich whom can afford to leave behind after feeding, appreciable pieces of meat on their plates. Like stated earlier, it costs very little to nothing to get these animal protein laden leftovers from most fast food restaurants.

The second avenue for procuring cheap animal protein to supplement your dogs nutrition is to go to the butcher's desk at the market and he'll sell to you unwanted pieces of meat and juicy marrow-rich bones for a very negligible fee. Both sources have been utilized by dog owners since the Nigerian economy took a turn for the worse to adequately supplement their dog's daily protein requirements.

With leftovers gotten from restaurants it is advised to first heat up the food sufficiently to kill pathogens so you don't
risk making your dog come down with food poisoning. With the butcher's meat leftovers, you can cook up from scratch a delicacy for your canine Fur-friend, incorporating into the meal other vital food classes creating a balanced diet for your pet dog.

I do hope you find good use in this article to better feed your pet dog in these tough economic times. Thanks for your time reading, bye for now and have a blessed day.

CC @justyy

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