Customer Reviews

Raw and Natural Nutrition for Dogs: The Definitive Guide to Homemade Meals

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I bought this book and another to start my reading on feeding natural/raw. I found the other book (Raw Dog Food- Make it Easy for You and Your Dog by Carina MacDonald) to just be about her limited personal experience switching over the diet and what she does, but no real professional or academic experience. In this book, Lew Olson simplifies feeding natural/raw while adding her years of experience as a breeder and AKC judge as well as a solid academic background in canine nutrition. I took a risk buying this as it had just come out and there were no reviews on it, but I've found it immensely helpful and interesting to read. She does recommend a number of supplements (from the company she works with), but she does state that these are optional, so I just make sure that I have enough nutrients in the raw food to meet those recommendations instead of buying the supplements.

In response to another reviewer, she does say to cook any vegetables that you use, but so do pretty much every other person that has knowledge in feeding raw. Dogs do not have the ability to break down fibre like we do as their system is so much shorter (why they an eat raw meat!), so we start the process by cooking it thoroughly. In nature, if a wolf was to eat vegetables, they would be from the stomach of their prey and would already be partially digested, aiding in their own digestion. Yes, she does suggest feeding vegetables, because there are a lot of nutrients that can be gained from them, but she suggests preparing them to be as similar to the vegetables wolves would eat in nature as possible.

All in all, I HIGHLY recommend this book!

Some of the information is very thorough (almost too thorough) while information on other aspects is somewhat lacking, particularly when it comes to allergies, a major concern of many dog owners looking for dietary advice--indeed, this is a major drawback of the book, because every recipe contains beef, chicken or fish, all of which can be allergens, but no alternatives are offered, and she heavily promotes fish oil supplementation, but it's unclear whether that would be appropriate for a dog allergic to fish. In fact, she includes a lot of information about supplements, but if anything, by the time I'd finished I found myself more confused about what supplements are essential. There's also a LOT of repetition (particularly of the feeding guidelines, which are reproduced verbatim in every chapter; they could have been placed at the front or back of the book for easy reference), and nearly all the specialty diets seem essentially the same: 6oz beef, chicken or fish with eggs and vegetables. I was also very surprised, given how much she promotes them in the book, to find at the end that the supplements she recommends throughout are made by her own company. This doesn't make the book bad, necessarily, but it also doesn't tend to inspire a lot of confidence. While the book covers a range of topics I was left feeling that I need to do a lot more research.

I found the advice in this book was not written to help the average pet owner. There was too much graphs and talk about nutrient balance with little advice on how to obtain it. Also the author contradicted herself, complaining that prepared dog food was poor because it was overcooked and then stating that any vegetables added to a dog's diet must be heavily cooked to help digestion. My Boys eat raw carrots and peas at every meal and they don't have any problems. So that kind of blanket advice is counter-productive. I also found her to be biased in favour of raw food and advised people to feed their pets cans of salmon. Any canned salmon I have come across has 26% of an adult human's daily intake of salt, which would be a great deal higher in a 30 lbs Cocker Spaniel. I would recommend being very careful and selective about any advice taken from this book.