Best Protein For Your Dog Food
What’s the Best Protein to Choose for Dog Food?
In the coming weeks, I’ll spend some time talking a little bit more about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and how you make more specific protein choices.
No protein source is completely off-limits. But some will be better than others and it may change as your dog moves through various life stages.
Venison or Deer meat is one of the leanest protein sources with virtually no natural fat. It’s also a “hot” protein accordingly to TCM. This means for some dog it’s like pouring gasoline on a fire to their internal systems.
So unless your dog is a performance athlete burning through lots of protein needs you probably don’t need Venison daily. If your dog’s system is also “hot” *restless, has difficulty learning, seems hot even when it’s freezing around him, pants for no apparent reason, etc) then this would be the wrong protein source.
Protein Sources may also need to change seasonally, Example summer is the season of fire. It’s the time we often see red-hot skin in our dogs — this may be a season in which he cannot tolerate the same protein you’ve always fed him.
You may find that you can shift once the dog is “back in balance”. Though many people are afraid to switch once they find one that “works”. The issue then may become is that you literally shift your dog from a “hot” dog to a “cold” dog because you didn’t achieve balance.
Once the dog is in balance you can vary protein sources a bit more fluidly between hot, neutral, or cool for a little variety.
To give a few examples:
Chicken is also a HOT or warming food
Salmon is considered warm or neutral depending on who you ask — but I have seen many dog’s do better when the salmon is modified to white fish. Technically, consider farm-raised salmon to be hot and wild caught to be neutral to warming.
Beef is neutral
White fish is cooling as is rabbit and duck.
Some folks will explore novel proteins like Kangaroo in an attempt to address allergies. Keep in mind — that’s only going to work if they are allergic to other proteins — if it turns out to be a grain, gluten or other function of kibble ingredients they are allergic too, the protein change along won’t work Ask Me About Rescue Diet From Volhard — Anti-Inflammatory and Anti-Allergy
We’ll dig deeper into this soon — and also non-protein sources that can offer hot/neutral/cooling benefits
I bring this up to you now because I want you to evaluate your dog’s health in relation to behaviors you may not have ever considered being connected.
In your wellness consultation with me we can review this and help give you some information to make decisions about protein sources and even veggies and fruits that may benefit your dog. https://naturalwellnessfordogs.com/wellness-consult
(Ask me about my Nutrition Guide for understanding more about protein requirements with fats, calcium, organ meat and other requirements as you think about either doing a home-prepared menu or supplementing your dog’s bowl with meat)