[Saturday Soup] Invest 5 minutes for your pet

These are some of the questions I often received from companions when I conducted customized nutrition consulting or guardian seminars.

I, a 7-year-old butler, want to give only the best to my dogs and cats.

But in fact, there is no definitive answer as to which type of food is best.

This is because I have been in the field of companion animal nutrition for 10 years and have encountered a wide variety of cases, and as each patient has a different medical history, dietary history, and health condition, each type of diet is different. 

I didn't even think this way from the beginning.

When I worked for a foreign feed company, there was a time when I thought that feed was the best and that I had to feed only feed.

But while caring for sick puppies and cats at a pet hospice center, I realized how narrow-minded that thought was.

This is because feed was no longer the best choice for patients who did not eat and could not eat.

Now, I am meeting many patients and guardians through customized nutrition consulting, lectures, and seminars, and each has a really different story and situation.

So the conclusion I came to is "There is no absolute standard for which type of food is best, but there are definitely things that are suitable for our dogs and cats, so we must know what is best for our children and feed them properly."

Therefore, in this article, we will compare the pros and cons of feed, natural food, and raw food, and consider which type of diet is more suitable for our children and us. 

One day, a veterinarian asked me to treat her dog.

It was cystitis, but after the prescription of antibiotics, the condition improved, but when the prescription was stopped, symptoms of cystitis appeared again.

After repeating it several times, the attending veterinarian was looking for a reason why, but he suspected that the guardian was feeding this dog too much healthy food and asked me to check.

I asked the guardian to sort out all the healthy foods I was feeding my dog, and after receiving the results, I was also very surprised.

This is because the dog was eating more than 10 health supplements a day.

Among them, there were too many products with overlapping omega 3, and even included omega 3 for human consumption. 

Omega 3 has an antioxidant effect and can prevent aging and cancer, so many people take it steadily.

And because omega 3 can suppress inflammatory reactions, it is often recommended for patients with diseases such as allergies, (cat stress) cystitis, and kidney disease.

However, the inflammatory response is part of the immune system and is one of the body's essential responses when an infection occurs.

If you prescribe antibiotics to treat cystitis caused by bacteria, after killing the bacteria, the body must have sufficient immunity to prevent re-infection.

In the case of this dog, he ate so much omega-3 that his normal inflammatory response was suppressed.

It is a case of being infected with bacteria again when antibiotics are not available because the immunity has been weakened. 

There are many types of pet food on the market.

Pet food includes snacks and staple food.

Although it is called feed, there are many pet foods that are close to snacks.

In this article, we will learn about the types of food, starting with the distinction between snacks and staple food, and learn how to analyze the food.

Let me introduce you to a simple way to separate food and snacks.

If you check the type of feed on the feed label on the back or front, there is a mark of compound feed, single feed, or supplementary feed.

Usually, the feed that is used as a staple food must be 'mixed feed'.

To briefly explain the terminology 

 : - Formulated feed: Mixed or processed single feed, supplementary feed, etc. in an appropriate ratio

 - Monofeed: Plant, animal, or mineral material that is used directly as feed or used as a raw material for compound feed

 - Supplemental feed: Added to feed to prevent deterioration of feed quality or to increase the effectiveness of

feed. The definitions of single feed, compound feed, and supplementary feed according to the Feed Management Act are as above.

As can be seen in the definition, the ingredients of compound feed can be seen as single feed and supplementary feed.

The compound feed is the finished product.

However, unlike what is defined by the law, in reality, compounded feed and single feed are more closely related to facility regulations.

The requirements for registration as a formulated feed manufacturer are a bit more stringent. 

You can easily check the health of your digestive system by looking at the condition of your stool.

As a representative yet easy example, if the stool is soft and watery, it can be judged as diarrhea, and if the stool is dry, hard, cracked, or round, it can be judged as constipation.

For dogs and cats who can't say where they are sick like this, figuring out the condition of the feces can help find digestive system diseases.

One or two bouts of mild diarrhea may resolve on their own.

However, completely watery diarrhea or bloody diarrhea is severe diarrhea and requires treatment at a veterinary hospital.

Even if the degree of diarrhea is not severe, if it lasts for a long time, it can cause another health problem and it is necessary to determine the underlying cause, so it is recommended to receive accurate treatment at a veterinary hospital.