Lucies Farm Nutrition Primer
Choosing the right food

The most reliable way to judge the nutritional value of a dog’s food is to see what happens when s/he eats. Is s/he always hungry? Coat dull or glossy? Active or uninterested and lethargic? Of course, these are only a few indicators and can signal other problems. Your dog is your best guide to deciding on the right food. And for starters, you can eliminate:

• canned food containing more than 78% water
• any food whose guaranteed calcium content is less than 0.30%
• any food without at least one cereal grain

Anatomy of Feeding:

It might come as a surprise to learn that a dog’s mouth is built for a very different eating style to that of a human being. A dog picks up a piece of food with its front teeth and then tosses the piece onto its tongue with a short thrust of its head. The tongue rolls the piece of food to the back of the dog’s mouth where a reflexive movement of the tongue pushes the food, unchewed, into the oesophagus.