Why a Vegan Great Dane?

In 1987, I brought home a beautiful female Harlequin Great Dane whom I named Dagmar. (In Danish, it means "joy of the Danes".) My Dalmation, Sasha, immediately took over the job of potty training and other canine maternal tasks. When I took Dagmar to the vet, who also happened to be a homeopathic vet, I asked the vet if it was possible for a dog to be vegetarian. I was a bit timid about even asking the question, not wanting to impose a nutritional regimen that might not be suited to a canine digestive system, or worse, might be detrimental to the health of the dog. I was surprised when she answered, "Not only will that make your dog healthier, it will extend her life expectancy." I found two "higher quality" brands of dog food at the pet store and, with some of my own dinner menu mixed in, raised my Great Dane as a vegetarian, and switched my Dalmation over to a vegetarian diet. My Dalmation lived to 16 years, and my Great Dane, who was supposed to live 7 to 9 years, lived beyond her 11th birthday. When Dagmar died, I expected to get another Great Dane, followed by a second one, when I was ready, but life got busy and complicated and I lived 14 dogless years before I got another one. On September 23rd, 2012, after I had searched the internet for over a year for exactly the right puppy, my husband and I went to the breeder to pick up a beautiful female Harlequin Great Dane. She was a couple days shy of being seven weeks old. I named her Valentina, which means "brave protector". (It was the name I had come up with 14 years previously, in anticipation of getting another Dane puppy after Dagmar died.) I'm sure every parent thinks they have the most beautiful baby in the Universe, just as every puppy owner thinks they have the most beautiful puppy, but I must insist, this dog is beautiful and very smart. She learned her name by the second day with us, and within the week, she had learned "come", "no", how to ring the peepee bell on the door, "kisses," "sit" and "no bite", (even though teething and tempted to bite everything in sight!). After two weeks with us, Valentina understood questions like,"Do you want to go outside/inside?" (She goes to the door.) "Do you want to go upstairs?" (She runs to the foot of the stairs.) and "Go eat your food." (She would go over to her food dish, look in it, and then look up at me as a signal that I needed to put more food in the bowl.) as well as the command "shake hands." After having read so much about the atrocities contained in commercial dog food, I vowed to make her food from fresh, organic, vegan ingredients, so she could have a good shot at exceeding the current life expectancy for Great Danes. I went to my nearby PetsMart, to get a bag of "transitional vegan kibbles," and found that they no longer carried any. We were happy to find that a local specialty pet store had vegan kibbles and I began transitioning Valentina toward the vegan kibbles, and transitioning myself towards making all her food. So much has changed with the internet. I have found a wealth of knowledge, and connected with people that I never would have found in a library. I have ordered books, researched blogs and websites, and amassed a compendium of vegan canine recipes, all via the internet. And, yet, I feel I have just scratched the surface of what I need to know.

So, Vegan Great Dane will be a record of what my husband and I experience and learn about providing a nourishing diet for Valentina with more-than-minimal nutrients plus everything else involved in raising a healthy Great Dane. (And, of course, I won't be able to resist including some pictures of her.) Much has changed about the approach to puppy training -- I have been surprised to learn that I did a lot of things right in training my other dogs in the past.

One more detail: Valentina will be a bi-national dog. We split our time between Austin, Texas and Lake Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico. Like Kafka, the Dalmation that I had before Sasha, Valentina will be trained in two languages, so she will understand commands both in English and Spanish. There are requirements for taking a dog into Mexico and for taking a dog into the US, so, I'll also be sharing those experiences with you. I welcome your comments, support and any information you might offer. If you are offended by veganism/ vegetarianism, please take your criticism elsewhere. I raised two dogs as vegans, and they were extremely healthy their entire lives. I'd love to hear from you, your experiences, information, your stories, and your support. Thank you.

Companies That Sell Vegan Dog and Cat Food

Evolution Dog Food -A 100% Complete For All Life Stages Dry Dog Kibble. Human Grade Pure Vegan Ingredients. (Also sold on amazon.com)
F & O Alternative Pet Products Vegan dog and cat kibble and canned food1-877-376-9056
Harbingers ofa New Age Vegecat™, Vegekit™, Vegedog™, and digestive enzymes406-295-4944
Natural Balance Canned and Kibble Vegan dog food 1-800-829-4493
Natural Life Pet Products Canned and kibble dog food 1-800 367-2391
Nature's Recipe Canned and kibble dog food 1-800-237-3856
Newman's Own Organic vegan dog treats
Pet Guard Canned dog food and biscuits
V-Dog Vegandog foodv888-280-8364
Wow-Bow DistributorsCanned and kibble dog food and biscuits1-800-326-0230
Wysong CorporationDog and cat kibble 989-631-0009




Friday, October 2, 2015

No Time to Bake Kibble? My recipe for Supplementing Commercial Vegan Dog Food

You care deeply about your precious pupster’s health, but this next week is going to be too busy. If I am running out and absolutely cannot bake Valentina’s kibble, I do the following.  Keep in stock a bag of highest possible commercial vegan kibble and make a mixture of the following ingredients to be mixed into the kibble when you dish it up. Keep the mixture in a light-free, air-tight container.
Put in food processor or blender in dry container and turn into meal:
½ c almond flour meal
½ c hemp seed
½ c raw pumpkin seed
½ c chia seed
½ cup flaxseed meal
1 c dried cranberries (preferably unsweetened or apple juice sweetened)
½ c dried blueberries (preferably unsweetened or apple juice sweetened)
 Mix into above mixture in a large bowl:
½ c Vegedog
¼ cup nutritional yeast
¼ c Vegeyeast
½ c oat bran
½ c coconut flour
½ c pea protein or ½ c hemp protein, or both
¾ tsp kelp powder
 Add to the mixture 7 days’ worth of the following:
Immune dog
Nzymes
Back Pack Plus
Barley Grass Powder
Wheat Grass Powder
Alfalfa Grass Powder
L-Lysine
L-Arginine
Taurine
L-Carnitine
Acetyl – L—Carnitine
L-Methionine
Sodium Ascorbate, or Ester-C (I don’t use Ascorbic Acid – see Canine Nutrition, William D. Cusick)
R-Lipoic Acid
 At this point mix, and then measure what you have in the bowl. You should have around 12+ cups. Keep in a cool, dark, dry place.
 When I dish out a days’ worth of kibble,
In a small bowl I mix the following, then add to kibble along with about ¾ c of the above dry mix:
1 heaping TBSP peanut butter, pure, organic (I buy it from Costco.)
1 heaping TBSP almond butter, pure, organic (I buy it from Costco.)
3 NOW-brand Aloe Vera Veg Gels (Cut off the very top with scissors and squeeze into bowl.)
1 gel Ubiquinol (NOW- brand) (CoQ10) (Cut off the very top with scissors and squeeze into bowl.)
1-2 NOW Brand 400 mg. Gamma E Complex gels (Cut off the very top with scissors and squeeze into bowl.)
8 drops Vitamin D3 , NOW brand, liquid (Equal to 800 IU)
2TBSP flaxseed oil (Barlean’s – does not have ascorbic acid)
2 TBSP hemp seed oil (Nutiva)
For Valentina, (adult Great Dane) I mix in about ¾ - 1 cup of the dry mixture, about 4 heaping cups of  kibble, and the oily mixture.
Note: Valentina rarely finishes the 4 cup kibble mix in one day.  I am aware that some vets advise against free-feeding, however Valentina has been free-fed since I got her (as were all my dogs in the past.) Sometimes she’ll eat 1 cup in a day, and sometimes 2 or 3 cups, and rarely 4 cups. Other than 1 hour before and after her daily exercise, her food is always out and available. She does not binge, and usually eats only twice a day, once in the morning and then in the evening after she sees if she’s going to get any handouts from our dinner.
In my opinion, I use this practice only as a “temporary fix” to add nutrients to commercial food, which I consider inferior to my recipe.  If she stays on this for a little while, she will begin to gain weight. (And who knows what is going on in her body because of the “mystery ingredients” in the commercial food. Just because the ingredients listed are vegan, does not mean that they were not past expiration date for full nutrient value (as is legally allowed for other than human consumption regulations).  Just like the animal flesh mixtures, the vegan mixtures can have bacteria that are heated in preparation of the kibble. When you heat food to a certain temperature, you destroy the bacteria, but what is not destroyed is the toxins the bacteria release upon death.  The toxins remain.) If you feed commercial vegan to your pupster, you may want to watch the weight and reduce the quantity a bit from what you normally measure out.  Weight gain never happens when she eats my recipe.  
Note: I’m coming up with  measurements/ a recipe for a mixture that can supplement my own recipe. ( I'll pull out ingredients from the baked mixture, that would be better in the raw supplement mixture. I got to thinking about my ingredients, and although I use the moistened flaxseed meal to substitute for the texture of eggs, if baked, the flaxseed will lose all of its Omegas – other nutrients like the proteins will survive the heat, but the precious Omegas and some of the other nutrients, such as enzymes are destroyed after 108 degrees F.  So, there’s really no reason I can’t leave some of those vulnerable ingredients raw and added to my recipe later in a non-baked supplement mix. I’ve also decided to work on a recipe that is made (“baked”) totally in the dehydrator oven under 108 degrees F, so almost nothing is lost due to a higher heating process. Stay tuned for that.
 
Regardless, in my opinion commercial dog food (which started only a hundred years ago) is fast food, . . . fast, processed food. The goal of most businesses is to increase profits, which usually involves cheapening the investment .  Whether for animals or for people, most food businesses have become “smarter”, but not wiser in their attempts to mask degraded nutrients with flavor enhancers. What happens is in the body’s attempt to obtain more nutrients, it will crave and eat way beyond the necessary number of calories to maintain weight and health -- simply because the body is hungry for nutrients. I was surprised about most vets’ concerns about overweight dogs nowadays. Years ago, that was not such a concern – there weren’t that many overweight dogs to worry about.  Human obesity and poor health statistics parallel the canine’s story, and I am convinced it is due to the same problem.  A long time ago, Aristotle said, “Make food your medicine, and medicine your food.” That still bears constant consideration when making food choices for human animals and for their companion animals.  
 
 A number of health gurus tell us that if you can stay on a healthy food path ninety percent of the time, and only slip into unhealthy choices ten percent of the time, or less, you will probably stay healthy.  I like to think that’s true for dogs, too, so I aim for 100% healthy. Last August when we were returning to the US and needed a health certificate to cross, our wonderful vet in Mexico, Dr. Borrego, asked me if Valentina was still a vegan and if I still made her food. After I replied, “Yes,” he said, “She’s very healthy. What’s in your recipe?” I usually carry a copy of my recipe in my purse, but couldn’t find it, so I promised I would bring him a copy next time when we returned.  My point is, to use an old adage, "the proof is in the pudding." Valentina is proof enough to me that a healthy, balanced homemade vegan diet IS GOOD for dogs.
 
I love the old Chinese instruction that says, everything in life, except health, has attached to it a zero. Health, which must precede everything, coming first,  is given the number"1". With the number 1 preceding all the zeros, you are very fortunate. Having health, you can enjoy all the other aspects in a good life.  But, without health, the rest cannot be enjoyed, and is worth little.   
 
I wish you and your canine companions: love, happiness, prosperity, but, first and foremost. . .  vibrant health!