Adding Fresh Foods to Commercial Dog Food is an article from DogAware.com. It is useful for those who wish to enhance the diet of their dog by providing some fresh food but who do not wish to completely feed a home made diet.
If you feed at least three-quarters commercial food, you don't need to worry too much about balancing the foods you add, though variety is always better than always feeding the same thing.
In the past I've felt safe in following this guidance, reducing the commercial food by 25%. The shortfall is made up with suitable cooked, mashed vegetables, fruit such as blueberries and a good quality protein in rotation. I don't add carbohydrate now because their commercial food has enough and I feel that these fresh ingredients provides enough balance.
Surely common sense…it’s fine to chuck in appropriate healthy left overs or add to commercial food so long as dog still gets enough balanced diet.
I appreciate the importance & value of good advice but nothing here groundbreaking to my mind. Obviously I wouldn’t add chocolate gateaux or cause fruit salad to become the entire daily feed.
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I agree that there is an argument for not giving the dog extras/replacements in view of the fact that commercial dog food is labelled as complete and I would not see this as wholly necessary. It is just an alternative view and maybe useful for some who are interested in nutrition for their dogs. I accept that probably most people would not be interested in the idea.
It seems to me that it has long been the norm to select a product and feed it to the dog unremittingly. Indeed some authorities would say that a dog’s digestive system is so delicate that you shouldn’t change it’s food unless absolutely necessary. Problem is that in the case of some types of food it can become very boring for the dog, even though dogs have fewer taste buds than humans.
It is not necessary to give fresh food if the dog is having a complete pet food product but at the very least it gives variety. Personally, I feel that if a dog is going to have a fresh food top up/replacement it is best to look at the recipe of the food they are having on a daily basis and see where you can create a bit better balance. For instance, if it is high in carbohydrate (usually the case with dry food), protein, veg and fruit will reduce it a little.