Tracie Hotchner Blog

I received this from Sheila in East Hampton, who is a devoted Monday-morning-after listener. I think her well-meaning letter is a good example of how easily people can misunderstand statistics and studies, and also how there are fundamental truths about commercial pet food that need to be clarified. Sheila wrote:

Hi Tracie – I love listening to your show every Monday.  Saturday is just such a bad day for me to be glued to my radio. I do want to make the following comments:

You say that you’re feeding Halo pet food. I checked out the Halo ingredient list on-line and find that they have, high-up on their ingredient list, citric acid as a preservative. I don’t know if you know it, but citric acid seems to be implicated in bloat. My citation is from the results of the Purdue study that ran for five years, ending in 2005:  “The risk of GDV was increased 4.2-fold (or 320%) in dogs that consumed dry foods containing citric acid that were also moistened prior to feeding by owners.” (Citric acid is used as a preservative. Wellness doesn’t use preservatives in their food.)

You talked about Scoobie putting on a lot of weight due to the carbohydrates in kibble. I now feed Wellness Core low fat kibble because it’s very high in protein, much lower in fat than others, and has fewer carbohydrates.

Your caller who talked about his poodles having diarrhea could have been me talking a few years ago, but I changed that! Thanks to you Tracie, I have completely changed Oliver’s food. He was always so gassy – I used to say that he was lethal – you’ve heard about carbon monoxide alarms, well, we needed a gas alarm. Poor Oliver also had a very hard time metabolizing fats and oils – he even had pancreatitis once and he often had loose poops. I feed him now as follows and he’s great looking – you can feel his ribs, but you can’t see them. Barry Browning thinks he’s at his optimal weight – 72 lbs. Breakfast – 1 cup of Wellness Core and 1 can of Wellness fish and sweet potato. Dinner – 1 cup of Wellness Core, 1 cup of mixed brown rice, carrots and peas, and a 6-ounce low-fat cooked hamburger. This dog no longer has lethal gas, no longer has loose poops and is keeping his boyish figure. I’m so happy with him!

Keep up the good work.

Sheila – Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts, personal experience and concerns about feeding your beautiful Standard Poodle Oliver. Let me just go through your points one at a time and help you see where you may have misunderstood a few issues. First of all, your misinterpretation of the Purdue study on bloat is an easy mistake to make – but the kind of misunderstanding which people often have when they look at data.

CITRIC ACID: It is a natural preservative used in many human foods and has never been linked to any health problems anywhere it has been used. It is essential to have preservatives of some kind in any kibble – it has fats which will oxidize and become rancid otherwise – and with naturally preserved foods they can only stay fresh for about 3 weeks from the time you open that bag in any case. I believe you misunderstood the actual issue in the quote you used and thought that citric acid was the causative problem. It would appear that the actual problem was that people wet down dry food before offering it. Apparently that caused gas and abdominal distension, etc. I always tell people that moistening kibble causes bacteria to flourish, it is a very poor way to get moisture into their dogs.

WEIGHT GAIN AND PROTEIN CONTENT: As far as my Scooby Doo’s alarming weight gain over the winter, perhaps I didn’t make it clear that it was an abundance of food – the huge quantities I was doling out – that led to his getting fat. In order to burn up that fat and get him slimmed down, I instituted a really strict portion control and also elected to stop feeding any kibble at all for he duration of the diet. It was too many calories and carbohydrates that got him fat – withholding carbs allows the body to metabolize the excess fat more quickly and efficiently. I now give him half, if not less, in quantity and he has lost 10 pounds in about a month – and has another 20 lbs. to lose, if you can believe!

HALO FOOD’S SUPERIORITY: I am ready to sing from the rooftops that I have found a dog food that deserves all-around praise and one I will be using exclusively for my own dogs. I have waited over five years to choose a pet food company whose outlook on the world of pets and whose dog food was so much better than any other. I have held off on making that decision because I never wanted to have to say “I’m sorry” or be on the defensive about any business practices that came to light later about how a company conducts itself or what they slide into their dog food. The first thing that attracted me to HALO was the excellence of their ingredients and a solid commitment to not skimping on the high quality while also having transparency about their origin. I learned that the protein content in HALO’s dry food is just about the same as WELLNESS CORE – but there is a gigantic difference. ALL the meat used in HALO foods is “fit for human consumption.” I do not know of any other company using such extraordinarily high quality and really costly basic protein ingredients. Their President has told me that they could double the stated percentage of protein in their food if they included any of the laundry list of allowable “protein” ingredients, but they have drawn a line in the sand about what they will permit into their foods. The organ meat HALO uses is butcher quality beef liver. As you know from THE DOG BIBLE, crude protein can quite legally contain hooves, beaks, feathers, and the manure that may cling to them. Most kibble can contain by-products. It can contain or consist of “meal,” about which there is no regulation – in theory “meal” can be high quality but the fact is that once the word “meal” is used in the pet food industry it refers to a protein source that was not fit for human consumption. HALO doesn’t use any of those things. Secondly, HALO is a small private company making a disproportionately high contribution back to the less fortunate pets in the community compared to other pet food companies. I spent hours with the CEO of the company and then met him in person before deciding to endorse this truly superior brand and accept their support of the work I do educating the public on many topics. I guess you can imagine that I want to urge you to try a bag of Spot’s Stew kibble next time for all these reasons (and their canned dog food is delicious, too).

OLIVER’S GAS PROBLEM: Poodles are known for having digestive sensitivity – as do English Bull dogs, German Shepherds and others. Gassiness, especially foul-smelling, is a sign that the dog is having difficulty digesting something in that food – and most of the time it is the grains. For dogs with these issues the less carbohydrates you feed, the better. It sounds like you’ve made a good accommodation for Oliver and his problem is solved. I would certainly add a big spoonful of yogurt every day, even though his tummy problems are solved. Do NOT assume that his loose stool was a result of an inability to process fats – I would recommend that you consider what foods he was getting at that time because I have to believe it was something specific he as ingesting that caused the problem, not fats in general.

YOUR HOME COOKING: I commend your devotion and patience in cooking for Oliver but I would recommend that you add more variety. I would go slowly because you have [a dog with] a sensitive stomach, but I would change up the vegetables (consider green beans, beets, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, zucchini, acorn squash) and substitute oatmeal and/or pasta and/or quinoa for the rice. Instead of chopped beef I would sometimes offer chicken, a can of sardines, scrambled eggs. Also, when you give a canned food that mentions “sweet potatoes” in the name, you want to check what proportion is sweet potatoes and what is meat, so you aren’t paying beef prices for a tuber. I urge you to add some of The Honest Kitchen raw, dehydrated food a try because it has such a vast array of vegetables and fruits and a bit of grains that is a cornucopia of health. My dogs get that, along with half a can of food and a bit of kibble (except poor chubby Scooby), a scoop of Platinum Performance for joints that are aching and those that are not yet and always some omega-3 fish oil. I think Nordic Naturals has the best one because it is 100% pure, filtered and fresh.

Keep up the good work yourself! You set a great example for others who care about their pet’s welfare. Lucky Oliver!

Tracie

The Dog Bible