Do you feed your dog a natural diet?

I have in the past, yes. Not every dog, not all the time. Usually when they reach a point of age when things are starting to go south. Then I tend to convert to a diet I prepare myself for the dog. When my last dog was almost 17 I fed him scrambled eggs, peanut butter sandwiches, finely chopped chicken pieces and grated carrots, or broccoli, a little rice. All organic, lightly cooked, the bread was homemade. He thrived for many months on that until it was time, due to age.
If my dogs are ill or hurt, I do the same. Otherwise, they have all thrived and lived pretty long on a quality dog food.

“Have you ever just used meats, fish, poultry as opposed to store bought food?”

Those are not mutually exclusive. My dog eats store-bought kibble, but I know exactly what’s in it. Nothing weird. Right now it’s salmon with potato and brown rice.

I would be very careful designing his meals by yourself as a long-term strategy. Vets see a lot of malnutrition when people do that. It’s a very complicated subject and you’d have to do a lot of reading. Plus, much of the information out there is simply made up.

If you aren’t feeding him high-quality food yet, I would start there. Your vet could do an allergy test, too. We thought our Lab might be allergic to certain foods, but the test revealed it was actually different types of mites.

No. I always have good kibble (also salmon) and they can have that anytime, but at meal times they’ll get chicken breast, veggies but clean/without seasoning.

Dogs can be somewhat omnivorous. I always fed my dog a high quality dry dog food like Purina.

We feed our dogs Nutro Lamb and Rice.
The boy has developed an eye allergy too but his is environmental and possibly UV light. He has been on an eye drop twice a day for two years and the swelling of the third eyelid has reduced. They are Black Lab and German Shepard cross.

@Tropical Willie- We got some drops today and will see how he does after this. I am hoping once the inflammation goes down, he will start producing tears.
Did you ever figure out what could be causing your dog’s allergy?

Used to :(

@ucme -?

@ucme Did something happen to Buddy?

PM you both

Dogs eat corn and wheat in the wild. Meaning, it’s part of a “natural diet.”

@longgone am I correct in thinking there is a lot of science that goes into the store bought dog foods? One time my DIL found some “make your own Pedialite” recipe. I thought…No. No. No. No.