While you might treat your pet dog as a part of your family, its diet has to be very different from human food. Ankush Battoo draws up the dos and don’ts for your dog’s diet.

What to feed

They are absolutely like babies and feeding them right from the very beginning is most essential. Giving them a wrong diet can lead to serious health issues and can even be fatal.

Dogs are carnivorous, they get their nutrition from meat and meat-based diets. By nature, dogs are meant to hunt in a pack and eat, or catch small prey and eat. For them, raw meat was the source of nutrition. A pet dog receives food on time without having to hunt it, yet it is in their nature to feel the need to work for it.

Best home food for a pet dog would be meat. Cooked would be preferable as it will kill all the bacteria. Boil it without salt or any other spices and oil; you can add a hint of turmeric powder. Boiled veggies can be added as well (carrots, green beans, broccoli, papaya). Adding fish oil as a supplement works well, it makes their skin and coat smooth. Dogs usually get their nutrition from protein and fats. Although carbohydrate is not essential for a canine diet, it plays an important role for a balanced diet. About 75 per cent of the food should be protein-based and the rest should be veggies and carbs.

Dogs are lactose intolerant, therefore milk is a big no. Instead try curd and buttermilk. If you want a veg diet for your pet, then go for paneer instead of meat and add veggies to it.

At The Love Room, we feed our dogs chicken and rice, which is easy to make. We take 150g of chicken and 50g of brown rice, boil it with a hint of turmeric and once cooked, we serve it with a teaspoon of salmon oil.

When to feed

How many times to feed a dog a day is the most common query of pet parents. There is no set rule. It depends on their size, age, weight and physical activity. However, there are some basic guidelines.

From the time of birth till the age of four months, a puppy should take their mother’s feed along with puppy food. Once they turn four months, they should be introduced to either dog food or home-cooked food, that is meat with vegetables, fish with vegetables, or paneer with veggies. Four to 12 months is a crucial time for the puppy’s physical and mental growth. They should be fed three times a day till 12 months.

After that their diet should be reduced to two meals a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Make sure to give them the ideal proportion of fat and protein.

If you want to feed dog food, you can go ahead with that as well. Different companies have different recommendations for food portion, prescribed at the back of the food packet. Home food quantity should be ascertained going by the breed — large, medium or small breed. Usually for small breed, a total of 100g of food is enough, which should include meat and veggies or paneer and veggies. A medium-sized breed can have 250g of food per meal and a large breed would need somewhere around 320g of food.

Make sure that you take your furryball out for a walk before you feed them.

Processed food or home-cooked food

A lot of processed food meets the daily nutrition requirement of your pet. Dog food comes in three basic variations — puppy, adult and regular. They also come in other variations like weight balance and hypo allergy.

Puppy variation comes with the highest nutrition value in it. Adult ones maintain the overall well-being of an adult dog. Regular is low on nutrition but enough to fill the tummy of your dog. Hypo-allergy food is for pets with skin issues and to treat allergies.

Even though processed food is easy to feed, it goes through a lot of processes to reach our pooches bowl, resulting in loss of natural vitamins. They come with artificial preservatives, too, which is again bad for them.

Home-cooked food is basic and we have to add certain supplements to make it more nutritious.

Chicken Steak with Veggies (from The Love Room’s Furbaby menu) Picture courtesy: The Love Room

A home-cooked meal of meat and vegetables is ideal for your pet The Love Room

Chicken Steak with Veggies (from The Love Room’s Furbaby menu):

Ingredients:

• Broccoli 50g chopped
  
• Chicken breast half piece
  
• Beans 20g chopped
  
• Carrot 50g chopped
  
• Peas 20g
  

Method:

Boil the chicken breast along with one cup water till it becomes soft. Add broccoli, peas, carrot, beans and boil till you get a semi-liquid gravy. Slice the chicken breast, add the gravy on top and garnish with some boiled veggies. Serve it only when it reaches room temperature.

• Ankush Battoo is a pet lover and a partner at The Love Room, a pet-friendly cafe in Calcutta
  

Hypo-allergic diet

Take two pieces of fish (preferably katla fish 70g each), put any three vegetables from carrot, papaya, asparagus, green beans and spinach. Boil it with the fish. Feed one piece fish along with veggies in the morning and one piece with veggies in the evening. Do not feed milk, rice, potato, egg, chicken or any other veggies apart from these if your dog is suffering from skin allergies. Consult your vet before starting the hypo-allergic diet.

Recommended fruits

• Apple without seeds
  
• Banana
  
• Mango as a treat as it is high in sugar content
  
• Watermelon without seeds. You can always make a watermelon popsicle. Take out the juice of watermelon; make sure there are no seeds; mix yogurt; add honey if required and freeze it for a few hours. Your pet will definitely love this healthy treat.
  

Avoid

• Chocolates
  
• Any form of seeds
  
• Onion and garlic
  
• All spices except for turmeric
  
• Milk
  
• Wheat could be fed occasionally, not more than once a week