To Your Dog's Health! by Mark Poveromo

To Your Dog's Health! Canine Nutrition and Recent Trends Within The Pet Food Industry
by Mark Poveromo
Poor Man's Press; February 2010

When I was given the opportunity by the Online Publicist to review To Your Dog's Health! I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about dog nutrition. If you've ever talked with me about my dogs, you've probably heard that we don't feed kibble, and we have raw fed for 6 years. Coming with the research I had done before beginning to raw feed, I was interested in what Mark Poveromo would have to say.

Mark does a great job clearly outlining the health needs of dogs (and cats) in this book. He walks through the different types of nutrition such as grocery store kibble, holistic foods, home cooking, and raw. He gives great advice and recipes for home cooked meals, meals for dogs with kidney disease or cancer, and what to look for in kibble.

His one chapter on raw feeding was a bit of a disappointment compared to the amount of time he spent on other subjects. While he went into great detail on kibble, home cooking for your dog, supplements to use, recipes, and things to keep in mind for certain health issues, he spent only one chapter on actual raw feeding and did not discuss how to do it yourself. He mentioned that there are good raw food manufacturers, but did not discuss how to balance your dog's meals if you don't buy a prepackaged raw diet. I would have liked it if he went into more detail in some areas, including this one. I found this lack of information especially odd in light of the last paragraph of the chapter on raw feeding where Mark Poveromo said, "For the record, I have been feeding my pets a raw diet for about seven years now, and have had tremendous success."

However, there was a wealth of information about vitamins, enzymes, carbohydrates, and vegetables, that I still came away learning a lot. Based on this information, I will try changing up our dogs' diet a bit, but I will probably also consult some other raw diet resources before making a final decision.

I was delightfully surprised that he wrote a chapter about vaccines and other treatments. I must say I found his thoughts on that subject well balanced and helpful.

I do recommend this book for a quick, easy to read overview of dog nutrition. In fact, despite my disappointment with the raw food chapter, I found enough good information in the book, that I am keeping it on my shelf to read again. There are various facts in this book that more pet owners, and some vets, need to know. One such fact is that the protein in most kibble is from rendering facilities. These facilities take leftover animal pieces (meat, fat, blood, bone, and feather) and render them down to be included in kibble. These are the animal pieces that are not sold in grocery stores because they are not fit for consumption! And because of this poor protein quality, we are seeing increased incidents of health issues in our pets.

Just like humans, our pets are what they eat, and we owe it to them to make sure we give them the best nutrition possible.

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I received this book free from The Online Publicist. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own
.