Commercial dog food has been available since about 1860. Approximately a century later in the 1950s, kibble as we know it today was introduced to the market. It became the standard for sustaining the family’s four-legged friend.
These days, this practice has been called into question as people have begun to wonder what goes into a tiny pellet of kibble. There is widespread interest in moving toward more natural alternatives, but why, how, and is it really necessary?
Closer to nature
Guy Britten is the founder of RuffMutts, a store that sells a variety of different dog foods. Britten, like many food experts these days, is a fan of the raw diet.
“If anybody ever walks into our stores and says, ‘I want to feed our dogs the best,’ we would probably recommend raw. It's certainly something that's more in line with nature — they’re very balanced diets, they're very safe diets,” he says. “One of the bigger [suppliers] is Big Country Raw, and I've been to their kitchen. Their quality control is impressive. They're HACCP certified, which is a human-grade voluntary certification, and they meet that annually, so when it comes to what's best for a dog and what's most natural for a dog, quite often we see the best results with feeding your dog a raw diet.”
No need to be absolute
Raw diets tend to provide nutrients essential to a dog’s health, but there are a few hurdles to this feeding method. One is the cost. According to Britten, this barrier can be overcome by introducing dogs to a mixture of kibble and fresh ingredients.
“What we really try and recommend at the store is as much fresh as you can,” he says. “Maybe you put a bit of raw in with the kibble, maybe you add a bone broth to the kibble, maybe you take some fresh meats from home, and you add that to the food.”
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This way, dogs receive a variety of nutrients from items that may be on hand anyway, and the cost of items is spread further.
“Even if you can get 10 to 20 per cent of the diet more fresh [and] less processed, then you're going to see some really great benefits,” says Britten.
The mixing method can be the best of both worlds — while kibble stores well, costs less, and is more convenient in some ways, the raw portion of the meal bridges some of the nutritional gap in the processed food.
Finding what works for Fido
In the end, for Britten, what is best for each dog and each family is a balancing act.
“Everybody has different lifestyles. Everybody has different needs and requirements,” he says. “We recognize that . . . some things will work for some pets, and some won't work for other pets. It's about getting to know our customers and getting to know their pets and then, once we have a bit of information, we can make a recommendation that hopefully works for everybody.”
Where it all began
Britten’s expertise on pet food reaches back to 2011, when he founded RuffMutts after his military career. The store began in his house before it expanded into a brick-and-mortar store in Niverville. Soon after, there were also locations in Altona and Morden.
“I’ve just always been a pet guy, and I think I've always been interested in business and being my own boss,” he says. “The army was great, but sometimes it helped teach me that being my own boss may be a better way to go about doing things.”
Over the years, Britten has gone from selling dog food out of his garage to his storefronts. For him, the rewarding part of business is seeing the effect high-quality food has on canine family members.
“A lot of the time pets are having issues,” he says. “When we can recommend things and help people save a bit of money quite often and then help their pets improve their health, their energy, their skin, their coat, . . . that's most rewarding. When we can just work with people.”
What’s in the food?
Britten investigates things like feeding guidelines, ingredients, and the recall history of a brand when he looks for the best dog food at each price point. He recognizes that everyone has a budget but would also like to feed their pets the best quality food possible.
“[The foods] definitely have to meet the nutritional guidelines. We certainly want to see that foods that are meat first, preferably a diversity of meat, and then the least amount of processing that's possible within that meat,” says Britten. “[With] the more budget friendly foods, obviously you're going to see a bit more, you can call them, fillers, but . . . you want to see fruits, vegetables, whole grains. We avoid certain things — none of the food we sell has corn, wheat or soy in it, for example.”
Britten uses the same methodologies to choose the cat foods in store. Owners of hamsters, gerbils, birds, and tarantulas (to name a few) will also find products for their pets at RuffMutts.
“[If] somebody comes in with a new exotic pet, we will bring something in for them and then we'll kind of keep it on the shelf for them,” he says. “We’re very accommodating to whatever people’s needs are.”
While it is now a long-standing tradition to feed dogs kibble for a variety reasons, there are further steps to take to encourage a long, healthy life for dogs. Adding some raw food (or switching to it) is one place to start. Your furry friend will thank you.
~With files from Jayme Giesbrecht and Ty Hildebrand~