There are some dog feeders who foolishly insist that meat is the only thing a dog should ever eat. Of course, feeding meat alone is entirely inadequate proper canine nutrition. The foremost deficiency in an all meat diet is the lack of calcium. Meat that has been trimmed of fat is also likely to have less energy value. While there are many other deficiencies none stands out like these two.

But, meat is the single most important source of protein fed to dogs and thousands of tons of horse meat and beef are used every year to produce commercial dog foods. Hundreds of tons more are fed as to supplement commercial foods or in homemade dog food.

When used as an addition to a well-balanced commercial dog food you can add up to 10 percent more meat to the weight of the mixture. Any more than that will dilute the nutritional value of the commercial food to the extent that the diet will no longer be balanced or adequate for the animal.

If meat is used as the sole source of protein in a homemade dog food meat be sure that is makes up at least 25 percent of the total weight of the diet. However, homemade feed should never contain more than 75 percent of its total weight as meat

All meats except for pork can be fed to a dog either cooked or raw but raw meat will usually furnish more nourishment as vitamins are destroyed by the heat of cooking. Fat also is driven out of meat during cooking and unless it is added back into the food it is lost as an energy source. The only real reason to feed your dog cooked meat is if it is pork or because your dog does not like raw meat which is rare (no pun intended).

The type of animal from which the meat comes does not seem to be very important where protein is concerned as most proteins seem to be nutritionally equal no matter what animal they come from.

For many years it was felt by some dog owners that pork should not be fed to dogs but numerous feeding experiments proved this to be untrue. In fact, pork liver is probably among the most nutritious animal livers commonly available to dogs as long as it and any other pork meat is fully cooked.

There are certain Natural Dog Foods that are good for a dog to eat but NEVER feed raw eggs to your dog.