Raw Bones, Raw Diet & Dental Health
Elroy, my 13-year-old puppy, just had his dental cleaning last week. I can’t even keep track of how many dentals my senior dogs have had, largely due in part to the highly-processed, high-carbohydrate kibble diet that I had been feeding them for the last twelve years. Now, Elroy has a clean slate, and his current homemade diet, using Dr. Harvey’s base-mixes, will keep harmful oral bacteria at bay.
The combination of following what I was taught in veterinary school about nutrition, and also feeding my dogs a high-end prescription kibble diet for joint disease, made me feel that I was doing what was best for my dogs’ health food-wise. Yet it turns out that by feeding the dogs kibble, I was coating their teeth with sugar and allowing armies of oral bacteria to move in to do their damage. You may ask, “But how?” Well, carbohydrates break down to sugar, and the sticky nature of sugar make the carbohydrates the perfect product for it to adhere to their teeth. Bacteria are living organisms, and these living organisms eat the broken down sugars and therefore produce waste, better known as plaque. Plaque produce acids that break down the protective enamel and creates cavities. This repetitive cycle, if left untreated, causes severe dental disease.
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