Until about 20 years ago most dogs could still eke out a living on table scraps. With the advent of modern merchandising methods, both the quality and the quantity of the usable scraps has declined. Meats are sold already trimmed and boned, carefully wrapped in cellophane and cardboard, and ready for cooking without additional alterations. Frozen foods have eliminated trimmings from vegetables, and dairy and poultry products come from cartons and coolers, not cows and chickens. Everything is prepackaged in convenient quantities so that purchases can be adjusted to family appetites with almost no leftovers.

The scraps from a meal made from these pre-trimmed, pre-battered, pre-buttered, pre-cooked, and pre-packaged foods consists of only bits and pieces which are either inedible or unwanted by human beings. Such bits and pieces make neither a balanced nor an adequate diet for a dog.

The true value of today's table scraps are succinctly brought home when the dog owner who feeds his dog table scraps asks himself, "What would I do with these scraps if I didn't own a dog?" lf his answer would be to save them in the refrigerator for his own next meal then a dog can probably eat the scraps, too. However, If he would throw the scraps into the garbage can, then he is literally feeding his dog garbage when he feeds table scraps.

There is an even greater danger in table scraps. In spite of their poor nutritional quality, table scraps frequently are quite palatable to a dog. All too often such table scraps are used with the idea of increasing the palatability of a less palatable, but better balanced, commercial food. Unless the scraps are finely chopped and blended with the commercial foods, most dogs will simply pick out the table scraps and leave the balanced food behind.

Most table scraps are fats and carbohydrates, yielding lots of calories and little else. As a consequence, the dog obtains a sizable portion of its daily caloric need from the useless scraps and loses his appetite entirely for the commercial food. By refusing to put table scraps on the food, a dog owner may feel he is forcing his dog to eat a food it does not want. But, in the long run, most dog owners will agree that it is better to starve a dog with concern than to kill it with kindness.

Your Puppy's Diet

Liver is a very important part of your growing puppy's diet. Whether it is chopped, raw or slightly braised, liver adds an essential nutrient to his meal that cannot be found from any other source. The only problem a dog owner may encounter when feeding liver to a puppy is diarrhea. Because of this, they should be trained slowly to eat liver and should not be fed amounts so great that their quantity, alone, produces a loose stool.

If you are feeding your puppy commercial foods, such foods should be improved by adding one tablespoonful of liver and one tablespoonful of corn oil per pound of dry matter. This is equivalent to approximately tablespoonful per can of canned food and 2/3 tablespoonful per 16 ounces of soft-moist.

The amount of good-quality protein may also need to be increased in some commercial foods fed to puppies. This can be achieved by adding two ounces of any one of the following to each pound of canned food: cottage cheese, hard-boiled egg, processed American cheese, ground chuck, fried or baked fish or chipped roast beef. Four tablespoonfuls of dried, skimmed milk also add an adequate amount of extra protein to a dry food being used to feed a fast growing puppy.