Natural Diet

A "Natural diet" is a scientific term meaning the diet the species eats in the wild during abundant habitat and food supply.

The dog as a species is "Canis lupus" and as such is a carnivore. The dog is a domesticated wolf and therefore should eat a diet that closely resembles that of the wolf.

Gray wolves once ranged over much of North America. Populations were apparently highest in habitats with plentiful large prey, principally ungulates (Young and Goldman 1944). Large mammals account for a majority of the diet of the wolf, with deer, moose, bighorn sheep, and similar-sized species among the most frequent prey (Paradiso and Nowak 1982). When such game is scarce, it turns its attention to mice, ground squirrels and rabbits.

Today's reality is that our dogs live in a form of captivity without access to their species natural habitat. This does not diminish their requirement for an appropriate diet, which is a diet rich in a variety of animal source foods. I have no plans to hunt food for my dogs so I must find animal source ingrediens that can "mimic" what they would have previously obtained "in the wild".