Volhard Dog Nutrition Is the Best Choice for Your Dog!

Food is one of the most critical choices for your dog. Volhard produces three canine diets; each diet has its own unique function and application depending on the dog’s needs. 

What if I told you that when you switch to Volhard, you will see significant changes in your dog’s health?

Changes in Your Dog’s Health

• Increased energy and vitality
• Better digestion, smaller/firmer stools
• More mealtime excitement
• Relief from food sensitivities
• Improved skin, coat, and nails
• Improved weight

Do we have your attention?

Top Reasons to Transition to the Volhard Diet Over Other Commercially Available Diets

1) Real Ingredients You Can Recognize

Volhard diets are made with human-edible, non-GMO, and organic ingredients that include fresh herbs, grains, fruit, vegetables, and other recognizable ingredients. Volhard is a huge step up from commercially ultra-processed pet foods, often made with poorly sourced, lower-quality ingredients like by-product meals, fillers, artificial colors, and preservatives. Your dog should be getting their nutrition from something other than synthetic vitamins! All the Volhard diets are formulated under the guidance of a Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionist and Ph.D.

2) Adding Your Own Fresh Protein Allows for Easy Protein Rotation and Control Over Quality and Freshness

Many kibble recipes are limited in how much real meat they can include and supply protein from ultra-processed meat or allergy-triggering vegetable ingredients. The ability to add raw or gently cooked protein to a balancing foundation mix means more animal-based protein overall and is readily bioavailable to the dog. 

3) Calorically-Dense Food Provides All the Dog’s Daily Needs in Smaller Meals

Other dog foods are formulated to only provide the required nutrients, and other beneficial nutrients are cooked out. Volhard provides more beneficial nutrients because it is fresh, allowing more nutrients to remain intact than kibble.

4) Volhard is the Easiest Way to Feed Fresh and Balanced on the Market

The Volhard diets are an easy way to feed fresh, whether at home, on the road, showing your dog, or breeding your dog. No matter your lifestyle, you can feed Volhard.

5) Real Benefits Backed by Science

Some benefits of a fresh and natural diet include better digestion; increased mealtime excitement; improved skin, coat, and nails; improved weight and the distribution of that weight; and increased energy and vitality. Emerging science continually shows the positive impacts of a fresh diet with raw protein, such as reducing a dog’s likelihood of developing certain health conditions. Additionally, research shows that feeding your dog as little as 20% fresh a day can reduce the risk of cancer by 80%!

Do not underestimate the power of observation, experience, and feedback. Not only is Volhard celebrating its 50th year in existence, but Volhard also has relationships with breeders that have fed Volhard to their breeding dogs and puppies for over 13 generations. You should have legitimate dog people who work with dogs making the food for your dog. There is essential information only a dog professional knows when they have been breeding, training, competing at the highest levels, working with and owning dogs for 80+ years, and then applying that to a dog’s nutritional needs. 

6) Food Safety is a Priority, Along With 3rd party Testing for Nutritional Accuracy

Volhard makes it a priority to focus on food safety by taking a multifaceted approach to testing. All diets are 3rd party tested for nutritional results, including tests for DNA, Listeria, E. coli, Salmonella, mold, and fungi. Before anyone else did it, Volhard conducted comprehensive “Novel” home feeding trials on all diets since 1973 in conjunction with veterinary oversight on various dog breeds, ages, sizes, and regional locations. Clinical laboratory testing during these trials includes blood, thyroid, HTMA, microbiome, urine, fecal analyses, and overall health and well-being measurements. 

Still not convinced? Wait, there is more: 

Volhard Diets are Formulated to be Functional Foods

Functional foods have a potentially positive effect on health beyond basic nutrition. The research focus has shifted more to identifying biologically active components in foods that can optimize physical and mental well-being and may also reduce the risk of disease. A familiar example of a functional food found in the Volhard Rescue, NDF2, and AM/PM diets is parsley because of its anti-inflammatory properties that help promote good kidney health and antimicrobial properties that promote good urinary health. When choosing a food that supposedly does something to support the dog, you must look at the ingredients and ask to be shown what ingredients are present and in what quantity to affect change in the dog’s health. 

Functional Foods Include:

• Conventional foods such as grains, fruits, vegetables, and nuts
• Modified foods such as yogurt
• Medical foods, such as special formulations of foods for specific health conditions
• Foods for particular dietary use, such as anti-inflammatory or hypoallergenic food.
• VDN has helped every dog that eats its food thrive, not just survive

Chronic inflammation, which is an internal inflammation that persists and serves no healing purpose, is linked to many health issues, including obesity, heart disease, cancer, and arthritis.

The inflammation that occurs after an injury is the body’s natural response to the trauma. Its purpose is to flood the injury site with nourishment and kick-start the healing process. Chronic inflammation serves no such purpose and is detrimental to overall health. There are many factors that can lead to chronic inflammation, including lack of exercise, stress, and poor diet.

Inflammation is harmful to the health of dogs just as it is to humans. One of the keys to keeping a dog’s inflammation at bay is a healthy and varied diet. There is an assortment of spices and foods that can be the first line of defense against chronic inflammation. 

Rescue has spices like ginger that combat inflammation. Herbs and spices contain an assortment of vitamins and minerals and can be a great way to prevent chronic inflammation.

Besides being anti-inflammatory, these spices can improve the taste of the food. Furthermore, spices can act as natural preservatives and can extend the freshness of dog food, and eliminate the need for artificial (and potentially harmful) preservatives. Ginger is recognized as the best anti-nausea herb and is well tolerated by dogs. It acts as a digestive tonic, relieving stomach aches and intestinal gas. It also stimulates the digestive juices and helps expel worms.

Several Foods With Anti-inflammatory Properties Have Been included in Rescue

• Animal-based omega-3 fatty acids, like those found in fatty fish
• Leafy greens and vegetables, including broccoli, squash, beets, zucchini, and pumpkin
• Herbs

NDF2 and AM/PM contain purposefully chosen ingredients to support healthy organ function and gastrointestinal health. For example, there are live probiotics in NDF2 that help to maintain a healthy gut microbiome. For some dogs, a raw food diet might help improve gut health. Raw meat contains live enzymes that aid in nutrient absorption and help to create a healthy microbiome in the gut. 

It’s not always easy to gauge your dog’s digestive health from the outside. Surprisingly, some symptoms of poor gut health aren’t related to the digestive system at all because your dog’s gut health affects the entire immune system and, therefore, the entire body. 

Common Symptoms of Poor Gut Health

• Gastrointestinal issues like diarrhea, vomiting, bloating, or constipation
• Fatigue and/or lethargy
• Frequent licking of the paws, limbs, or other areas of the body
• Restlessness and/or disturbed sleep
• Poor coat quality
• Weight loss or gain

Dogs are also susceptible to a condition known as leaky gut syndrome. Most of the time, this condition is a result of long-term intestinal damage caused by a bacterial imbalance in the gut. 

Essentially, too much bad bacteria outweighs the good bacteria for too long, and it compromises the barrier function of your pet’s intestines. This allows substances like bacteria, allergens, and toxins to pass through your dog’s intestinal wall. The resulting symptoms include many of those listed above, like vomiting, weight loss, and diarrhea.

Probiotics are the “good” gut bacteria that live in your dog’s intestinal tract. They help to build microflora to balance the microbiome, and they provide all sorts of gut-friendly benefits: increased resistance against harmful bacteria, defense against pathogens, regulated digestion, and better immune system function are just a few examples. 

Prebiotics are a form of dietary fiber. They act as a food source for the probiotic bacteria to feed on, resulting in the growth of beneficial bacteria. So, a combination of probiotics and prebiotics is a great way to improve your dog’s gut health. All of the Volhard diets have prebiotics!

Want to know more about the ingredients we use in our diets? Check out our ingredients in depth here!  

Volhard Diets are Energetically Balanced, Not Just Nutritionally Balanced!

The old adage that “you are what you eat” applies here. Food is classified as having various properties such as cooling, warming, etc. Allergic dogs should eat cooling foods such as fish, duck, and rabbit. The cooling foods help to bring down inflammation throughout the body. Foods like venison and lamb are considered the warmest of proteins and, to an allergic dog, would greatly increase the heat in the body and the allergic reaction. Incorporating cooling foods into an allergic dog’s diet will help to resolve the underlying disharmony that is causing the reaction.

A dog that is balanced and healthy has a very clear and defined mental state, no outward signs of disease, and a perfect balance of Yin and Yang in the body.

The Classic Signs of Balance and Health in Dogs

• No outward signs of health problems
• Clear emotional component
• Clear skin
• Clear, focused eyes
• Breath that doesn’t smell
• A pinkish-red tongue with a mild amount of saliva
• Pet easily adapts to different environments

The goal of food therapy is creating and maintaining balance in a dog’s body. Dogs that are already balanced do very well on an energetically balanced or “neutral” diet.

Protein Choices

We recommend 80/20 beef because of its neutral properties, and most dogs are not sensitive to good-quality grass-fed beef. You should consider using cooling proteins such as duck, fish, and rabbit if beef cannot be tolerated. For variety, you also can use fish as an alternative: small fatty fish such as whitefish, herring, sardines, smelt; or wild-caught fish like mackerel or salmon. Pork liver is included in the Rescue diet instead of chicken liver because of its neutrality.

Vegetable Choices

The cooling ingredients included in Rescue are cooling such as broccoli, kelp and flaxseed oil. Neutral vegetables have been added to Rescue including beetroot and pumpkin. Zucchini is a warming vegetable but is neutralized by the other cooling vegetables included in the diet.

The Rescue diet can be made warmer or cooler and used in combination with other types of foods to add variety and choice or to decrease the harshness of a very cold or very hot diet.

Volhard diets differ from other commercially produced diets in that they do not use triggering foods such as nightshade vegetables which have been proven to sometimes elicit intolerance reactions in testing. 

We started this blog with the three main reasons why to choose Volhard: the ingredients and sourcing; the biological appropriateness of the diets; and finally, the effort to keep the dogs safe through testing. Then we touched on the importance of ingredient choice, creating diets that are both a functional food and energetically balanced following Traditional Chinese Medicine and 5 element theory. 

Finally, the most convincing reason is that Volhard diets allow the pet parent to have a convenient way to feed a fresh, natural, and hydrated diet with minimal preparation. You can make your dog’s meal quickly without having to source organs and bone, grind for hours, balance nutrients so the diet is not deficient, or spend a ton of money with a nutritionist to create a diet. 

It’s Time to Make the Switch!