Most experts recommend a raw diet for dogs. I believed most of what supposed experts write about in the internet when it came to my dogs' health, so I fed my dogs raw ground beef and vegetables. Two of them, Midori and Char Siew were allergic to chicken and I also read somewhere that pork was not good for dogs, so they only ate beef.
As part of our preparation for the lock down, my parents bought canned food to supplement the fresh produce that they were still able to buy from the city market. We had stacks of tuna, sardines, corned beef, corn, mushrooms and whatever else they were able to grab from the grocery shelves. There wasn't much that they could buy because most people had been emptying the shelves the past week.
So, the humans in our household would survive this lockdown with the canned goods. Our dogs, did not eat canned goods and I was afraid of the repercussions to their health if we fed them processed food since they were not used to that. If supplies of beef would be scarce, they would not have anything to eat.
It was a tough decision to make, but I told Mama that we should grab a sack of commercial dog food just in case our town's grocers ran out of beef. Most dog owners would know that introducing new food to dogs could be tricky. You would have to mix a small portion of it first with their old food and slowly increase the quantity until they get used to the new food. So that's we did. Approximately 1/8th of their usual portions during their meal was replaced with dog food.
Midori the Beagle, Char Siew the Shar Pei, and Jonas the Shih Tzu tasted commercial dog kibble for the first time in years. They didn't seem to mind the new mixture.
On the second day of feeding them kibbles, I noticed that Char Siew was vigorously scratching himself. He has a history of food allergies so I knew that this could happen. If we were not in lockdown, I would have taken him to the vet and asked for a prescription of antihistamines. But vets were closed.
I did what I thought was a reasonable action when I could not get medical consultations for my dogs, I turned to google. I noted down the appropriate dosage for Char Siew and Papa bought the meds.
I went to bed that day praying that as I took this risk, that I would not end up killing my beloved Char Siew.