Our vet Anita Kröger introduces herself

As a holistic vet, Anita Kröger attaches particular importance to a species-appropriate, natural and varied diet when it comes to dog health. From the perspective of holistic veterinary medicine, nutrition plays a key role in a dog's long and healthy life. The vet and founder of the Centre for Canine Health specialises in the treatment of chronic diseases in addition to providing medical nutritional advice. She specialises in intolerances, allergies and gastrointestinal diseases.

As a specialist in healthy dog food, she makes a valuable contribution to the FIDELIS recipes and range with her ideas and experience. Anita Kröger and her team at the Centre for Dog Health are enthusiastic about FIDELIS and recommend the products.

Which dog owner hasn't heard the term "complete food"? After all, the term implies something wonderful. The term complete food promises that a single food not only contains all the nutrients your dog needs every day, but also that this food alone is suitable for (almost) every situation in life. So imagine, as a dog owner, that you were to feed your dog the same "food" day in, day out and that the recipe - depending on the quantity - would not only provide you with a constant daily supply of minerals, trace elements, vitamins and amino acids, but also the necessary energy. In addition, your sole food would also be suitable for all individualities - in other words, whether you are a woman or a man, a teenager or a gradparent, a competitive athlete or a couch potato, healthy or ill. For your dog, this means that it is well cared for with a complete food regardless of age, breed, performance, state of health, etc. ideal scenario, but one that many dog owners believe!

But why?

The success of the complete food is based on its seemingly universal practicality and feigned security of supply. It is simply damn convenient to know that your dog is always and everywhere optimally supplied with just one food. Added to this is the concern of owners that their dog might not be optimally nourished if not all nutrients are contained in one food alone. It's a real feast for the pet food industry, which successfully sells the fairy tale of complete pet food as a one stop solution for pets.

Can only one complete food really cover the dog's needs optimally?

Large feed manufacturers in Europe use the FEDIAF table (FEDIAF is the abbreviation for the Federation of the European Pet Food Industry) when designing a complete feed. The FEDIAF table contains so-called requirement values - these indicate how high a dog's nutritional requirements should be (!). Requirements values are standardised values that have been determined experimentally and therefore (only) provide a general guide rather than an individual nutritional recommendation. When calculating the nutrients in complete diets, manufacturers are not concerned with the raw materials from which the nutrients are obtained. It is therefore irrelevant whether the vitamins in the feed come from an apple or from a test tube. It is also irrelevant what nutrient density natural raw materials have - i.e. whether low-quality meat meal or high-quality muscle meat has been processed. For this reason, dry food (but also wet food) is often spiced up with nutrients in order to "fulfil" the table of requirement values. A common method is to spray missing nutrients onto the kibble - regardless of whether they are bioavailable to the dog. As chemical additives are used here, where not only the bioavailability is questionable, but also the "artificial" nutritional concept per se: a standardised nutrient intake without variance in smell and taste! It is simply not only an insult for every living creature equipped with sensory organs to always "enjoy" the same thing - it is neither necessary nor natural to consume the same amounts of magnesium, manganese or vitamin B12 every day. For most dogs, however, it is a sad reality to be served a kibble that is standardised in terms of taste, smell, colour, size and nutritional balance.

Why don't you simply feed your dog a natural and species-appropriate diet, just like yourself?

It is undisputed that there are some special features to consider in the diet of carnivores. The calcium requirement, for example, is significantly higher than in humans. However, there are only a few food components from nature that are poisonous or forbidden for dogs. Nevertheless, dogs are fed from bags with processed ingredients instead of real food - meaning food(!) that originally comes from nature, such as meat and fish, offal, vegetables, fruit, seeds, etc. Irrespective of all modern nutritional trends, it must be clear to all common sense that only a natural, varied and versatile diet can provide a balanced intake of minerals, trace elements, vitamins and amino acids. It goes without saying that this is the case not only for every dog owner, but also for every dog!

Feeding a dog a species-appropriate, natural, balanced and varied diet - this is the principle that FIDELIS follows when designing its menus. The raw materials from which the menus are made are fresh, high quality and of natural origin. They therefore have a high nutrient density "by nature", without the use of chemical additives.