Is Too Much Meat Bad for Dogs? 🥩

Why it sounds healthy but quietly overwhelms your dog’s body

Meat sounds good.
Real meat. High protein. Natural.
It feels like the right thing to feed.

And for one part of your dog’s biology, it is.
Meat delivers the 22 amino acids your dog needs to grow, heal, and stay strong.

But meat also brings minerals and vitamins
And in meat-heavy diets, those build up fast
Faster than your dog can process them
And when that happens, health begins to crack quietly
No limp
No cough
Just slow internal damage

It’s not about quality
It’s about quantity
And most owners have never been told where the line is

🧬 Amino acids love meat — but biology doesn’t work alone

The more meat, the better
That part is true for amino acids
They power growth, immune defence, and repair

But every bite of meat also brings phosphorus, copper, iron, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin D, fat, manganese, and other minerals stored deep in tissue
Most are essential
All become dangerous in excess

This is the part nobody tells you
Not because it isn’t true
But because it doesn’t sell

You are shown meat percentages
You are sold on words like raw, natural, ancestral
But you are not told what happens to your dog’s organs when the nutrient load goes too far
And sadly, most owners don’t know to ask

Marketing says “more is better”
Biology says “only if it’s balanced”
The choice between those voices has always been yours

🐺 “In the wild, they eat meat all the time…”

They do
But not like this

In the wild, dogs fast for days
They rotate prey
They scavenge
They get sick, recover, and cleanse
They chew bone, fur, and feather
They eat structure, not volume

That is detox
And it works

Domestic dogs do not get that
They get breakfast at 8am
A pouch at noon
Some liver during training
A Yak bar after dinner
A topper at bedtime
And a sardine on Sunday

They get love
They get variety
They get comfort
But they do not get balance

No wild dog eats salmon mousse
Followed by tripe bites
Followed by an egg
Followed by a goat milk treat
Followed by kibble soaked in lamb broth
But domestic dogs do
Every day
And the organs quietly suffer

⚠️ The overload begins

With every excess, the numbers fall apart

Phosphorus climbs
Calcium collapses
Copper stores in the liver
Zinc becomes blocked
Vitamin A builds
Vitamin D spikes
Iron interferes with iodine
Choline drops
Selenium falls behind

Absorption slows
Organs strain
And health declines

The damage is quiet
But it is not rare
It is happening in thousands of homes
To dogs who look healthy
Until the day they don’t

☠️ Toxic Overload

Ladies and Gentlemen. Caring dog owners. This is Toxic Overload
It is the root cause of most dog problems
Caused by poor diet and too much
And fixed, if lucky enough, also by food

📉 What does overload look like?

It often starts with something small

Loose stools
Restlessness
Skin rashes
Hyperactivity
Itching or licking
Low energy
Yeast in paws
Runny eyes
Red ears
Poor sleep
Selective eating
Bald patches on legs or tail
Mild limping or joint stiffness

Later, it becomes more serious

Kidney strain
Liver overload
Low thyroid
Joint pain
Chronic fatigue
Mood swings
Constant inflammation
Reduced lifespan

Most owners see these things
But never link them to the bowl

🧪 What the science says

Every major authority agrees

FEDIAF sets nutrient limits per kilogram of food
NRC warns about mineral overload from meat-heavy diets
WSAVA trains vets to feed by numbers, not ingredients
EFSA confirms nutrient excess is harmful, especially long term
VetCompass and the Royal Veterinary College show rising kidney and liver issues in domestic dogs
BSAVA, IVC, CVS, Linnaeus all follow these same principles across the UK

This is not theory
It is data
And it is ignored at your dog’s risk

📊 What we saw in 11,000 dogs

Since 2004, we have tracked diet, behaviour, weight, energy, symptoms, and recovery
Over 11,000 dogs
Thousands of meal types
Real results

And the pattern was clear

The best-fed dogs were not on the meatiest diets
They were on the most balanced ones

When meat went too high, phosphorus spiked
That spike caused mineral imbalance
That imbalance blocked the amino acids
That block caused inflammation and fatigue
And the decline began

We used that data to build our food
Fresh meat for digestion
Dehydrated meat for structure
And a per-kilo formula of 22 amino acids, 13 vitamins, and 14 minerals

Measured
Repeatable
Safe

🔁 The most common mistake

Many dogs are fed from a bowl that never empties
It sits there all day
Topped up with guilt
Topped up with love
But never topped up with structure

Then come the extras
A splash of bone broth
A topper for boredom
A cube of cheese for meds
A pouch to help the kibble go down
A sprinkle of salmon
A spoon of tripe
A bit of RAW
Some kibble for crunch
A chew for their teeth
A treat because they’re cute

The owner feels generous
The dog feels lucky
But the organs feel pressure

This is not variety
This is a nutritional collision
A biological bomb detonating three times a day
With every treat
Every topper
Every well-meaning addition

And the organs that suffer
Are the ones you never see
Until it’s too late

The kidneys
The liver
The thyroid
The blood
The brain
The joints
All under fire
And all assumed to be indestructible

They are not

🔄 This can be fixed — but only with discipline

Overload is not permanent
But fixing it is not easy

There is no pouch that resets the gut
No powder that rebuilds the system
No bone broth that corrects a year of excess

What it takes is:

Patience
Structure
Discipline
And the courage to do less

Many dogs have been under nutritional attack since they were puppies
Not from abuse
But from confusion
From the constant changes
The overfeeding
The hype
The switching
The layers

And sadly
Many owners continue that cycle
Looking for quick fixes
Expecting results in days
Changing again
Searching again
Feeding again
Guessing again

Until the dog gives up
Inflamed
Tired
Stiff
Stuck

But when a good owner steps in
Draws a line
Builds the food with structure
And stops adding
The dog gets the space it needs to heal

And that is when everything changes

🧠 The good owners take the next step

They stop trusting the label
They learn what balance looks like
They feed for biology, not branding
They realise that love without structure becomes overload
And they change course while there’s still time

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Your dog, if it could talk, would worship you even more than it already does. 🐾