Going Raw ???

[crank]

Jake always got either a lambs neck, lamb shank or pork hocks every night. He also got steamed vegies and pasta or rice a couple of times a week.

 

Although I would never give a dog a bone thats been cooked due to the fact that they spinter into tiny fragments so easily

[Bill Fosher]

AK Dog Doc,

 

Thanks for being the one to bust the "canids don't eat vegetables or grains" myth this time.

 

I don't have experience with wolves, but I'm pretty familiar with Eastern Coyotes, which may be more closely related to red wolves than their western cousins, but in any event are wild canids. They can and do eat the stomach contents of both large and small prey. When mousing behind haymaking equipment, they certainly don't take the time to dissect and leave the stomachs behind. In a lot of cases they don't even chew mice -- just flip and swallow. And it's not just stomach contents. They eat fruit, berries, grasses including oats, rye and, corn (yes, evil corn -- sweet and grain, whole and ensiled).

 

Coyotes have a highly varied diet, and seem to do just fine on it by and large. Given the concentrations of vitamins and minerals that are available in leafy green veggies and the roughage provided by whole grains, I see no reason not to include them in a dog's diet.

[MaryP]

AK dog doc,

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you. You addressed two of my pet peeves: 1) dogs are NOT wolves; and 2) wolves cannot be domesticated, even if you raise them from a puppy and treat them like a dog. I also hold an advanced degree in wildlife biology and it always burns me up when I read stuff like this. Usually its misinformation that is passed around on message boards and taken to be true. Or, it's gleaned from websites authored by self-appointed experts who really have no idea what they are talking about. If you want to get the real scoop on wolf biology or wolf behavior, read something by David Mech. But, when you read it, remember that he is talking about WOLVES, not DOGS.

[Anda]

E) Just as a BTW, I've had a number of patients, fed raw, who have cyclical and nearly intractable diarrheas and other gut complaints (including salmonella and other delights of food poisoning) - until they are taken off of raw feeding. It is not a panacea. Some dogs do great on it and others do not.

 

 

That would be Ouzo! OK, I feel better now knowing that he's not the exception to the rule Thanks!

[AK dog doc]

You're welcome - and I'm sorry if I'm a bit hot under the collar about this, but it Just. Drives. Me. BATS when people do the dog = wolf thing. Plus, as Bill points out, no wolf (or coyote) has the time or inclination to carefully peel the outsides off a mouse and leave its tiny guts behind. They pretty much eat those things like popcorn - and it's a good thing they do, because NOT eating the mouse whole would distinctly decrease its nutritional value. Muscle meats are far from being a nutritionally complete diet. You need those tasty organ meats, and that nice fat-rich brain, and some other stuff to get it all - and thank you, Bill, for your observations about what coyotes in the wild actually DO eat.

 

Like I said - I have zero problem with people cooking for their pets (or assembling raw) IF THAT WORKS FOR THAT ANIMAL, and if care is taken that it IS a nutritionally complete, balanced and digestible diet (and one that does not contain toxins to the dog, such as onions and chocolate). And there ARE dogs who don't do well on kibble - but there are also dogs who don't do well on raw.

 

FWIW, I once did a health certificate for Steve Krochelle (although I'm virtually certain that's not how he spells his name, sorry). He's a professional animal trainer who rears and trains wild animals for work in the movie industry (entertainment and documentary). He DOES manage to live with them safely because he GETS IT that they are wild animals, and even though they are habituated to him, probably fond of him, certainly willing to work with him, they are still WILD ANIMALS. I did five arctic foxes and three wolves for him. There are certain things he will and will not do with them, in view of the fact that they are not domestic animals. And I assure you, no one with half a brain could look at those wolves up close and personal and mistake them, even for an instant, for domestic dogs. They are not the same shape, they do not move alike at all, their eyes are distinctively different, and their level of focus and attention is markedly un-dog-like. It was in some ways like looking into human eyes, and at the same time very UNlike that. They knew what they were. I got a sense that they were as aware of themselves, of their nature, and of mine, as I was of them. It was strange, and both thrilling and unsettling at the same time. But even though they were safely contained and not in the least bit interested in eating me, touching something that wild leaves an electric print on your skin that doesn't soon fade. The hair on your neck stirs, and some atavistic part of your brain pops to full alert and says: Watch it. This is a predator equal to you, one that could best you if it wanted to. Have some respect - and don't turn your back.

 

But I digress. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

[Daviid]

I don't understand why feeding lightly cooked, or steamed vegetables is bad. They're loaded with vitamins, have good cancer blocking properties. All meat, and no grain or veggies is too high of fat and protein. I don't feel dogs are like wolfs at all. Wolfs burn off much more energy in the wild and need a high fat/protein diet. My dogs get miles of exercise working & playing every day, and I still don't think it's necessary for all meat diet. Our dogs have much lower immune systems with all the vaccines, tick/ flea/ heartworm and medications. So many dogs die of kidney failure, is a contributing factor too high of a protein diet?

 

I have many friends that starting feeding raw back in the 80's when it became very popular. Most are now off raw diets due too pancreatitis, diarrhea, bone blockage. One dog died of poisoning. My holistic veterinarian feeds raw and homecooked, but is becoming more of a home cook fan due too all the clients she sees with problems with raw.

 

I also have friends that have been feeding raw for over 10 years and are still happy with it.

 

 

I'm not against raw, I just question it. ( and have been questioning it for over 20 years!! )

 

David

[Laurena]

Thanks for all the information everyone . I gave Heidi her first raw meal yesterday , well I guess technically not really her first but you know what I mean . I gave her a chicken quarter , at first she looked at me like I had totally lost my mind . After a couple minutes of staring at it she finally ate it , and is a really careful chewer . She had two yesterday and two today . She is acting totally normal and it hasn't upset her belly , yay .

 

Just a question for you all . I used to breed rabbits when I owned large constrictors but stopped a couple years ago. I was thinking of starting again as frozen feeder rabbits are very high in demand here . I was thinking could I feed Heidi whole rabbits too ? But I guess I would have to skin them , not exactly excited about that but I guess I could do it . Sorry for all my silly questions . Thanks .

[Alaska]

E) Just as a BTW, I've had a number of patients, fed raw, who have cyclical and nearly intractable diarrheas and other gut complaints (including salmonella and other delights of food poisoning) - until they are taken off of raw feeding. It is not a panacea. Some dogs do great on it and others do not.

 

Um, like how many patients out of your total population of raw fed clients? I'm kind of interested in whether this is a common outcome, and whether these people tend to be the ones who did a lot of tinkering with their raw diets and still couldn't make them work, or whether they're the ones who copied a diet from the internet and threw up their hands when that particular formulation didn't work for them. Most of what I read about raw diets is black or white, either they're good or evil, with little discussion that they might be good for some dogs and not for others, let alone any way to determine which diet is right for a particular dog.

 

The raw food folks acknowledge that diarrhea happens, but they also suggest that you can get past that point eventually by careful tinkering with the diet (e.g. stick with a single food source until the gut settles down, avoid food sources that don't work for a particular dog). Is it just a matter of tinkering with your raw diet long enough, or, as AK Dog Doc says, are raw diets just not right for some dogs?

 

More specifically, I am trying to determine whether one of my BCs fits in the category that AK Dog Doc describes. He's a skinny boy who has tons of energy and no complaints about life, but tends towards diarrhea whether he's on kibble or raw. I've knocked it back with antibiotics twice in the last year, once on kibble and once since we started raw. This makes me think that raw is not the culprit, but my mind is open and I'd like to do right by him if I could only figure out what the right diet is.

 

It would, of course, be extremely useful to have a vet who helps you work through whether a raw diet ultimately is or is not right for a particular dog, but even patient vets who tolerate their clients tinkering with their dog's diet don't seem too interested in actively helping a client make a raw diet work (and I'm not suggesting that they should, just that their help would be useful to a someone in, say, my position). Anyone (Doc included) know of a methodical protocol for efficiently figuring the ideal diet for a specific dog? I don't want to just try every food under the sun for a month each to see what works. There must be a more scientific way to go about this, isn't there?

 

My vet is (begrudgingly) open to ideas but doesn't have a lot of his own.

[Bill Fosher]

It would seem to me that the methodical way of finding a good diet for your dog would be to change one variable at a time until you find the ones that cause the upset and the ones that he tolerates best.

 

It's not only what you feed, but when and how you feed it. I heard of one person who vastly improved his dog's constitution by feeding him once a day. That was the only change needed, ultimately. The intuitive idea that smaller, more frequent feeds would be better tolerated proved to be the source of or at least a major contributor to the problem.

[CLW1]

More specifically, I am trying to determine whether one of my BCs fits in the category that AK Dog Doc describes. He's a skinny boy who has tons of energy and no complaints about life, but tends towards diarrhea whether he's on kibble or raw. I've knocked it back with antibiotics twice in the last year, once on kibble and once since we started raw. This makes me think that raw is not the culprit, but my mind is open and I'd like to do right by him if I could only figure out what the right diet is.

 

I feed raw and have 1 dog that I had continuing problems with. About every 3-4 weeks she'd have horrible diarrhea, usually during the day in her crate. I did fecal exams which showed nothing but wormed her still, treated for giardia and coccidia, kept a food journal to see if there was something that triggered it but couldn't see a pattern to it. Finally, a little over a year ago, I put her on a kibble with a protien that I didn't feed and was new to her system (duck) and the diarrhea stopped. Now she's on either a lamb or duck kibble and gets 1-2 marrow bones a week and still is fine. I just think that she's a dog for which raw is not the right diet.

[AK dog doc]

Bill is right (AGAIN! How do you do that?!?) - if you alter only one thing at a time, you know what your alteration did. If you change multiple variables, you don't know WHICH variable, or which COMBINATION of variables, produced the change.

 

As far as how many of my clients that feed raw have problems - that's a good question, and I'm not sure I can give you exact numbers. I CAN tell you I have at least two clients I can think of off the top of my head, each of whom has multiple dogs who have had longterm and repeated gut issues (sometimes for years), have tinkered extensively with their raw diets (a little bit at a time, no big drastic changes) and who STILL have some kind of gut problem about every other month. Why they refuse to even consider kibble is beyond me... the amount of steam cleaning their carpets undergo is truly astonishing. However, both clients are completely convinced that their dogs' diets can't have anything to do with having blowout diarrhea and vomiting every 6 to 10 weeks. There may be others, as well... I work in a multi-doctor practice and we have over 10,000 case files there. We have clients I've never even met.

 

Most of our clients, apart from mushers, feed kibble in total or in part. We have a lot more people who either feed some kibble and some home-cooked diet, or an all-home-cooked diet, than feed raw, actually. Even most mushers feed kibble AND cooked; some of them also do partly raw as well, as in when they snack their dogs. (As you well know, in the winter up here, if you're going to broth your dogs, you're going to be cooking for them.) As for as clients who try raw, hate it and then bail out immediately - those are the minority, and in fact I can't think of a single one off the top of my head who has bailed out before giving it a reasonable try. I can think of several who decided it wasn't right for their dogs and bailed out after a few months... some for gut issues, some for behavioral reasons, some for coat or skin issues (we've had a few who got MORE itchy on raw diets, not less, and who had other coat issues as well.) Dogs are all different. You can't know ahead of time what will work for yours. You just have to try it.

 

I do know of some dogs who seem to have intermittent or persistent diarrheas no matter WHAT you feed them. They can be pretty frustrating for everyone (except themselves, actually - some of them seem perfectly happy to have diarrhea all the livelong day.) One of my nurses has such a dog; one day she was doing something with her Sibes (she has many) and while she was concentrating on something with a few of them, she lost her vigilance on the diarrhea dog. He stole FIVE POUNDS of moose meat off the counter and ate ALL of it. In one sitting. She came back into the kitchen and the moose meat was gone and her Mal looked like he was carrying a litter of ten puppies. BUT - and here's the interesting part - the dog had totally normal stool. This is a dog INCLINED to diarrhea, and he had a MASSIVE dietary indiscretion, but his stools were normal. (Also, equally interesting IMO, the dog is normally a hyper maniac and drives everyone insane half the time by trying to herd her Sibes, but he was calm and mellow and relaxed for about 2 days after the Great Moose Ingestion of 2007). Unfortunately, she's not a hunter so she doesn't have enough moose meat to keep this regimen up; and there's no knowing if it was because it was MOOSE meat, or just meat, that he improved. The thing that's done the most to help the dog is putting tylan powder daily in his food, regardless of what that food IS. But I digress.

 

One of the problems with feeding raw is that people tend to forget that in the wild, canids are NOT eating commercially reared poultry or other commercially produced products. They're eating wild sources of plants and animals, by and large. People ALSO forget that when they feed raw, they're NOT feeding (for instance) prairie hens that live out in a naturally dispersed population. They're feeding commercially reared poultry, and those birds are by the nature of it concentrated in population density, even the organic free-range ones. This increases the liklihood of having, say, a carrier status of salmonella. There's a reason you're told to wash your cutting board between raw chicken and anything else. Also, wild (and domestic) predators DO get salmonella from time to time (we've had several outbreaks up here in cats who've hunted songbirds), and they may very well die of it unless (and sometimes even if) they get medical attention. We just don't always know about it because they die off in the woods somewhere. Same is true of botulism and E coli and so on. Even a bad case of giardia might be enough to do it. We DO have known outbreaks of these in wildlife populations, but we usually do NOT know about the small-number-dieoffs, so it surely happens more often than we're aware.

 

Any time you do an abrupt diet change, you're likely to get diarrhea. Not guaranteed to get it, but likely. If I were switching a dog from any diet, including kibble, to ANYTHING else - another kibble, canned, cooked, raw, what have you - I'd start by mixing in a small amount of the new diet for a few days, and gradually add more things in, always waiting to see what the reaction is in the dog, and subtracting as necessary. Unless you're in a desperate hurry to change them over - and there ARE times when you need to change diets abruptly for medical reasons, so you just have to live with the diarrhea til it resolves - there's no reason why you can't take a month to change a diet, if you want to.

 

P.S. Bill - when are you going to box me up some bottle babies and mail them to me? I haven't had to get up in the middle of the night to feed lambs in AGES. I'm starting to feel deprived.

[Bill Fosher]

No lambs -- bottle or otherwise -- on the ground for another couple of weeks. Hoping the snow will have melted by then and the grass will be coming up.

 

What does lamb milk replacer cost in Alaska?

[Alaska]

It would seem to me that the methodical way of finding a good diet for your dog would be to change one variable at a time until you find the ones that cause the upset and the ones that he tolerates best.

 

Thanks all, and especially Ak Dog Doc for the useful dissertation. Beyond simply changing one variable at a time, what I meant by a protocol was, more or less, a list of the variables one should try changing, and a reasonable order to try varying them in. So far, we've heard a bunch of candidates:

 

amount to feed at a sitting

time of day to feed

raw vs cooked

home-prepared vs factory-processed (kibble)

different protein sources

wild vs domestic

etc

 

A person could change one of these at a time for a long time before stumbling on the right one for a dog with a sensitive digestive system. With all the experience vets have, and with all the discussion and thought that people have put into diet for domestic animals (and it's not just dogs and cats -- I remember these same discussions from my ferret days), you'd think someone would have tried to develop such a protocol by now.

 

BTW, my guy does not have uncontrolled diarrhea. He can and does hold it for 12 hours at a time regularly, and he's not in a giant rush when he does get a chance to go. But it frequently looks pretty evil when it comes out, and it generally takes him longer than it should to clear his system. And yeah, he's been tested for giardia, coccidia, worms, etc. and so far always comes up clean. My other BC, who is fed exactly the same diet, has never had any trouble with anything she eats (including a huge pile of deer guts she scavenged when we camped too near some hunters, but now *I* digress).

[AK dog doc]

Unfortunately, dogs vary, so no matter what, some people will STILL have to go through a whole list of things before they hit on what works. My suggestion is usually to start at the simplest thing and proceed to more complex/esoteric. The simplest thing (after having parasite screens, which you have already done) would be to change the number of times fed per day, without changing anything else. You can also try different fiber additions without changing anything else, and I'd say that cooked food would be more of a moderate step than raw, as an example.

 

Bill - TBH, I can't remember how much milk replacer is up here; it's been quite a while since I've had to get any. Also, the last bottle baby I reared (Gumby) was QUITE ill initially and had the most horrendous sticky greenish black diarrhea for about 2 weeks. I ended up buying goat's milk for him (unpasturized, from a local farmer who sells the milk, so his herd is frequently screened). THAT wasn't cheap, but it worked. Little Gumby ended up having the most personality of any lamb I've ever reared, although several times he did attempt suicide by waiting til I was in the shower, jumping on the table and attempting to ingest an entire spool of ribbon (or some other inappropriate item, which I would then have to reel back out of his mouth one slimy foot at a time). Gah. The number of times he figured out a new way to get up onto things he was not supposed to... and let me tell you, no matter how cute a little black lamb in a diaper is, no amount of adorable is really quite enough to make up for the sensation of having him leap from the floor onto your unsuspecting lap with his POINTY LITTLE FEET while you are, say, trying to relax with a good book and have a cup of hot tea balanced on your thigh. Mmm. Refreshing. However, Gumby is quite a robust little Shetland these days, and acts as good-will ambassador and wool-maker for his doting owners, who assure me it was all worth it.

[Bill Fosher]

Bottle lambs are the devil's work. I try very hard not to have any lambs that require artificial rearing -- the latest price quote on LMR is $40/25 lb bag. Each artificially reared lamb will require at least one bag -- more likely 1.5. There goes any profit on that lamb. I try even harder to have any AR lambs be on self-feeders ASAP. We had one bottle lamb last year for reasons of mental defect. It followed me down the road when I took the dogs for a walk. loved dogs and people and hated sheep. As soon as we weaned it it essentially stopped eating and eventually croaked. (After eating $50 worth of LMR, and taking up who knows how much time, of course.)

 

Bottle lambs get names that indicate the place they hold in my heart. Last year's was called S#!t Factory. I've also had Icky, Brainless, Stumpy Dog Food (a premie that had had one leg chewed off by an over-enthusiastic ewe), Zero, Beavis and Butthead ...

[tumblehome]

As an FYI, in case anyone has a question about my credentials in this department, I not only hold a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, I ALSO hold a Master of Science - in Wildlife Biology.

 

Sigh. End of rant.

 

Hey, I'm glad you posted. I am not about to question your credentials but I am interested in your references. Thanks!

Chris O

[Daviid]

B ) Onions (and kale, BTW) DO cause Heinz body anemia. Garlic, not so much. Too much of anything - even oxygen - is a bad idea. Being judicious is a good idea. As with anything.

 

 

AK Doc, I didn't know kale can cause Heinz body anemia, where can I look that up?

Is that just in very large quantities, like onions?

 

I've been feeding homemade for over 20 years, I sometimes add some home grown kale in the mix.

 

Thank-you

David

[AK dog doc]

Bill - Snerk! I named Gumby for his long cunning Gumby-legs. I don't regret the effort or expense, but I'm also not rearing sheep for a living. If I were, I doubt I'd enjoy it as much as I do, since as you say the profit would be marginal if not absent, and it would probably mostly be an excersize in frustration. I personally can't bring myself to EAT the bottle babies, but for wool sheep or milk sheep, that's not a big problem, and for some reason I'm okay with rearing a bottle baby, breeding it, and eating its babies. Mostly what I get to rear is the littler, weaker twin who can't quiiiiite make it in our chilly spring weather unless given a little help, but who is otherwise normal, and will go on to produce perfectly acceptable babies (and wool). Lamb is frightfully expensive up here, so on a small scale growing your own has its appeal. Even if your bathtub doubles as a lamb nursery for a couple of weeks.

 

I named one of the lambs P.T. (for Pepper's Toy). Maybe I'll name my next one Icky.

 

Daviid - I don't know where you can look that up, TBH, apart from veterniary texts. It's published in at least a couple of veterinary emergency medicine books. You might try the Veterinary Merck Manual; I think they have an online presence. Not sure if it would be in there, though.

 

Chris - you betcha. What references were you specifically wanting...?

[tumblehome]

I don't really understand why those who choose not to feed raw are so fussed by those of who do. The title of this thread makes it clear it is about feeding raw diets; it does not appear to be about why, but rather how.

 

For those of us who have chosen to feed raw, and for those who in the face of a massive petfood recall are reconsidering their options, this topic could be useful and enlightening and maybe even interesting. If those of you who disagree with raw feeding are frustrated by reading about wolves (grey) and the inextricable relationship between grey wolves (canis lupus) and dogs (canis lupus familiaris), perhaps you might simply not linger.

 

I for one am not trying to persuade anyone to do something they are not comfortable with, for whatever reason; I am trying communicate safe, easy , flexible and nutritious ways to make raw possible. Seems to me that the Border Collie Boards are large enough to accomodate those who are fer a raw diet, as well as those who are agin it.

Chris O

[Bill Fosher]

Chris,

 

I feed my dogs raw meat, bones, and some vegetable matter and grains as well. I'm pretty new at it -- just a few months now -- but I can already see a lot of benefits to it. Not the least of which is that I am spending less money on dog food every month than I was when I was feeding the least expensive kibble that still allowed me to look myself in the mirror.

 

What gets me in a snit is to see this myth repeated over and over that wild canids don't eat vegetables or grains. They do. I have seen it with my own eyes.

 

And the taxonimy Canis lupus familiaris is a new one on me. I always thought it was Canis familiaris, although I am coming to believe that the lines between what have traditionally been called species of canids, whether it's C. lupus, C. rufus, C. latrans, or C. familiaris, can be pretty well blurred. Our Eastern coyotes look and behave more like red wolves than western coyotes, for instance, and come in colors that are known in the red wolf but not in the western coyote.

 

The point of all this is to say that yes, there are a lot of similarities between wild and domesticated canids, and one of those similarities is that they are opportunistic ominivores.

[AK dog doc]

I don't think anyone here is saying that you are trying to convince people to do something, nor do they object to the idea of feeding raw, IF it suits a given dog and household, and IF it is done sensibly and without harm to the pet. (I believe most of us would object to something that harms the animal, or at the very least offer alternative possible courses of action). However, if the justification for a particular diet is "prey model" and the wolf is used as an example of how one should feed a vegetable-free diet to their dog because the wolf is "genetically identical" to the dog, there needs to be a bit of straitening-out done. That's the sort of thing that tends to careen off into greater and greater degrees of inaccuracy, with potentially disasterous results.

 

My objections here have been that there is a certain amount of misinformation that is misleading and/or flat out wrong, which, if not corrected, could lead to serious (and potentially life-threatening) errors in feeding. That is the HOW that I am addressing. But I also feel in all fairness that it is perfectly acceptable to point out that raw feeding - just like kibble feeding, just like cooked meal feeding - is not right for every dog, and that if it's not working for you, you need to try something else. New converts to the idea of feeding raw, like new converts to many things, appear at times to believe it's the cure for all ills, and there is sometimes a certain amount of implied censure - inadvertant, I'm sure - toward those who do not do likewise. I'm just trying to be even-handed in pointing out that just as there are some animals who do poorly UNLESS on raw (or home-cooked), there are ALSO some who do poorly unless on kibble. Most will probably fall somewhere in the middle, as with most things. Having had to try to save the lives of animals with, for instance, salmonella (acquired from eating raw poultry), I can assure you that the easiest and least expensive way to fix this problem is to not get it in the first place. Hence the cautions.

 

If you're referring to me as someone who ought not linger here, perhaps that would be simpler if I wasn't trying to answer questions and comments directed at me, specifically, by name (including, I must point out, by yourself). If you mean there are OTHERS who ought not linger here, then I leave that to you and them. It certainly IS true that there's more than enough room on the Boards for more than one philosophy of feeding, and by all means, trade info to your heart's content. However, if the information is faulty, incomplete or misleading and someone chooses to point that out, that's certainly allowed as well.

 

FWIW, I am not an advocate of ANY particular method of feeding, although I will point out that there are some things which should be regarded with caution, maybe even extreme caution, when considering what to feed. For me the bottom line is that each person must think about what works best for them and for their dogs, and make their own decisions. But it's best to do so when in posession of correct information, not incorrect.

 

JMO, of course. Oh, and it is Canis familiaris, or at least it was the last time I looked at the taxonomy.

[bcnewe2]

Nothing to add to the raw discussion other than it makes for interesting reading.

 

But I now have a new name for bottle babies. "The Devils Work" is perfect!! We've had a bottle baby for almost 2 weeks now. She will be leaving tomorrow and for me, that's 2 weeks to long!

 

My son named her Charlotte, I renamed her Remora, after the little fish who attaches it's self to big fish for cleaning purposes. She has attached herself to Mick the working dog (he being the gentleman that he is, has not ate her yet) so when he does an outrun or some other sheep work, there she is running right after him. Won't have a thing to do with the sheep, but loves this dog!

 

There is no reason for her to be a bottle baby except that our young LGD stole her from a new momma who had 2 so she figured she already had 1 if he wanted her he's got her. Since I worked hard on teaching him that is a BAD thing, now he won't touch her. Guess that's why Mick has a new butt buddy!

 

The devils work it is!

 

AK dog doc, if you weren't so darn far, I'd ship her right off to you! I'm sure you could train her to jump onto anything you want! Wonder if I could do Bill’s self feeder method in a box on a plane?

 

Kristen

[blackeyesue]

From the stand point of someone like myself who doesn't feed raw exclusively, this topic is fasinating. Do this, don't do that. I'm all for research, but sometimes too much is a bad thing. Too much conflicting advise...for me anyway. I feed EVO and add in small amounts of chicken livers etc, raw chicken or sardines with his nightly meal. Thats as far as I take it. EVO has very high protein. I was reading the other day about too much protein not being healthy for dogs. It would seem that feeding raw, a dog would get high amounts of protein. Buddy does great on the EVO, so the high protein doesnt concern me. Can someone explain about the high protein (or lack of) and its long term effects? If any? Thanks

[kelpiegirl]

I am also interested in this- Evo is VERY high protein...

J

 

From the stand point of someone like myself who doesn't feed raw exclusively, this topic is fasinating. Do this, don't do that. I'm all for research, but sometimes too much is a bad thing. Too much conflicting advise...for me anyway. I feed EVO and add in small amounts of chicken livers etc, raw chicken or sardines with his nightly meal. Thats as far as I take it. EVO has very high protein. I was reading the other day about too much protein not being healthy for dogs. It would seem that feeding raw, a dog would get high amounts of protein. Buddy does great on the EVO, so the high protein doesnt concern me. Can someone explain about the high protein (or lack of) and its long term effects? If any? Thanks

[smileyzookie]

Here is a website regarding carbs and protein in raw diets. http://rawfed.com/myths/carbs.html --- It goes into EXTENSIVE detail.

"There is no known minimum dietary carbohydrate requirement for either the dog or the cat. Based on investigations in the dog and with other species it is likely that dogs and cats can be maintained without carbohydrates if the diet supplies enough fat or protein from which the metabolic requirement for glucose is derived."

 

This same site discusses the idea grey wolves and dogs are .02% different at most in DNA ect.

http://rawfed.com/myths/changed.html

"Lastly, dogs have recently been reclassified as Canis lupus familiaris by the Smithsonian Institute"

 

LOL it also discusses wolves eating stomach content. http://rawfed.com/myths/stomachcontents.html