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Originally Posted by MyFairLacy  Just wanted to share my opinions concerning what you addressed:
Yes, one of my concernes in bacteria. This does (for the most part) apply only to dogs with compromised immune systems but what I'd like to know is who is the judge of whether their immune system is compromised? I never thought Ellie had a compromised immune system until she was spayed and the internal sutures didn't dissolve as fast as they should. Her body didn't attack them right away. There is no way to be 100% sure. And are we positive that this only effects compromised dogs, I'm not convinced. Food poisoning is much more rare in dogs than humans...I agree, but how much more rare, I don't think anyone knows for sure.
Even my microbiology professor who had us read an article on the "danger of raw feeding" (a VERY biased and opinionated study btw) repeatedly said in our salmonella lecture that food-borne illness is not a concern in a healthy dog. And even if a dog does get food-borne illness (which is very rare), it can be easily cured with antibiotics and fluids. Dogs digestive systems are different than humans - they were designed to eat raw meat. What does a wolf eat in the wild? RAW meat. And think about it - dogs lick and eat nasty things all the time with no problem. When a dog eats, the food sits in the stomach for about six hours - being bathed in a highly acidic bath (dogs stomich acid is more acid than a humans). It then moves into the intestines where it quickly passes through. Bacteria just doesn't have time to multiply like it does with humans. Our food sits in our stomach for about 30 minutes and then moves into our intestines where it may sit for 2 days..plenty of time to make us sick.
Next, raw egg (which some prepackaged foods are held together with) can deplete your dog of biotin. I don't think there is a good reason to feed raw egg.
While it would be dangerous to feed raw egg whites alone, it is fine to feed a whole raw egg. The egg whites contain avidin which binds to biotin so that it cannot be used by the body. Feeding egg whites alone can create a biotin defficiency. However, the egg yold contains a large amount of biotin that exceeds whatever the avidin binds too. So the dog actually gets MORE biotin by eating a raw egg...it doesn't deplete the body of biotin unless you fed only the egg whites.
And, I have seen zero studies on if a raw fed dog lives significantly longer than a dog eating kibble or homecooked. If they are proven to live longer, than I might consider feeding it BUT this isn't the case so far (we only have testimonials and we have those from homecooked too) and I see no reason to put Ellie's health and life in danger by giving her a mouthful of bacteria-filled meat and hoping her immune system will take care of it. There is so much risk already feeding any food (homecooked, kibble) and I see no reason to add any additional to it.
What studies are there to show that dogs fed kibble are living the longest? About the time kibble became widely available and vaccination began, dogs started developing all kinds of problems such as cancer, hypothyroidism, diabetes, epilepsy, etc etc. There are anecdotal stories of dogs living long, (supposedly healthy) lives on both kibble and raw..and there have been plenty of stories of dogs dieing from an early age that were fed kibble their whole life. I've seen with my own eyes how healthy my dog is on raw and her last blood panel came back perfect.
I don't like dog food much either though. Homecooking is by far my favorite because the diet can be balanced with a bit less bacteria concern and dogs that eat homecooked can do very well on it. I say cook the meat and add a supplement...
Cooking the food depletes many important nutrients in the food and changes the protein. Raw meats are fed in their most natural form in a way that a dog would have naturally eaten.
For prey-model diets, add the rare occurence of bone obstructions to the list (which DOES happen) which could have been avoided by brushing their teeth and giving them food. Also, vitamins aren't added to prey model and the diet isn't the least bit balanced. I don't believe this last part is just an opinion at all.
Most problems with bones are due to COOKED bones. Raw bones just are not a concern. They are highly digestible. Also, carnivores have a special fibrous lining to their stomach and first part of their small intestines. This is because carnivores were designed to eat raw meat and bones from the prey they killed. This lining protects from punctures |
First I want to say that this is a VERY good post.
I still strongly disagree with raw but you explain things very well.
Food-borne illnesses may not be a concern in the healthy dog but again I ask, who judges whether they are healthy? There are no tests for it.
The problem with trying to treat food-borne illness in dogs is that it ins't diagnosed very quickly and therefore the treatment might not come in time.
Since there aren't many cases of it, I think it is rarely looked for. Besides, we HOPE the treatment works. I see no reason to take a bigger risk than what we have to.
Wolves were designed to eat raw meat but that doesn't mean that cooked meat isn't safer. I don't feel like I am hurting Ellie by cooking her meat and supplementing but I would feed VERY responsible if she was one of the few that got poisoned and I was the only one to blame.
Good explanation on the egg but I still don't feed raw animal products...
Here is an excerpt from a wolf excerpt about bones:
"To my knowledge there are no well-documented cases [of canid having GI obstructions due to bones]. However, many would agree that you can't compare feeding bones to feeding on a carcass (bones, fur, and large quantities of meat and entrails), i.e. what harm fragmented bones might do is alleviated by passage of the other items with the bone fragments."
Susan Lyndaker Lindsey, Ph.D.
Wild Canid Survival and Research Center
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Dogs do get obstructions (rarely but it does happen) from bones and ONE of the reasons is that they aren't coated very well.
And as far as how long raw eaters live, I'm not saying kibble or homecooked dogs live longer but if they live the same amount of time (which is what it looks like right now), then why risk feeding raw?
There just isn't enough good information available right now for me to even consider this kind of diet. Maybe someday...