[Woogie Man]

Originally Posted by Nancy1999

I don't believe any of those diets would be shown to be "significantly" better than another. It takes a lot of difference to show a "significant" difference in testing. First you would have to define "better." Would this mean, how long the dog lived, or lack of health problems? Would it mean the state of individual organs? After you decided what your definition of better is, than to test that you would need a rather large group of dogs than are genetically very similar, because genetics plays such a huge role in all these things. Animals live in cages to rule out other things that would cause an effect. For example, if these animals were living with different families the environment, they lived in could have caused the effect. Pesticides, cleaners, air quality all could influence the results, as well as many other environmental factors. Even the psychological environment should be similar as we know stress plays an important part in how the body/organs ages.

I think a computer model, only would work, if the knowledge was there and could be entered into the computer. For example, at age 3 bone calcifies in the anterior frontal blah, blah, blah. To do a real study you would have to study the organs at various ages to see what effect specific diets had on them. This means killing healthy animals at different ages to study them. I disagree with the millions and millions of years theory, and in the wild animals don't need to live very long, just long enough to procreate and feed their young. I suppose if we find people having dogs that live much longer or much healthier in the future, more people will take more notice of these raw food diets. I just don't think any food company would want to do a study such as this, or even use the results.

The part of all this I'm having a hard time accepting is why grain is so bad for dogs. Comparing dogs to cows doesn't seem right; cows eat raw grain, not cooked grain. Why can't some food man invented be better than something that dogs would get in the wild? Dogs have been living with man for over 15,000 years, and since a dog can procreate after the age of one, that is a lot of evolutionary years. Dogs like most animals are wonderfully adaptive to a wide variety of diets. This isn't to say that individual dogs don't do better on some diets than others.

Excellent post . I totally agree with you about dogs in the wild only needing to live long enough to reproduce to ensure survival of the species. The fact that wolves and other wild dogs have existed for so long doesn't speak to the quality of the diet at all. It certainly doesn't ensure that a raw diet is the ideal one to achieve longevity. I believe that nowadays there are commercial dog foods that are light years ahead of the early kibble as far as quality of ingredients and balanced nutrition goes though there are still many 'garbage foods' out there. Having said that, I think the evidence of the dental benefit of feeding meaty bones is undeniable. For that reason, I've begun giving mine raw meaty bones on an occasional basis. Their primary diet is kibble in the morning and kibble mixed with canned at night. This is the personal decision I've made based on the information I've read. I can't make the leap to just raw but do see some real benefits to it.