[Ellie May]

I would not say that kibble and homecooked fed dogs live longer. I'd say we don't know because it is all subjective. I hadn't really been talking about kibble being good or bad because that is so mainstream. I actually have a hard time considering dried, processed food with older and sometimes questionable ingredients a perfect diet. But many dogs do well on it, even some that don't do well on raw or HC, so they are all different. And that's what most are comfortable doing and I think that's fine.

And the "millions of years of evolution" that a good number of people agree with still has wolves dying at an average age of 8. I didn't say it was the food, but moreso how would we even know? There is evidence that wolves have nutritional issues on their diet. So there is more than one opinion...

I care so much about all of this b/c I'm going into the field and I do need answers for people. It's not enough for me to read that 10,000 dogs on a Yahoo group do well on raw. There are so many questions about safety that I am still not seeing answered. I'm not saying that raw fed dogs are heavily parasitized, etc., but that it must be possible for that to happen. And on raw sites, they say yeah it's possible but rare so no worries. Where are we getting that it is rare? Have we done any studies? The ones I've seen concern me. Have we interviewed a good number of vets across the country to see what they are finding?

BTW, I homecook but think it's way too easy to do it wrong, time consuming, expensive, there are quality control concerns, etc. So I usually don't recommend it.