Feeding Dog Raw Diet: Yes or no?

I was feeding timberwolf organics and when their quality control wasn't good enough a just as expensive kibble I can't remember the name of for my akita as a puppy. She had some problems with not wanting to eat and then inhaling food, vomiting because she overfilled her stomach, and deciding food was bad again. I had to use very very dense kibble that did not expand at all, which fillers contribute to, and was high calorie. I tried to get Orijen then but it was only in Canada. I wish the same knowledge of raw would have been accessible 9 1/2 years ago. I would have kept her 100% raw from day one until I had 3 dogs to feed instead of 1.

I feed a varied diet, mostly 4Health kibble (one of the very very few dog food companies that actually makes food with a proper Calcium to Phosphorus level for large breed puppies and dogs), some raw when it presents itself (failed kits, whole eggs, failed chicks, butchering scraps, leftover fruits and veggies just starting to wilt, & leftover bones), and a lot of leftovers from my own meals (as well as many products about to expire such as dairy, meats, bread, grains, etc). There is almost always something left on my plate. I don't see any allergen, poop, or any issues related to food out of the many dogs I've raised. It also completely removed almost all wastage to feed this way and no wild animals are attracted to my trash Everything has already been licked clean by a pack of dogs.

If you're going to feed just raw though, you really really do need to research and a lot. Well beyond what this forum is going to offer you. Dogs have died due to imbalanced and inappropriate raw diets. Not just died but died horribly. Diseases caused by nutrition imbalances can be extremely horrific, like deformed limbs on puppies or organ failure horrific which to me isn't worth it. I'd rather not risk it. Vets react the way they do to it because so few people know what they're doing when they get into it and they constantly see a barrage of these people when their feeding inevitably goes very south and still refusing to accept that the food is to blame when the vet tries to explain it.

It requires a lot of very careful planning and organizing and even maths since you need to keep ratios steady. It also helps if the dog you're feeding it came from a line of dogs that have been raised on it. Comparing to our rabbits, some come from long lines of pellet feeders. If you suddenly switched to all forage feeding (even gradually) you may see gut issues, parasite issues (they were from long lines of animals never - or very rarely - exposed to parasitism so would not have any inherited defenses against such), and you very may experience nutrition issues as well depending on your sources. It all becomes a careful balancing act and at least with rabbits we have mineral spools to help make up for what we missed. This applies to more than just rabbits. Goats too have issues with this as well as humans (all vegan raw diets in humans have been also problematic when not carefully balanced and supplemented).

I feed the way I do because it ensures proper nutrition without sticking my dog with GI issues later if things should ever happen to change (feeding a dog the same food its entire life can also be bad and result in serious gi issues if you should ever need to change it for any reason, variety is the spice of life anyway) Those of you who have changed your own diets in your lives might have run into this aswell. Eating mostly junk and then deciding to try healthy vegetables or fruits and then getting sick? Your body was trained to reject the good stuff.

Those of you who feed fruits and veggies, do you do anything special with them? Do you cook them or feed them raw?

I'd never thought of feeding left over garden produce to the dogs. Generally I've thrown it over the fence to the horses or given it to the rabbits.

You need to puree it really well. They don't have the teeth to chew or the enzymes to break down the food so it needs to be more like the consistency you would find in the stomach of herbivores. Which is another thing some people feed. Unbleached green tripe (not the cleaned version you buy for humans) is often sold canned in stores now and used as a supplement with vegetables because it still has the enzymes the herbivores use to digest.

alforddm":356404by said:

Those of you who feed fruits and veggies, do you do anything special with them? Do you cook them or feed them raw?

I'd never thought of feeding left over garden produce to the dogs. Generally I've thrown it over the fence to the horses or given it to the rabbits.

Click to expand...

I don't really, it depends on the dog though. My small mutt girl loves carrots but the dogs all seem to agree that carrots and yams/potatoes are okay completely raw. They will absolutely mouth all over a potato (always remove the skin though to be safe).

They mostly like greens and will mow them over like grass (they seem to enjoy shredding up the leaves themselves). There isn't much I really get in the fruit department though (mostly berries, like blackberries, blueberries and bananas ) I get such small amounts of other kinds of fruit that there's rarely any left over. All of my dogs love berries, by the way, to the point I can use them like treats no problem.

Cukes and watermelon are other things I've had my dogs fight the chickens over haha. They will also slurp up BOSS if the birds aren't fast enough.

As someone else already mentioned, dogs are not wolves. They are dogs. Highly developed and evolved to survive off of human food, that includes the garbage humans throw away, this is a huge huge pool of foods as humans are omnivorous. Dogs will even gobble up bugs if you let them. I would never feed a dog garbage or bugs intentionally of course, but a lot of perfectly good food for dogs winds up tossed by folks these days. I don't have, nor do I even need a garbage disposal. There's nothing left on my plates to get caught in there.

Raw potatoes, really?

I don`t feed raw vegetables (fruits are usually just for a treat, like a piece of apple. i give that raw) because they are more digestable for a dog if they are at least covered in hot/boiling water (blanching?) for a few minutes. If I give my dog a raw carrot he will poop out a raw carrot. Cooked one is digested.

Just because they will eat it doesn't mean they are getting anything worthwhile out of it. Whole raw vegetables as just chew sticks and entertainment I understand. If you really want to attempt to get them to digest useful stuff out of it though most agree you have to break it down and help them out a little. Personally though I do not believe in the need for vegetables and do not include them. My akita wouldn't even sniff anything without enough real meat (to hell with meat flavored). The husky will eat anything including the paper plate you set the vegetables on.