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Let me start by saying that as far as I am
concerned there is no one right way to feed our Beardies, any more
than there is a single right way to feed ourselves or our children.
What follows are my own observations. I feed a raw diet because it
works for me and my dogs (and cat); I think a lot of what is written
about raw diets and commercial diets is questionable at best. Each
of us needs to decide for ourselves, based on our life style and
beliefs.
There have been several important
“aha” moments that have led me to raw feeding.
- In veterinary school, as all the raw feeders will tell you,
courses on nutrition are taught by animal food company
representatives. The feed companies give veterinary students
free food for their animals, give them lots of books and other
neat stuff if you take a kindergarten age appropriate test on
“nutrition” – just remember who is sponsoring it kiddies.
However, in my second year of veterinary school in our
gastroenteric pathology class, we had some classes from Herbert
van Kruningen DVM, PhD. He talked to us first about acute
gastric dilatation and volvulus (aka bloat) the number 1 killer
of giant and many large breeds of dogs – by his conservative
estimation it affects at least 80,000 dogs a year. There is an
identical disease in several other species including humans and
monkeys. Dr. van Kruningen (Van Kruningen, et al. The influence
of diet and feeding frequency on gastric function in the dog. J
Am Anim Hosp Assoc 10:294-324, 1974) had linked the disease to
bacterial fermentation of high carbohydrate commercial dog
foods. The incidence was particularly high in dogs fed once vs.
twice a day. The stomachs of dogs fed a commercial diet were
substantially larger than those fed on a raw meat and bones
diet, and bigger in dogs fed once a day vs. 2 or 3 times a day
on commercial diets but not on raw diets. It takes a dog 15
hours to digest a kibble meal, but only 4 to 6 hours to digest
one of meat and bones. He then studied the contents of the
gastrointestinal tracts of wild canids that had died of natural
causes in the national parks. As he said (please imagine German
accent here), “not one of them had Purina dog chow.” Nor did
they have any grains or soybeans. Similarly, monkeys and
marmosets fed commercial pelleted diets were the ones that
developed gastric dilatation (in humans beer, certain vegetables
and soup have been incriminated). These diets also encourage
over-growth of the bacterium Clostridia perfringens and
this is thought to be a contributing factor. The worst diets are
those that derive the majority of their protein from soybean
meal and are high in fermentable carbohydrate – but basically
to be formed into kibbles a diet must contain ~ 60%
carbohydrate.
Question: Why are we advised not to feed ourselves and
our children on highly processed diets and yet we are bad people
killing our dogs if we feed them anything else? I’ll
feed my dogs a commercial diet when the dog food company
nutritionists feed themselves Eukanuba Maintenance Diet, and
their offspring Hill’s Kiddie Chow. If I am capable of
formulating a relatively balanced, healthy diet for myself and
my human children, why am I suddenly incapable of doing the same
for my dogs?
- Why is it if every dog food is complete and balanced, that
every month a new food is released which contains some essential
new ingredient that every dog, or some significant number of
dogs, absolutely has to have for tip top health? Doesn’t this
imply that the earlier “complete” diet wasn’t as complete
as we were led to believe? This reminds me of when I was a lot
younger, and a friend introduced me to a natural brand of
vitamins, that had been in production since before
“vitamins” were known to exist. It has been made from
natural ingredients, to supplement diets that might be lacking
in fresh foods. With each new “vitamin” discovered, the
manufacturer of the product would check, and it was in his
supplement. The manufacturers of the chemically-derived
multi-vitamins had to scurry around to add it into the mix.
That’s how I feel about raw feeding, it’s already in there.
I don’t need to add it.
- Many of the diseases we see in modern veterinary practice are
either new or increasing in frequency. One of the rare instances
where I push owners towards raw feeding is when their dog has
inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This is a modern disease. In
humans a link has been found to improved hygiene. Over millennia
humans evolved to coexist with an intestinal population of
worms. Dr. Joel Weinstock’s group at the University of Iowa
has brought human IBD into complete remission by giving patients
non pathogenic worm eggs. Worms grow in the intestines for a
while, but long after they have cleared their system remission
continues (Summers, R.W, et al.: Trichuris Suis Appears Safe and
Effective in the Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A
Possible Example of Th2 Conditioning of the Mucosal Immune
Response. Am. J. Gastro., 98:2034-2041, 2003). In dogs, many on
the verge of euthanasia for intractable IBD, switching to a raw
diet has proven curative, giving these dogs’ g/i tracts food
they can handle. Other modern diseases that seem to be strongly
linked to diet include: diabetes – type 2 diabetes and
metabolic disorder have been reported in all species fed diets
high in processed carbohydrates; allergies – not just food
allergies, although grain allergy is prevalent, but allergies to
other environmental allergens have been linked to grains; ear
infections; kidney disease, and stones in the urinary system;
deficiencies of important amino acids and their derivatives –
lack of carnitine and taurine especially can lead to heart
disease; periodontal disease and gingivitis – at one time dogs
did not get cavities, now they do, and diseases of the teeth and
gums can lead to systemic bacteremia and consequent heart and
kidney disease; obesity. (That isn’t to say raw fed dogs
can’t get too fat, but in making diets palatable dogs are
encouraged to overeat, and the bags generally recommend you feed
more than the dog needs.)
Debunking some myths and the Twinkie
generation.
Unfortunately, there will be people who become
evangelical in promoting diets of whatever type, and this seems to
be particularly the case with raw feeding – both pro and anti.
Dogs have not been wolves for millennia - even though their gene
sequences differ by only 1-2% that is more than the difference
between humans and chimpanzees. It is probably true that there has
been no change in the gastrointestinal tract and physiology of the
dog in the past 150 years since commercial diets began to appear,
but dogs have lived on table scraps and hand-outs a lot longer than
that. As long as dogs have tied their lot in with humans, they
probably weren’t getting the best of the available food, they got
the leftovers. There have not been a lot of studies, but one of
feral dogs in Italy and another of stray dogs in Maryland, found
that these dogs were not hunting in the traditional sense, but
raiding garbage dumps. Even dogs that team up and kill domestic
livestock rarely eat the animals they kill. They have gone into a
frenzy of killing, perhaps as a memory of times past, but have
forgotten the purpose of the kill, to eat the prey. There may be
exceptions, but dogs are no longer the hunters that wolves are and
have adapted to eating whatever bones we throw them. On the other
hand, there seems to be little difference between the digestive
system of the modern dog and that of his wolf ancestors, so he can
adapt very well to eating the same kind of diet. His intestines just
aren’t designed to extract optimal nutrition from a
carbohydrate/grain based diet, which is why so much of the
commercial diet passes through unchanged.
Commercial dog foods did indeed develop from a
desire to use grain tailings rather than throwing them away, and to
add animal fat, previously used in detergents when that role was
usurped by phosphates. Then again, dogs have always eaten what we
don’t want. Human food at the time was not protected from
adulteration, sand in the sugar and lead in the flour. It was a bad
time all round, industrialization was hard on the diet of man and
animals. Fresh meat carried a premium price and wasn’t to be fed
to animals. Now, realizing the willingness of the consumer to pay
handsomely to feed his dog, canine nutrition is heavily researched,
and new requirements are being found and addressed. Dead, drugged,
diseased and down (4D) meat isn’t going into premium commercial
dog food, although it may still be fed raw to racing greyhounds, nor
are dead dog and cat carcasses being used. There has been a radical
change in the industry in recent years. I arrived in this country in
1975, and unquestioningly fed my dog kibble. In England our dogs had
eaten canned dog food and leftovers from family meals. The first
family dog I knew died when a cooked lamb chop bone perforated her
intestine. I was not about to feed bones – I still wasn’t aware
of the difference between raw and cooked bones – usually only
brittle cooked bones splinter into sharp points, and while I can’t
believe I never questioned why wild dogs seemed to be able to eat
bones with impunity, either I didn’t, or else I figured it culled
quite a lot of them. Back around 1980 all canine illness suddenly
was laid at the feet of the preservatives used to prevent fat in
commercial food from going rancid. Ethoxyquin became a dirty word
among dog owners. When my dog developed mammary cancer, I found the
only preservative free food (Cornucopia) and fed her that. Low and
behold, she has been given 6 weeks or less to live and lived three
and a half more years. Increasingly sophisticated niche diets became
available. I recently went into an upscale pet store with a friend
about to open her own grooming, feed and supply store for a little
research. I was amazed, appalled and fascinated by what I found.
What I wasn’t convinced of was that this was better for my dogs
than what they were eating. Every effort was made to reproduce a raw
diet, but the products were all cooked, kibbled or otherwise
processed, and I was left wondering why we were trying to reinvent
the wheel. Tapioca may be a root, but it’s still carbohydrate –
29% - and fiber, with 1% or less of the recommended daily allowance
of any other usable nutrient. I’m also wondering why we are
feeding canned pheasant, kangaroo and buffalo, but I suppose if you
can afford it, why not?
Feeding a balanced diet
We hear this phrase all the time, but what exactly
does it mean? To me it means not feeding the same thing day in and
day out. No one food can meet all a dog’s nutritional needs so mix
them up. I don’t intend to write a detailed treatise on how to
feed raw, I would recommend reading as much as you can on the
subject from as many different authors as possible. I would advocate
rotating different meats, fish (except raw Pacific salmon) and whole
eggs – but they don’t have to be exotic, whatever is available.
While they may gross us out, fish heads and guts, and less desirable
parts of carcass and anatomy are relished by dogs. Some organ meat
(liver, tripe, kidney, heart – I’d avoid brain) is good, but be
careful of feeding too much as it can be too rich and produce
diarrhea, somewhere between 5 and 10% of the average meal is about
right. Trachea is a good source of chondroitin which helps lubricate
arthritic joints. Glucosamine levels are high in crab and shrimp
shells. ( Sulfur is lost from food when it is processed, dried,
cooked or preserved. MSM – the third ingredient in the healthy
joint triumvirate - serves as an important source of bio-available
sulfur, but is rarely needed in raw fed dogs.)
Finding products that have been organically
raised, free of antibiotics, pesticide treated fodder, etc. is a
good idea as these substances accumulate in the body. Concentrate on
meaty bones as opposed to muscle meat. Some people strongly oppose
feeding fruit and vegetables to dogs. However, if you remember Dr.
van Kruningen he did find berries, grass and other non animal based
foodstuff in the intestinal tracts of wild canids – he also found
insects, dung and some other stuff you might prefer not to
contemplate – or add to your dog’s diet. If you grow your own
fruit and/or vegetables you’ve probably seen your dog harvest
whatever takes his fancy. Do avoid grapes and raisins as well as
green tomatoes and potatoes, and limit avocado. Otherwise a little
is often appreciated by the dog, and can be used as a fiber filler
to leave an obese dog feeling satiated while consuming fewer
calories. Dogs past weaning usually do not tolerate dairy products
well. They lose lactase the enzyme that breaks down milk sugar, and
dairy may lead to diarrhea and colicky signs. You can give yogurt or
kefir with live cultures if the dog is on antibiotics to restore
healthy bacteria to the g/i tract, however, probiotics may be better
tolerated.
Supplementing the diet – whether raw or kibbled
– is much debated, and is and of itself a major industry. I do
believe a good source of Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) especially
omega 3 is very important. Beyond that I tend not to add anything
unless a particular dog has a particular need. Remember too much can
be as bad as too little. Some people do advocate adding kelp and
alfalfa, and I can see benefits in doing so.
Concern about bacteria – especially Salmonella
spp., E.coli and Campylobacter jejuni – keeps a
lot of people from raw feeding their dogs. However, these organisms
exist on the meat we prepare for our families, these and other
pathogenic bacteria are present in commercial kibbles, on fruits and
vegetables, and provided we take appropriate precautions – washing
hands, surfaces and utensils carefully – they do not pose a
particular risk to owners – special care must be exercised if
immune compromised people are present in the home. Because bacteria
multiply rapidly between 40 °F and 140 °F, freezing and
refrigerating raw meat helps to reduce the bacterial content of the
food. The rapid transit of the food through the dog’s digestive
system, and highly acid stomach secretions protect dogs from these
illnesses, although again, if you have an immune compromised dog
home prepared, cooked diets may be more appropriate.
How much to feed can also be a concern. Some
beardies only eat what they need while others gorge, some can
maintain their optimum weight apparently living on air, whereas
others burn food off so fast they can require three or four times
the amount to just stay at a good weight. In general, start with
1-2% of the dog’s weight – usually about half the volume of
kibble. Dogs generally drink less on raw diets as there is a high
fluid content to the food. Kibble has to be hydrated, preferably
before it is fed, but if not it will absorb fluids inside the dog.
Poops tend to be small, white and crumble – much less offensive to
clean up or step in.
It takes a while for some kibble fed dogs to adapt
to a raw diet, and they may need to be coaxed at first to this
strange new stuff. (Puppies take to it happily from the get-go.)
There is a concern that bones can crack molars and this is
legitimate. Dogs’ teeth have become softer and more brittle on
kibbled diets, and it can take three generations of raw feeding to
restore their “wild” strength. Even then, bones can break teeth,
nothing comes without a price. Dogs also choke to death on kibbles,
greenies and rawhides. If you prefer to feed ground raw food –
despite those who feel raw, whole carcasses are the only proper way
to feed – you will remove that risk, and yet the teeth will become
stronger and the tooth cleaning power of the diet is the same as
with the whole bones. You do lose jaw exercise, however. Softer
bones – poultry, neck bones – may also be safer for dogs that
are new to the raw diet. If your dog is a gulper, hold onto the
other end of the bone so he doesn’t try to swallow it whole.
(Removing competition from other dogs may go a long way to reduce
these tendencies.)
So that is why I feed my dogs raw. It costs about
the same as feeding a top quality kibble, but feeding dogs well is
an expensive proposition, and few people reading this are buying
their dog’s food at the supermarket. It is messier than feeding
dry food, but cleaning up after dogs on a kibbled diet is messier.
One downside I have experienced a couple of times is dreaming that I
too was eating raw, and waking up having been downing a raw
hamburger or chewing on a raw chicken wing, can leave a less than
pleasant taste in your mouth!
Whatever you feed your dog you should feel good
about it, and your dog should be healthy and a good weight. That is
success; however, you go about it. Diets should be tailored to the
needs of the individual dog, and there will be considerable
variation, something the pet food industry is just beginning to wake
up to. No diet can protect your dog against every illness that may
come his way, and some dogs could live exclusively on shoe leather
and probably have long and disease free lives. We do the best we can
with current knowledge. The more we can learn though, the better we
will be able to feed our dogs.
Here are some books where you will find more
information (and divergent ideas) about feeding raw diets. It is by
no means a complete list, just a place to start.
"Give Your Dog a Bone"; "Grow Your
Pup With Bones" and "The BARF Diet"
by Dr. Ian Billinghurst
"The Ultimate Diet: Natural Nutrition for
Dogs and Cats."
by Kymythy Schultze
“Raw Dog Food: Make It Easy For You And Your
Dog.”
By Carina Beth MacDonald
"Raw Meaty Bones" and “Work Wonders. Feed Your Dog Raw
Meaty Bones.”
By Tom Lonsdale
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