Weddingbee boards

I feed raw prey-model. 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, 5% other secreting organs.

Better food does make a difference. Dogs bodies cannot adequately digest plant/grain matter, it must be pureed and/or cooked for them to digest it, and even then, the nutrients have lower bioavailability than nutrients from animal matter. It's also harder on the animal's system to digest foods it is not naturally intended to digest.

Also, with cheap fillers, your dog will eat more. So it may seem cheaper if you compare cups or pounds; but in the amount eaten and the health of your pet, better food is worth it.

Raw-feeding:

Meat is, you got it: meat. Chicken, turkey, pork, beef, goat, lamb, ostrich, duck, salmon, venison, rabbit, pheasant, quail, kangaroo, whatever you can find. The more variety you can [slowly!] work into their diet, the better; but even if you can only get your hands on a few proteins, it's still a good diet. I try to feed at least 50% red meat; red meat being 'mammal meat', so pork, even though it's called "the other white meat", is actually red meat.

Bones are a little trickier than meat. We've all heard "don't feed the dog chicken bones!", but this actually requires more explanation. It should be "don't feed the dog cooked bones, be it chicken or beef". Raw bones (yep, even chicken bones) are soft and digestible. Cooked bones (yep, even beef bones) become brittle and can splinter into shards. That smoked ham bone at the petstore is actually more dangerous for your dog to eat than raw chicken bones. The main bones my dogs eat are chicken bones, along with a few pork and lamb bones. Note: weight-bearing bones of large herbivores are too hard for dogs, so bones like a cow femur are no-no's.

Bones are also "nature's toothbrush". Dental care is just as important for dogs as it is for people. 80% of dogs over the age of 3 have periodontal disease; which not only is a problem of unattractive teeth, it affects the internal organs of the animal.

Liver is liver. Beef liver, pork liver, chicken liver, etc. That was an easy one!

Secreting organs are *drumroll* organ which secrete. Examples: kidney, spleen, pancreas, thymus, brain. The non-secreting organs, such as heart and gizzards, are fed in the "meat" portion of the dog's diet.

A raw prey model diet does not require any supplements, it supplies all the nutrients required by dogs. I do, however, give my dogs fish oil for Omega-3s to make up for the fact they do not get organic grass-fed beef or much wild game meat.

The amount to feed is based on your body's ideal adult body weight. The starting point is about 2%-3% of the dog's body weight, then adjust as necessary. (It's on a dog-by-dog basis depending on the dog's metabolism and activity level. One of my dogs eats nearly twice the recommended starting point!) I use a cheap kitchen scale to portion out my dogs' food.

Helpful resources/sites:

• http://www.dogster.com/forums/Raw_Food_Diet
• http://www.rawfeddogs.net/
• http://www.rawfed.com/myths/
• http://www.rawlearning.com/
• Work Wonders: Feed Your Dog Raw Meaty Bones by Tom Lonsdale DVM
  

KIBBLE:

My "rules" for kibble:

1. High meat content.

   This is first and foremost. Dogs are carnivores, carnivores eat meat.

   Preferably at least 2-3 out of the top 5 ingredients be meat or meat meal (first ingredient must be!). Don't confuse "meal" with "byproducts". Meal is simply the meat with the water weight removed. So for example, on the ingredient list, "chicken meal" is actually more quantity of chicken than "chicken".

   A dog should never be on a vegan diet. And the only time a vegetarian diet should be considered is if the dog has severe allergies and all normal and exotic protein options have been exhausted. Most kibbles are chicken, lamb, duck, or beef; but you can find exotic proteins like pheasant and kangaroo as well. Also worthy of mention is that there is a different between cooked and raw proteins, if your dog has allergies to a cooked/processed meat, it may not have a reaction to the same protein as raw meat.

2. Higher quality grains, such as barley, brown rice, and oatmeal. No wheat or corn.
   Or an alternative starch/carbohydrate such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, or tapioca.

   Dogs have absolutely no need for carbs and starches. The reason these things are included in dog kibble is because a starch is required to have "kibble", it holds the pieces of food together, else it would be "crumbles".

3. No byproducts.

   While there is nothing inherently wrong with dogs eating the things included in "by products" (organs, bones, feet, etc), the problem is that the term "byproducts" is a catch-all. You have no idea exactly what the byproducts are.

4. Minimal fillers.

   Fillers are things like brewers rice, beet pulp, etc.; used to bulk up the food but add no benefit to either the dog's health or the manufacturing process.

5. No carcinogenic preservatives (BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin). 
6. No artificial colorings such as the Red, Blue, and Yellow dyes. 

   Your dog doesn't care what color the food is, dyes are only added to make it look pleasing to the human buying it. And dyes have been linked to hyperactivity and health problems.

7. No added sugars (sugar, corn syrup). 

   Dogs don't need these. These are only included to make crappy food more palatable to the dog.

8. No mystery meats (meats identified only as "meat" or "poultry".)

   Your dogs' food should always tell you exactly what type of meat you are feeding.

Helpful sites:

• http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/
• http://www.dogfoodproject.com/

We feed our dogs Limited Diet Duck and Sweet Potato and yes it is worth every penny.

We used to try other less expensive options such as Iams and our dogs ended up developing skin allergies and other issues. Since the switch all the previous issues have cleared up.

My dogs were on Nutro Max- around $45 a bag. It was one of the higher priced dog foods and my first puppy who was found rescued with her mother had been weaned onto this food. I never had any problems and she was generally healthy. Fast forward and now we have out second puppy, a severe puppy mill rescue. We find out she has a lot of allergies including wheat so I start researching different dog food and find that out of a 1-5 the dog food I was currenty feed was a 5 in price but a 2 in nutrion. After a lot of research we settles on Blue Buffalo Wilderness. My older dog's full second coats (she's a bc) finally came in and I get so many compliments on how beautiful her coat is. She was always a picky eater and I was told that was her bread but she loves food now, and love is an understatement lol. My younger pup is doing amazingly well. She is so healthy and is just a beautiful happy dog and we do not have to deal with any of the soft stools or clean up like we regularly had.

Here are some sites:

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog-food-index-a.html

http://www.petfoodratings.net/dogtable.html

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=main

I was just looking for the links because I sent them to my father and this was his response word for word in his email, roxy is my older dog:

"Roxy looks unbelievable you would not think it was the same dog from several months ago"

"for those of you that do feed raw what do you give them?  do you just buy red meat like you would for yourself out of the meat department of the grocery?how much does it usually cost for you to feed completely raw? of course that will be based on dog size, weight etc.."

Any type of meat is fine, as long as it's not "enhanced", i.e. has a solution/brine added. Some dogs can handle it, some get the runs with the extra salt.

I aim to feed at least 50% red meat. In raw-feeding terms, "red meat" = "mammal meat". So meats like pork and rabbit, while they don't look "red", they are considered "red meat"; as well as the standard ones we think of as "red meat": beef, bison, lamb, goat, deer.

I buy meat at the grocery store when it goes on sale cheap, like 39c/pound chicken quarters. Chicken is about 50% of my dogs' diet because it's cheap and has appropriate bones for them (I have small dogs; they can handle poultry bones, rabbit bones, and smaller bones from lamb/pig/goat like rib bones and neck bones).

I also get meat from a raw-feeding distributor sometimes.

Raw-feeding co-ops - http://www.dogaware.com/diet/rawgroups.html

Some people make deals with their grocery store meat manager to get meat past the sell-by date for free or cheap. My 3 small dogs combined only eat about 7 pounds of meat a week, so I've never pursued this route, I would get way more than I could use.

Ethnic markets are great for finding organs and random parts. I find kidney, sweetbreads, chicken feet, uterus, brain, whole uncleaned fish, and other interesting things along those lines at the Asian and Hispanic markets.

My major source of "dog food meat" is FREE MEAT! We have a bulletin board at work, I post on there from time to time that I will take people's freezer-burned or old meat off their hands. My dogs have their own chest freezer. Last week, the freezer was about 1/4 full, I picked up enough free meat that it was overflowing and I had mark some packages "dog" and put it in the "human food freezer". Old/freezerburned meat is perfectly safe and nutritious, it's just that we humans don't like the texture or the freezer-smell it picks up.

Our dog eats dry Royal Canin duck and potato and it is the first food that hasn't given him digestive problems. This food is for sensitive tummies and allergies. He had colitis and other food allergy problems with other foods, but this one he has done very well with over the last year. So we will stick with this one as long as he continues to do well!