Moselle

Chihuahua - lived to 18yo; home cooked meals and bits from my plate; Was vaccinated for the 1st 4 years of her life then no more; used to have fits until she was 5 and then had no more fits for the last 13 years of her life, I attribute that to my stopping her yearly boosters! Border collie - 17 yo. Raw diet, mostly consisting of chicken and lamb shanks. Vaccinated for the first two years of his life and then no more jabs. Boxer - 16 years - Puppy shots and then a booster 12 mths later. Fed a puppy formula for 2 years along with raw chicken products.

I honestly don't doubt that people who choose to feed their pet/s a commercial diet love their pets and care for them and spend time training them, etc etc. I don't mean to come across as harsh although it certainly sounds that way. I suppose it isn't always a case of convenience after all but a case of exercising a vast amount of trust towards the pet food industry, which to me leaves a lot to be desired, but to each their own.

Really? How would you explain the almost total elimination of rickets in pups since the advent of wide scale feeding of commerically prepared foods and the increasing longevity in many breeds? I do believe than an appopriately researched raw diet is an excellent one for most dogs but I don't for a minute believe unsuitable half @arsed diets are confined to the realm of commercial dog food producers. I've heard of and read many home cooked diets that curl my hair in terms of their nutritional imbalances. The "diet totally manufactured with no fresh ingredients" argument neglects to consider that for many dogs, commercially prepared foods are only a part of their diets. Dogs in the wild die often and die young. It would be rare that all pups in a litter survive to maturity. That analogy is a very tired one and lacks legs when you consider that many dog breeds would not survive in the wild, period. I suppose a commercial diet had to have something going for it otherwise it would have been a dismal failure. Rickets? well....that was an easy one to resolve....just throw a little calcium to help things along. It goes without saying that a BARF diet has to be researched to ensure that adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals are included although it does not necessarily have to be an exact science on an every day basis. Raw meat on its own is hardly sufficient and anyone with an ounce of common sense should be able to understand this but then again.....lol PF, given that the pet food industry is not regulated by any organisation, how can anyone be sure that it really is as nutritious as they claim? and besides which, even the nutrients added are of an inferior quality, e.g. iron is often added to pet food in the form of RUST, now that is grand? lol

To those that say that their dog did not thrive on a BARF diet....I am left to wonder what would have happened before the advent of commercial dog food? or better still, what would have happened to such dogs if they happened to be born in the wild? Having said this, I am not saying that people should have to feed their dog a BARF diet but I still am of the opinion that a commercial diet is chosen due to convenience. A home cooked meal or a raw diet would have to beat a commercial diet. How would fellow human beings feel if they were made to eat a diet that was totally manufactured with no fresh ingredients whatsoever?

Perhaps your friend's dog has health issues that are not related to diet. Not all health problems are due to diet.

The majority of people don't have wads of cash to throw around; I was more concerned with people that can only afford the very bare mininal of vet. care; having said that, there are people that are loaded with money and don't want to spend it. Have you figured what it is that one of your guys is actually allergic to? is it contact allergy or is it related to food?

What a despicable waste of oxygen he is. He deserves to be marinated himself....thrown into quicksand with cement boots!

I think if you read orbit other post's you would be well aware that the dog has had all the care under world given & vet treatment BUT there comes a time where you can pay $1000 each year with no result from vet /holistic etc etc. People then go down the path of what best maintains that animal condition at it's worst time. We see people who bring there dogs here who have spent a fortune on there dogs care with no end result except simply being ask to put there hands in there pocket & spend more & more. I too am not a believer of "easy option " of pills but also appreciate for some dogs it is a must & like the food debate the same applies . If these people choice to neglect the meds that brought/bring comfort to there animals after many avenues had failed then they would be accused of not given the right care. If the answer was so simple there would't be a need for pills & hands in the pocket Thank you showdog Moselle, I take extreme offence to you inferring that by giving my dog cortisone for relief, I am taking a short cut. Orbit was itchy from the day he came home to me at 10wks of age. I tried diet changes, supplements, oils, shampoos, homeopathics, herbs, lotions, detox's etc. I consulted with Dermatologists to eliminate the possibility of scabies, FAD, fungal and bacterial infections. I have done thyroid testing and skin biopsies. I had two separate allergy blood tests done, because intra dermal tests were not possible for us because of the withholding period required. I have a list of everything in the environment he is allergic to. I have done desensitising injections. I feed him raw and struggle at times to find novel protein sources so I can repeat food elimination diets with him. He cannot have contact with grass or plants without becoming extremely itchy hours later. I have to put towels down on the back lawn for him to lay on when he eats his bones. He is still itchy. And with most atopic dogs, he will get worse as he gets older. He is itchy all the time. And on top of being chronically itchy, he then has the 'bad itchies' after laying on grass, carpet, brushing past plants etc. Perhaps you'd like to spend some time with a dog as allergic as mine and tell me how you'd cope? After a roll in the grass, that night, he doesn't sleep. He's too itchy to sleep. If you pat him or touch him, his skin quivers because it's so itchy. If he makes it to sleep, he wakes up as soon as he moves, because the motion of his skin moving makes him itchy. He chews himself till he bleeds. So yes, I give him cortisone because it takes away his misery. I also give him cyclosporin, at $550 for a 100ml, which lasts a dog his size about 2 months. So please, don't tell me I'm taking a short cut because I have spent the last 3 years living and breathing atopy and spending a good part of every single day, doing what I can to relieve his itching as best I can, to try and keep his medication rates down. So sorry for jumping to conclusions; I was just basing my opinion on posts written in other forums where it was made very clear that the itchy dog was taken to the vet and placed on cortisone right from the word go without trying to find the underlying reasons for the incessant scratching and even some vets themselves are guilty of not advising people of the available tests that can, oftentimes, be of great help. Once again...sorry. May I ask what breed Orbit is?

+1 Orbit has only ever had his puppy vaccines and minimal flea treatments etc and is on a raw diet. Yet he's still very allergic. Yes, he gets cortisone and other immune drugs, but only because they are the only thing that bring him relief. To say this is an absolute 'no no'?! How can you say this about a drug which provides comfort and quality of life for an animal? The RAW vs Kibble will always be an ongoing argument, but I think the subject is like religion - do your own research and make your own decision, but don't preach to other people. Not all dogs will do well on raw. Those who improved on raw were not 'cured' of their allergy, but merely relieved of their symptoms when the culprit allergen was no longer being fed in the dry food, eg a grain, storage mites etc. I know of one particular dog who was fed a raw diet all her life, only puppy vacc'd, never given oral treatments/chemicals/drugs, yet died at 2yo from cancer. My own family Golden Retriever was fed supermarket dry most of her life, had cortisone for flea allergy dermatitis here and there, vaccinated at times yet lived till till she was 16yo and was only pts because of joint disease. Dogs are all different - like people. Their digestive systems function the same but are not all the same, as with their bodies. If one dog thrives being fed a raw diet, then that's great, but I don't think it's fair to tell people something what they're doing is 'not the best' for their dog. x2 I've done it all with an allergy prone dog and really you have to do what's best for your individual dog, what you can afford financially and what you have the time for. Have you tried to get to the underlying problem? did you actually find out what was causing the allergies in the first place? I must say that I am often disturbed when people say that they can only afford minimal financial care for a dog and don't have the time that a dog requires. In that case, maybe goldfish would be a cheaper option. I do appreciate it that not everyone is made of money but if people cannot afford even minimal veterinary care then I think they should not consider owning a dog/cat/horse....

Can you be 100% certain that your wheaten passed away at 6 years of age because he was fed a raw diet? Perhaps if he had been fed a commercial diet he could have passed away sooner than he did....he may very well have had kidney issues from the time he was born.

IMO cortisone is a NO NO. Putting a dog on cortisone may relieve the dog of itchy skin but it is only a short cut as it relieves the dog of its itching whilst it is on this drug but will not resolve the underlying reason why it is scratching and will introduce far more serious health problems and given that dogs with itchy skin need to be on cortisone for a long period of time you can be assured that side effects will be imminent. The long-term side effects of Prednisone use are not the symptoms you've been seeing, they are: kidney damage, GI disturbance, diarrhea, vomiting, weight gain, GI ulceration, pancreatitis, lipidemia, elevated liver enzymes, diabetes mellitus, muscle wasting, and possible behavioral changes and Cushings disease. I would sooner play the eradication game and try to get to the underlying problem, the reason why a dog is scratching incessantly. Not all skin issues are due to overvaccinations or drugs. They could be due to hormonal disorders, bacteria, yeast, underactive thyroid, allergies brought on by a myriad of causes. Why take a short cut when one's best bet is to carry out skin and blood tests for allergies or bacteria or yeast or a biobsy for cellular changes to the skin amongst other things?

I had exactly the same problem in being able to store the raw meat (bulk) as a family fridge oftentimes cannot accommodate it. I resolved the problem by buying a 2nd hand fridge for $120 and bingo....now I have all the space in the world and it was not such a big expenditure.

It is very true that annual vaccinations, cortisone based drugs, etc are a definite NO NO. I wonder who is responsible for writing an article stipulating that a dog's digestive system can accommodate whatever they are being fed? lol. I am also left wondering if they have any monetary incentive in saying this? perhaps a link to the pet food industry, lol. I am compelled to ask if you and other posters have actually read what is being used in pet food and the noxious ingredients such as preservatives and additives that are thrown in?

The article below speaks volumes and basically goes to say that the Pet Food Industry is a law unto themselves, they are a free agent, free to sell whatever they see fit, fit enough to make them billions of dollars much to the dismay of unsuspecting pet lovers. Part 2: You are already familiar with the USDA and the FDA. They regulate the industries that produce food and drugs for us humans. You most likely think they do the same for the pet food industry. Nothing could be further from the truth. The USDA and the FDA do not govern pet food. Currently the government does not even have a set program to test commercial foods. Up until 1974 the National Research Council (NRC) set the nutritional standards. The pet food industry itself then formed the American Association of Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). They are not part of the federal government nor are its members appointed by them. What does AAFCO do? Their main responsibility is to regulate label text and product names. They have no enforcement authority. They are a private organization and the pet food companies do not have to comply with their standards. Each of the fifty states can set their own manufacturing guidelines and some states do not even have guidelines for the foods made there such as Florida and Alaska. Why was AAFCO formed? The industry found the NRC's regulations too restrictive and found a way to create it's own loop holes for claiming nutritional adequacy. Instead of actual feeding trials, chemical nutritional analysis would be conducted to provide the nutritional requirements. Let me restate that in English for you. AAFCO says whether a food is "complete and balanced" chemically. AAFCO does not say whether the food is palatable, digestible, or bioavailable. AAFCO provides minimum standards, not optimums. And don't forget AAFCO is run by the pet food industry. Talk about the fox in the hen house. AAFCO does not say anything about biologic value of the food. Nothing about how amino acids, vitamins, minerals and other components are digested or even if they are absorbed at all. Further more, AAFCO posses no restrictions or limits on the use of certain types of animals or the quality of the products used in making meat meals, tankage or digest. AAFCO doesn't care where it comes from at all! In English again please! AAFCO says a protein is a protein is a protein. Where it came from they don't care. By-products come from all the left over parts. One day it is chicken feet and feathers. The next day it is tumors, euthanized or sick animals. The next it is old outdated meat still in the plastic wrap from the grocery store. The next it could be heads, hormone implants and road kill. It would be impossible to figure out what percentage each of those things represents in the mix because it changes from day to day. But regardless they are all proteins. The guaranteed analyses you see on the pet food labels list the minimum and maximum amounts of protein, fat, moisture and fiber. This has absolutely nothing to do with the animals actual ability to digest them or absorb them or what effects that ultimately has on the animal. You could mix together some motor oil, vitamins, minerals, feathers and don't forget to throw in a bit of leather and you will meet the requirements for fat, protein and fiber. Is that plain enough English for you? AAFCO says that labels have to list what is in the product by weight. They don't say when in that process they have to do the weighing. Companies weigh the meat raw before they make it into a kibble. "Meals" are rendered products from mammal tissues. It is what remains after fats are drawn off and dried. The processing of meals reduces the protein quality. Then the meal is cooked again to make the dog food itself. When the meat is made into a meal it is about five times lighter than raw which would make it the fourth or fifth ingredient on the label. Knowledgeable guardians want to see meat listed as the top ingredient. So, the components of the grains are broken up and listed separately. You have ground rice, rice gluten, rice flour, and rice bran all listed instead of "rice". Therefore you can now list the protein first and all the rices afterwards. Slick! Or should I say bate and switch! We have already mentioned the use of second quality grains not fit for human consumption and the invention of the extrusion process in the short history of the dog food industry. The very nature of second quality grains means that they must be properly prepared in order for them not to be harmful to eat. Harmful bacteria must be killed or the animal consuming the food could get sick. Cooking reduces the potency of ALL nutrients and destroys some too. Any temperature over 130 degrees causes all essential fats, fatty acids vitamins A, D, E, K and several minerals to become useless. Cooked in an extruder and forced through a die under high pressure of 600 to 700 psi and at temperatures of over 300 - 400 degrees Fahrenheit, you loose fifty to eighty percent of vitamins and nutrients. The high heat also creates heterocyclic amines and acrylamides, both are carcinogenic. Heterocyclic amines were studied and found to be one of the most potent substances to cause DNA mutations ever tested! In 2003 Lawrence Livermore National Lab found 13 out of 14 dry dog foods tested positive. Then added are another twenty to twenty-five synthesized pure compounds versus naturally occurring vitamins. And don't forget to spray on nutrients after the extrusion. These palatability enhancers called a digest which is a result of a chemical or enzymatic reaction of animal tissue from meat, poultry or fish, therefore it is a "natural" flavor sprayed on to get the dog to eat the food. The second quality grains are non human edible, literally the chaff. These are the parts that are separated, the fines etc. These grains also have had a much longer storage times than those used for humans. The longer storage times actually lower the cost of the grains. What happens during storage is that insects, molds and storage mites get into the grains. Oh we're not done yet on what is going on with those grains. They have been sitting around therefore their exposure to mold spores in the air increases. Mold spores can also land on the kibble we expose to air at home after we have opened the bag.

Well, I am not a fan of commercial dog food and experience has taught me that RAW or BARF is best by far. I have copied and pasted a post from another forum; it is quite lengthy but very educational, at least I seem to think so, lol. It all makes perfect sense to me. What is Your Dog Eating? Dog food. Yikes! Dog food. What an all encompassing ever-changing subject. Everyday I learn something new. I see something changes and what I knew to work before no longer does. I find things that were true decades ago that became obsolete, now show that there was a small kernel of truth in them. Research reveals startling pieces of the puzzle of nutrition, key information never known before that changes everything. New discoveries are made every single day and need to be incorporated into our feeding plans. How do we sort through all of this and how do we make the decisions? And so I ask, what is your dog eating? Because for us that is the most basic and most important question to ask. What is your dog eating? If any judgements are to be made about what your dog is eating those decisions are to be made by you and your vet and most importantly your dog (the way your dog chooses does not mean which food he snarfs down with gusto, it means the food that helps your dog be as healthy as he or she can be.). My only function is to be the catalyst for your education, for your research, for your search and for your discovery of what works well for feeding your dog. I am not a vet, nor do I play one on TV. I am not a consultant, or a practitioner of any size shape or form. I am just a middle-aged woman with a biology degree who sells dog food. It is as simple as that. I don't pretend to know everything about canine and feline nutrition. That field of research is evolving and growing every single minute. I do my best to learn about it all. And then I try to carry as many lines of dog food that offer good nutritional results for as many animals as possible. There is no one perfect dog food for every dog. There is not even one perfect dog food for the lifetime of a single dog. Let's start by looking at the Pet Food Industry. The first commercially produced dog food was introduced in 1860. Before that dogs were never fed a food that was bought in a store. They ate what ever they could catch and scrounge for and whatever their guardians would give them. Dogs thrived on being omnivores and on either living with or staying near humans for over ten thousand years. In the 1920's and 1930's the grain industry was selling large amounts of their left over, second quality, not fit for human consumption grains to the manufacturer's of dog food. This was a boon to both the grain companies and the dog food manufacturers. It was basically a very cheap source to base the product on and it was a way to recycle what would have gone to waste. The year was 1957 and the Purina Company developed the extrusion process. This was the innovation that turned the tide. The ability to mass produce cheap food and sanitize it from bacterial contamination was a revolution. Soon the industry grew by leaps and bounds. Today the Pet Food Industry is a multi billion dollar a year economic engine. This industry invests in large ad campaigns using TV, radio, magazines, newspaper and all print media in order to gather larger market share and make more profit. The different companies have focus groups, marketing experts and advertising agencies working for them to sell more food every year and of course to make more profit and increase their bottom line. According to the Animal Health Institute's Market Sales Report, October 29, 2004, animal health product sales in the United States for 2003 totaled $4.7 billion - an increase of 5.7 percent compared to 2002. This increase can be attributed to the growing dollars pet guardians are spending on improving the quality of life for their companion animal. It is also due to the concerted efforts by animal health manufacturers, who are allocating more funds to marketing and promotional activities. Given those facts, the question that screams out at us is; is it possible to produce a fresh, balanced diet using the best cuts of meat and highest quality vegetables and do it all for under $25 a bag? The answer is unfortunately, a big resounding NO! The cheaper the product is to make the higher the profit potential becomes. Now here is where it gets interesting. It costs the manufacturer 19 cents per pound in food ingredients to make the dog food. Onto that you must add another 10 cents a pound to cover the bag, processing, etc. for a total cost to the manufacturer of 29 cents per pound. The manufacturer needs to make a profit and his margin is 45 %. He sells it to the distributor for 53 cents per pound, plus the cost of freight that is another 6 cents per pound. The distributor needs to make his profit. His margin is 22 %. The retailer pays 75 cents per pound for the food and now he needs to make a profit too and he gets 25%. This means that the food it cost the manufacturer to make at 29 cents a pound is costing you a whopping $1.00 to buy. This is for a product made with the cheapest possible ingredients, 'pet grade' or second quality grade ingredients. To make this easy for you, the bag of food you pay $20.00 for at the store only cost $5.78 total. What about the better quality brand of pet food that uses human quality grade chicken? That costs twice as much. The manufacturer pays 61 cents per pound and you pay $1.99 per pound. Or that same bag of food at the store that you buy for $39.99, it cost the manufacturer $12.14. You do the math. The food company makes a bigger profit on the cheaper food so of course the cheaper food is more widely advertised and sold, because more consumers are aware of the product and it saves them money to buy it. Or does it? How much more of the cheap product must you feed to get the same nutritional value as a better food? Quite a bit more actually. And how many extra vet visits will you make per year to treat symptoms caused by bad food? On average three to eight. Is that food still less expensive now? What about what most vets are taught in school and who sponsors nutritional research. The dog food companies fund most research and they also sponsor the nutrition courses taught in vet schools. Vets also learn that their practice can have a very large profit center by selling prescription diets from those very same companies. Most of these foods are 100% nutritionally complete. Ensure™ is 100% nutritionally complete. Does that mean we should wean our children off of breast milk onto Ensure™ and then feed them that until the day that they die? And then feed all ensuing generations Ensure™ because it is nutritionally complete? No of course not. When we look at it that way we see how foolish it is. The same applies to that bag of pet grade, grocery store bought dog food. That is the dog food equivalent to Ensure™. What do you think would happen if we raised 10 generations of human children on Ensure™? And only added in treats like candy, cookies, chips and other junk food. Would those children grow up healthy? No of course not. What we would have is compromised health, shortened life spans, and a myriad of diseases including organ failures, diabetes, tumors, cancers and obesity. This is not normal or natural in any way shape or form. We would be treating symptoms as they express and we would not be treating the underlying causes. This would suppress symptoms and then other ones would emerge to take their place. It is not uncommon to make five to eight vet visits a year under these circumstances. Sometimes even more trips to the vet than that. I have personally corroborated these results with a number of vets both traditional and holistic. Most recently by Ron Schultz, DVM Chairman of Pathobiology, University Madison Wisconsin. Typically an annual vet visit is ideal for your companion. More than that should ring alarm bells. These days your average pet guardian should be hearing five alarm fire bells ringing constantly. This is not normal. Let's make this simple: Excellent Nutrition = Good Health Average Nutrition = Compromised Health Bad Nutrition = Disease & Death Nutrition is not the only component of health. The other components are important too. Genetics and environment comprise the other top factors in health for our animals. Genetics and breeding is a large field and it too has its share of diverse opinions. I recommend looking for "hybrid vigor". The term hybrid vigor itself can be considered controversial. What I mean by it is what occurs throughout all species in the animal and plant kingdom. Unrelated animals of the same species are mated. The theory is the offspring in the first generation will be more healthy, fertile, and (in animals) mentally stable than either parent. Out-crossing is a related term. Out crossing in pure-bred dogs is the breeding of unrelated dogs. On a pedigree no names will be repeated within the first 5 generations. Out-crossing is the means to get the greatest genetic diversity. Out-crossing does not guarantee that the animals won't develop genetic disorders or have "hybrid vigor". It can reduce the numbers of affected offspring, if neither lines are carriers of a recessive gene that can cause a genetic disease. Simple lack of a common ancestor does not ensure that neither dog carries genetic disease. Hybrid Vigor only applies to the animals that are the direct offspring of the crossing of the unrelated strains. So did all of that confuse you? Genetically speaking look for the best possible puppy you can to help your dog have a healthy life not effected by diseases that can be transferred from the parents. If you are not getting a puppy from a quality breeder what then? You open your home and your heart to an unknown rescue dog and find the dog of your dreams. The bottom line in all of this is even with the best planning of breeding you never know exactly for sure that your dog will be one hundred percent free of any genetic problems. The same is true for a dog you rescue that you have no health history available. Those are the facts that our dogs come to us with and that we can't change. The same way we can't change who our parents are but don't we wish there wasn't a history of heart problems or cancer in our genetic/family background! The other big component of health is the environment. This is something we do have some control over. Not complete control like we do over the food we feed, but we can make some informed choices. We can choose not to spray our lawns with harsh chemicals. We can choose to only allow our dogs to romp in areas where those chemicals are not used. We can not use other harsh chemicals to clean our homes. We can not install building materials that outgas harmful residues and byproducts. We can provide a living environment as free from as much harmful and should I even say lethal products as we possible can. I am not saying we all have to become naturalists and subscribe to Mother Earth News. But I am saying be wise on how your immediate surroundings and living environment is put together. I will give you an example from my own life. I live on almost two acres of land. It is almost all grass. My neighbors hate me. They have complained to our homeowner's association about me. Why? I absolutely refuse to put any chemicals on my lawn of any kind to kill weeds or fertilize the grass. By the time the beginning of summer rolls around, I have the most beautiful sea of yellow undulating in the summer breezes you ever saw. I have the very best dandelions growing everywhere. The tender leaves make a wonderful salad and have great health effects in terms of detoxing a liver and kidneys but I digress. Everyone around me hates it. They all have lawn services. The grass is perfect and green and has terrible stuff spread all over it multiple times per year. Lucky for me I live on a bit of a hill and my land is elevated from all my surrounding neighbors. Before my home was here it was land that had been abandoned from farming for many, many years. So any farm chemicals had long ago leached out and anything my neighbors spread normally flows away from my higher elevation. My dogs roam freely and I don't have any fears that they are getting toxic chemical in large proportion from my yard. The dogs that used to live on either side of me lived their entire lives on beautiful green lawns. Their guardians are obsessive about having a perfect green and manicured lawn. By the time both of these dogs were three they were experiencing serious health problems. They both died at an age that was younger than the average for their breed. One of them at not even 8 years old for a breed that averages 14 -16 years old. The other at 10. One of these dogs started getting reoccurring fatty cell tumors. It didn't matter how often you would aspirate they came back. Finally they stopped aspirating. When the poor boy passed away he had multiple tumors all over his body many the size of grapefruits and others as large as16-inch softballs. The traditional vet said all of the lawn chemicals were a contributing factor to the tumors. Ya think????? The American Veterinary Association now says lawn chemicals can cause cancer and cites a study using Westies and bladder cancer occurrence as it's source. Other areas where you can improve the environment for your dog are number one stop smoking! Second hand smoke effects your dogs as much as your spouses and children. Not to mention what it does to you. Stay away from busy roads and vehicle exhausts. This includes riding in the back of an open pick up truck. Keep the dogs in on smoggy days. Put any toxic chemicals, cleaners, solvents and paint under lock and key in an area where your dog never goes. Brush and bath your pet regularly to keep contaminates off his fur and pads. Supply your animals with clean water. Don't just presume your tap water is safe and don't presume bottled water is safe either. Check into it, make sure and seriously consider investing in a reverse osmosis filter for not just your dogs and cats but you and your family. Everyone will benefit. Food is the one component of the health of our dogs that we do have a very large amount of control over. Genetics we have very little, environmental we have some control around our homes, but not in the park down the street etc. Food though is the one place we can make a major difference. Do what you can about supplying a healthy environment, but concentrate on feeding your dog the best possible food. Your return on investment so to speak will pay very large dividends in the health of your companion for many years. Let's get a little more in depth about how dog food is made and what is put into it. Let's learn what the ingredients really mean and how we can decipher the ingredients listed on the label. Let us take a look at whom if anyone regulates the pet food industry.

I agree with this post. A friend of mine has a couple of GH and they were fed copious amounts of dry food and never managed to put on any weight. Their diet was changed to a raw diet which consists of raw (pet) chicken mince, chicken necks & chicken frames and they have since put on the weight and how. Most dry foods tend to go straight through some dogs due to its high grain content and given that we are talking 'dogs' and not cows, I guess I know which diet is most suitable, lol.

BINGO! That is exactly what my thoughts are. So much blabber and little action. Just get on with the business of doing something constructive, they have the power to end the suffering esp if they have the proof to substantiate their allegations so what the heck? DO IT !

Good luck with your new addition, it is sad that boxers are predisposed to cancer. They are such a beautiful and loving breed, the one breed with a sense of humour.

What a tragic incident; That is why it pays to have eyes at the back of one's head, never ever take anything for granted! Animals are just like children, you can never be too careful. Just curious as to how old your son is?

So, let us make a point of doing just that, lol.

NO NO NO ;)

Good for you for taking down "signages" from pet shops advertising their stock or wanting to take in more stock, shame on them! As far as health issues that awaits them.....well, even purebred dogs bred by ethical breeders are prone to health issues and I should know as I have purchased pups from "health checked" parentage that still came down with health issues namely a cavalier king charles from breeding stock that was tested for mitral valve disease! The pup died of heart failure when it was 7 months old, so much for that, hey?

Good advice has already been given; I just want to wish the best of luck and hope that you get to keep all 3 dogs.

It is sad that you are withdrawing your offer to help; if only there were more people like yourself. Don't concern yourself with what is being assumed; you know your intentions were genuine in trying to help and not for financial gains so stick with it. You have to ask yourself what is more important....the animal whose life may be at stakes or the unfounded suspicions of some people. I know which I would pick.

Is that right?