Staranais

I don't use a juicer or blender. Too much work & I don't think it's necessary. I just freeze (and thaw) veges before feeding them, or cook them - thawing and cooking both break down plant cells walls quite sufficiently. I also give the occasional bit of fruit whole and raw. Basically, if it doesn't come out the other end looking the same as it went in, then the dog's digested it, even if it wasn't juiced or pulped.

I am going on what Mech writes,his books are heavy going but I really do subscribe to his writing. Wolves have eaten large animals regularly,small animals less regularly,his books have tables of wolf kills and species eaten. I guess we will agree to disagree on the veggies I eat salad too and it is just water,but I like it with balsamic vinegar so I eat it We'll just have to disagree... but when I graduate, I'm browbeating my clients until I have converted the world to feeding raw with veges. Bwahahahah! (That was an evil laugh) Seriously though, I think Mech's research is good, but I also think that type of research is sometimes misinterpreted by folks who try to adapt it to their dog without having any real idea of the anatomy of prey species (no offence meant to you, Tomas, for all I know you're a farmer who has dissected dozens of sheep). I'm interested though, if you have the book handy, could you tell us what % of prey was large and which small according to Mech's tables? I suspect it would be different for different wolf populations & different ages of wolf, and also different in different years depending on what prey populations were doing, but I'd be interested in hearing what he has to say about it.

and we don't want to do that! Well, actually, sometimes I look at my supermarket bill and am very tempted to feed kibble alone. Just joking! I will admit to thinking that myself,I see some peoples dogs at shows and know what they feed,these dogs are stunning and think IF only I did that,it would be so much easier. But longterm it makes a difference, I have 3 dogs over 8yrs and they still run hard minimum 3 hours everyday! Plus they certainly do not look their age. Yes, I think it does too, especially to teeth! Some dogs still get tartar when they eat meaty bones, but from what I've seen, it's far less common. But it just seems wrong somehow that my girl's weekly food budget is nearly as big as my own...

and we don't want to do that! Well, actually, sometimes I look at my supermarket bill and am very tempted to feed kibble alone. Just joking!

Oh, you've posted again while I was posting. Firstly, as I've already pointed out, a shaken out rumen still contains vegetable matter. It really does. I've shaken one out. If wolves eat rumens, which they do, then they'll get processed green matter too. Secondly, the fact wolves prefer small prey to large prey doesn't mean they don't eat plenty of small prey (Mech himself says that much), and it certainly doesn't mean that they don't need the nutritional value from small prey. I don't seek out salad - but it's still really good for me. Evolution didn't program me to seek out salad since it was readily available, it programmed me to seek out sugar and fat since that was only available in limited quantities while my ancestors were evolving. However, if I only ate fat and sugar, no veges, I'd not have an optimal diet, since my body needs to eat vegetables as well as fat and sugar. Same with wolves. Hunting large animals is more rewarding than small animals so it's not surprising that wolves have more of a drive to hunt larger animals, but if wolves have eaten small animals regularly over evolutionary time, then their bodies would still have adapted to eating those small animals.

I suspect that there are many things that dogs can survive and even thrive on in the short term which are not ideal in the long term. My old dog looked just the same on kibble as he did on raw - does that mean I should have fed him kibble? The truth is that we just don't know what the optimal diet for a dog is, and no one has done the long term studies to show what happens to a dog's health or longevity if we leave out vegetable matter, or kidney, or fish, or whatever, over the course of a dog's lifetime. All we can do is feed our best approximation of what wild wolves would eat, and use the limited science that is available to us. From what I understand, Mech will tell you that wolves eat small prey whole, and will tell you that wolves eat shaken out large animal intestine - thereby consuming a not inconsiderable amount of vegetable matter in their diet. So perhaps dogs don't get any long term benefit from eating plant matter. Perhaps they do get health benefits from it. Perhaps only some dogs benefit from plant matter, or perhaps there is only a benefit to eating plant matter if the dog becomes sick or stressed (sick dogs have been shown to benefit from vitamin C, for example, and there's really no way to get that except from vegetable matter). We have no way of telling which of these is the case. Why not be safe rather than sorry? Afterall, if we just wanted to save time, we'd all feed kibble.

I'd argue with that. :-) First I'd argue with the notion that wolves don't eat vegetable matter. Wolves have been observed to eat unprocessed vegetation and fruit, e.g. in Yellowstone park in seasons where prey was scarce (which is of course a not uncommon scenario in wild populations, where predator and prey cycles ensure hunting is regularly scarce). Wolves also eat vegetable matter in the rumen & intestines of prey species. They eat small prey whole - including the gut contents - which contains processed vegetation and grains. They tend to shake out the guts of large species, but due to the huge surface area of the rumen, there is always a reasonable amount of vegetable content eaten along with the guts (I've opened and cleaned out a rumen, and can assure you that there's no way you could get all that vegetable matter out just by shaking - even a thoroughly shaken out rumen still contains a fair amount of half fermented vegetable matter stuck to the walls). So processed vegetable content is a minor part of the diet of wolves and feral dogs. If you're aiming to replicate a wild wolf's diet, then you need to include some vegetable matter to do so. Secondly, I'd argue with the popular notion that dogs "can't" digest vegetables because they can't digest the cellulose found in cell walls. To start with, it's silly claim - humans can't digest cellulose either, yet we obviously seem to be able to get nutritional value out of vegetables! It's also possible to observe that while some vegetables my dog eats certainly do come out the same shape they went in (eg, carrots spring to mind), some vegetable products just don't reappear at the other end. If they're not breaking down in the dog's guts, then where are they going? And if they are breaking down, how can the dog "not digest" them? Not picking on you Tomas - just think you're wrong.

My goodness, what were you doing in there so long? For one week, I: Go shopping Put chicken backs in freezer Put lamb hearts in freezer Put lamb kidneys in freezer Chop liver into 100g size pieces and put in freezer So 15 minutes perhaps? & on the day, I defrost meat or bone, and possibly make up porridge or open a can of fish or peel a banana, and that's it...

My girl is a confirmed carnivore so far. If it didn't run or fly or swim, then she doesn't want to eat it. We may have made a breakthrough with banana this week though, she consented to nibble on a little of my lunchtime banana today.

Yes, Aidan is right in this. I'm sure you can use a e-collar to teach the dog that the cats aren't appropriate drive objects, but it would be best to get someone to teach you how to use it properly, if you had access to someone who has experience with that type of thing. My last dog was a cat chaser who had killed a cat before I got him (they didn't tell me till they'd handed him over, nice huh?) I did basically the same as Aidan describes with making the house a calm zone where he was initially only allowed to sit on his bed, plus I interrupted/corrected & redirected him the very minute he started to look at the cats in a predatory fashion. It worked really well, probably because we started doing it the minute he came to my house, and he therefore had no experience of success chasing my cats, as far as he knew it simply wasn't an option. Even getting fired up to chase can be reinforcing to a dog in prey drive, they don't need to actually catch the cat for the behaviour to be rewarding. So if your dog has a history of chasing your cats, it will be harder to break him of it IMO, and the longer you let it go on, the harder it will get. Good luck.

You mean working dog instead of a competition dog? Because the working SAR dogs I've trained with are all cued when to get into drive to work as well, either with a verbal cue, or by having a special collar put on, or just seeing their owners getting geared up in their SAR kit. I'm sure most working dogs are similar, in that they are somehow told that it's time to work.

I think I employed someone like that once. I don't necessarily expect a dog trainer or behaviourist to be officially qualified, but if I mention something like "shaping" or "negative punishment" or "prey drive" and see a blank look like I did with that lady, I just know I'm not onto a winner. Another warning sign to me is a trainer or behaviourist that completely slates everyone else's methods. I've had positive trainers do this about things like correction collars ("inhumane and never works"), and more traditional trainers do this about the clicker or food rewards ("ridiculous and never works"). To me, that's a huge warning sign that the trainer only has one solution in their toolbox and tries to make all dogs conform to it.

You've clearly had a bad run. I find very few trainers patronising and I've seen plenty. But why attend classes if you don't want to at least try it once their way. I've been to seminars and thought "no, this method isn't for me". But I do it on the day and then discard. Why? Because I've paid for that trainer to teach me THEIR way. I try it and evaluate it and discard afterwards if I need to. An open mind on the day sometimes reaps rewards. I go to training so my dog can learn to work around other dogs, and so I can learn different ways of teaching things. I don't like to try out every piece of new advice on my own dog. That confuses the dog, and me. I do like to hear new suggestions and see different ways of training, but I only try out the suggestions that I think will fit well with what I'm already doing with my own dog. So I can see where Corvus is coming with that. I do agree the trainer has to fit the job, though. I saw trainers when I still had my last dog who labelled him either "fear aggressive" or "dominant" when he was nothing of the sort - I think it was simply because they had had some success dealing with fearful or pushy dogs and thought they could solve any aggression by treating it the same way. They would probably have been really good trainers at fixing fear aggressive or dominant dogs, since that's where their experience seemed to lie, but they weren't the right trainers to help us. So even a "qualified" trainer might not be qualified for all types of behavioural or training work.

You're much more organised than me! My pup just gets a lamb heart for lunch 7 days a week, a chicken back for breakfast 5 days a week, and the other two raw meals (liver, kidney, veges, porridge, yoghurt, fish) whenever I can be bothered playing dog chef during the week...

Hey, remember when I said this in post 166? ... ;) . I should have just stuck to that! ;) Hell no, playing raw food chef with the DOL folks is far more fun than the study I'm supposed to be doing - bring it on, I say! FTPO, I reckon the diet you've described is probably just fine for an adult dog, but if you want to reduce the RMB a little and replace that with red meat as Yellowgirl suggests, I don't think that would hurt either. It's up to you. Just keep the RMB between about 1/4 and 1/2 of the overall diet. ;)

I'd give it a go if I lived closer to you, and the price was reasonable, it looks good to me. Although I wonder if the canned or dehydrated tripe, while having most the same nutrients as fresh tripe, wouldn't contain the live rumen bacteria after processing? Not sure if that would make any difference to the benefits of it.

Not trying to nit pick in our lovely friendly thread. But remember that RMB aren't all bone. If we take the RMB as being 40% bone and 60% meat (which is pretty typical) then the overall diet is roughly about 73% meat, 10% organ, and 18% bone. I (personally) wouldn't give much less bone than that. ;) Just wondering about the pet mince though, as it's generally just a chicken carcass with almost no meat. I worked it out the opposite way, about 60% bone & 40% meat because of the amount of pet mince. Would that still be okay for the overall diet? Hmmm, even so though, that's still only about 22% of the diet as actual bone. I'd be comfortable feeding that, even though it's a little higher than "true" prey model- adult dogs are superb at regulating their Ca absorption, plus the chicken bone she's using is much lower in Ca and P than beef or lamb bone. I certainly wouldn't want to see her feeding much less than 15% actual bone. So she's currently feeding about 22% of the diet as actual bone (= 45% of the diet as RMB, or 2000g of the 4400g total is RMB). 15% of the diet as actual bone would be 25% of the diet as RMB (= 1100g of the 4400g total). IMO anywhere in between those figures would probably be fine. eta: you're right, we're not keeping it simple! Sorry, oceanaussie. It's easier than we make it look. ;)

The manufacturers possibly don't know how much iodine is in it themselves if they haven't had it analysed, plus it could be different each batch as kelp is a natural product with natural variation. If you're feeding the recommended amounts & feeding the supplements on different days, I really wouldn't worry about it. If you were feeding 10 different daily supplements all containing kelp, maybe it would be time to worry about iodine levels then. But I'm sure what you're doing will be just fine.

Not trying to nit pick in our lovely friendly thread. But remember that RMB aren't all bone. If we take the RMB as being 40% bone and 60% meat (which is pretty typical) then the overall diet is roughly about 73% meat, 10% organ, and 18% bone. I (personally) wouldn't give much less bone than that. ;)

do you think you could do harm by adding too many? Yes, definitely. Too much iodine (from kelp) is not good for dogs, if you go overboard it can induce hypothyroidism. ;) How much kelp would be considered too much?? Like in the teaspoon of that supplement i give kelp is one ingredient amongst others so not sure how much is in it? Same as the muesli has kelp but again it is one ingredient amongst others?? Depends how much iodine is in your kelp, it can vary quite a bit. Most animals need a longterm & very high level iodine overdose to cause any problems, so just stick to somewhere near the recommended dose for your supplement and you should be fine. I put a pinch of pure kelp powder in my dog & cats's food once a week, not sure how much I'd need to give them to cause problems, but that seems to work OK so far. You don't need much iodine but some is essential.

I'm not Seita, but I can give you my answer for what it's worth. I trained my old dog in drive, and am just starting with the new one. If I gave the cue and my dog didn't go into drive? Either I haven't paired the cue solidly enough to the drive game (quite possible in a young dog like mine), or the dog just isn't that enthused about going into drive for some reason. I don't think you can make a dog go into prey drive through compulsion. If the dog doesn't go into drive on the cue then it's more a matter of sorting out where you've gone wrong, and fixing it for the future. Which I would do in the first case with more pairing of the drive cue to the game until the dog really gets what the cue means, or in the second case by building the drive up with frustration until the dog will eagerly go into drive any where, any time. How do you prevent a dog giving you the same level of response to a normal command? Do you mean something like, what if I ask for a casual down and my dog snaps to attention and gives me 100% focus as if we're working in drive? I don't really care if she does, but I just don't reward her in drive for it, so she tends not to. What is so special about having one ultimate reward? I don't really have one toy that is the ultimate reward. I think you're right - playing with you should be the best reward, no matter which toy is used. So my dog can have chew toys any old time she likes, but she only gets to tug with me when she's earned it. That's what she's working for, when she's working in drive. Not for the tug toy I produce, but for the opportunity to tug with me.

I think it's kind of like having a special emergency recall cue that always get a super duper reward. Sure, you could just have one recall command and give the super duper reward every single time you recalled your dog, but do you really want to? I don't want to have to tug with my girl for 5 minutes every time I call her over for something in the house, and I also don't want to devalue the super duper reward by making it available twenty times a day. So I have an outside recall which we practice at the park with an ultra cool drive reward, and I just use a casual command at other times. When I train for trialling, I'll introduce a third recall which means to run over to a formal sit in front. Perhaps I'm just complicated. Beagleboys is right though, I think, everyone here does cue their dogs to work. The only difference is whether the dog has just picked up the routine by itself, or whether a deliberate cue was taught to tell the dog what kind of work was coming.

do you think you could do harm by adding too many? Yes, definitely. Too much iodine (from kelp) is not good for dogs, if you go overboard it can induce hypothyroidism. And if you feed a ridiculously large amount of fish oil, you can get clotting dysfunctions. Brewers yeast is used mostly for B vitamins which are water soluble (so the dog just pees them out if you add too many), so I doubt that would cause any problem unless you went absolutely crazy with it. Everything in moderation. I haven't analysed your diet but it looks OK to me from a casual glance (to feed an adult dog, not a pup). Salmon in a tin is about half way between a muscle meat and a RMB, as far as Ca amount and Ca:P ratio are concerned, so I'd just treat it as half way in between. Actually there is one more supplement I would add if I could afford it - I'd feed a few oysters per week. They're amazing for zinc.

For us, just fish body oil for omegas & kelp for iodine. If I had an elderly or arthritic dog, I'd add glucosamine/chondroitin as well. If you're feeding a well balanced raw diet, then I don't think the other popular supplements (brewers yeast etc) are necessary.

Yeah, there's really nothing like bone for calcium. You could always get ground bone powder for Ca, or I've heard of people drying then grinding up egg shells and sprinkling them over their dog's food for the Ca? Of course, the further you get from feeding actual prey, the more careful you've got to be that you're giving the right amount of nutrients (instead of just eyeballing everything and going "yup, looks like prey"). I suspect soa protein is a just misspelling of soya protein? It's what they put in casserole style dog foods to give it the appearance of having meaty chunks in it, similar to tofu I think.