Supercoat

[blacklabrador]

Nobody has the right to refer to any other form of food as "rubbish" just because they don't feed it. Many do that and have never fed the food that they are trashing.

I actually do think that it's possible to identify a food as "rubbish" without having fed it. Just like I can look at junk food and don't have to have eaten it daily to know that it's not good for people to eat.

To say that your dog "does well" on a food really doesn't look at the long term picture. You often can't see the effects of feeding your dog excessive amounts of an inappropriate food (ie grains) until they are older. Others have dogs with chronic ear and skin problems and go on feeding their dogs this cereal based food regardless.

Last night I went to visit friends who have a beautiful little black brindle stafford pup. He's about 18 weeks old and the picture of health. Shiny coat, bright eyes, full of energy. It looks like his diet completely agrees with him (Optimum Puppy). That is until you spend some time with him and get a load of the stinking flatulence problem the dog has. OMG it was difficult to eat dinner at some moments with this dog in the room. So just as an example - the dog's digestive system is clearly struggling but you'd find it difficult to find a more healthy, shiny coated specimen of the breed. His owners thought his farts were normal but after discussion have decided to change his diet (I gave a few suggestions, including raw). I suspect that the dog is quite uncomfortable by the frequency and shocking odour of his emissions!

Raw feeding is best. I know it is. That's my truth. There is very little science that goes into knowing that natural, raw food is what our dogs are supposed to be eating. If other people believe that feeding their dog cheap supermarket junk food is better for their dogs health then that is what they should be feeding. It really doesn't make a difference to my world. I will maintain my opinions though and air them when the subject arises. ;)

;) at Kitat! Frames on legs? :laugh:

[KitKat]

Now my esperiance with a raw/by the book diet...was that i was feeding copious amounts of food to my GSD's and they were barely keeping weight on - certainly no money saving and as far as i was concerned no health saving either since they were having to eat so much to not even be in condition. I put them back on a high quality dry diet and they got their condition back and kept it up - not saying all high quality kibble got me that reaction (had same problem with Nutrience as i did with raw/barf).

However - I've got them back on a high meaty bone content & high quality kibble based diet (minus live chookies here's hoping) and they are doing well on that. (Have to get Sabe back into to his old self after seeming to develop every known skin allergy under the sun after rolling in pumpkin vines)

[blacklabrador]

Now my esperiance with a raw/by the book diet...was that i was feeding copious amounts of food to my GSD's and they were barely keeping weight on - certainly no money saving and as far as i was concerned no health saving either since they were having to eat so much to not even be in condition. I put them back on a high quality dry diet and they got their condition back and kept it up - not saying all high quality kibble got me that reaction (had same problem with Nutrience as i did with raw/barf).

However - I've got them back on a high meaty bone content & high quality kibble based diet (minus live chookies here's hoping) and they are doing well on that. (Have to get Sabe back into to his old self after seeming to develop every known skin allergy under the sun after rolling in pumpkin vines)

Raw isn't necessarily money saving - especially not these days as the butchers have caught on!

I have a skinny pointer here who requires copious amounts of food but I don't see him having to eat a lot as a negative to his general health (just to my wallet!). He requires 3 X what the labs do yet he weighs less and he always gets the fattiest bones I can find. As I said earlier in the thread he sometimes gets supplemented with high calorie puppy food a few times per week to help keep his condition. OH seems to think that a full body cast would probably work best just to stop the little bugger from moving all the time! He burns it quickly.

[KitKat]

Now if i was just talking Sabe - perhaps fair enough...but Bronx is a couch potato shepherd and he lost weight on barf - a weeks worth of food as per the book would be lucky to last 2-3 days. To me that's not quite working as it's supposed to, but that's just my opinion. I still prefer to feed them a combined diet and when i get my Berner i'll likely do the same but with advisement from the Breeder.

[gareth]

I was not implying that BARF or RAW feeders are food nazis (although some do have that appearance...)

Your quote

One question for all the BARF or RAW or so called Food Nazis...

Where did I say that?

If the dogs are so much better off on the above diets and Supermarket or non-premium kibbles are pretty much crap,

AKA Supercoat. Or were you referring to all the other drys and NOT Supercoat?

Observations, and REAL LIFE experience mate, personally knowing dogs, both farming and otherwise living into their teens and hardly seeing the inside of vet clinic (except for routine vaccinations, the odd snake bite etc..) sorry I don't have some fancy piece of paper to satisfy your scientific needs. But sometimes real life just likes to thumb its nose at all those theorists out there.

I ask you, have you any evidence to suggest otherwise?

No, only anecdotal evidence like yourself which suggests that dogs live long healthy lives fed on wild game such as rabbits. But then I didn't go making any unproven claims the way you did. Why do I need evidence?

[centitout]

My dogs too,with the exception of the desexed bitch,all looked horrible on total barf feeding,and required a huge amount to maintain weight,so no savings here-my food bill tripled.Thats why they have 1/2 raw 1/2 dry(and a cheap one at that )

i also know many farm dogs that lived until their teens,most had never required a vet,lived in 44's and where fed only on PAL dry-so how can you say there must have been long term affects?

Some dogs do better on raw,some dont,some do better on some brands,than others-they are individuals and should be fed accordingly.

[stormie]

Well said, centitout.

Just for the record, I have a dog who produces some stinky gas that can clear a room. He's fed entirely a raw diet and I would say has just as bad a smell, if no sometimes worse, than he did when raised on dry. Some dogs are just 'gassy' dogs.

Personally, I think sometimes people obsess way too much over diet. They're dogs - designed to be scavengers and opportunists and eat whatever is available. I think dogs are capable of surviving and also being healthy, on a wide variety of diets.

My boss's parents used to have Newfs and Saints. Their soul diet was mostly meat with a bone here and there and dinner left overs. Most people would cringe at a diet like this, about how unbalanced it is, yet they all lived long healthy lives. Go figure.

[blacklabrador]

They're dogs - designed to be scavengers and opportunists and eat whatever is available.

Which is one of the reasons that feeding the same cereal based food daily is not ideal. A raw diet gives a variety day by day and is balanced over a week, sometimes a fortnight. It attempts to mimic what happens in the wild. Our dogs have not been domesticated long enough to have evolved to being fed cooked, cereal based food on a daily basis. We do better to treat them as if they were still living in the wild. We've manged to refine and control how a dog looks over the past couple of hundred years, but the evolution of the gut is a much slower process. These foods have only been around for several decades. According to some, dogs did much better on table scraps, even though they were often cooked.

Edited April 4, 2010 by blacklabrador

[stormie]

Agree with you, blab. But doesn't mean a dog can't be otherwise healthy. Orbit is VERY limited in what he can eat and now only gets one type of animal meat. He has turkey meat and necks as his diet, occasionally he gets beef liver and kidneys, but they give him terrible black diarrhoea even in very small amounts. He gets a multivitamin a couple of times a week.

He is in great heath (other than his allergies of course but that's a completely different issue). I'd love to be able to feed him a bigger variety of meats but I can't because he's allergic to most of it. So turkey it is! And he does great on just that. Some might argue that its not a 'balanced' diet and not what the prey model or barfers would call ideal, but, its ideal for Orbit!

[BJean]

Now my esperiance with a raw/by the book diet...was that i was feeding copious amounts of food to my GSD's and they were barely keeping weight on - certainly no money saving and as far as i was concerned no health saving either since they were having to eat so much to not even be in condition. I put them back on a high quality dry diet and they got their condition back and kept it up - not saying all high quality kibble got me that reaction (had same problem with Nutrience as i did with raw/barf).

How thin did your dogs get?

How much condition do you like your dogs to have?

Can you feel their ribs?

Edited April 4, 2010 by lilli

[ellz]

Feeding dogs is like politics and religion. Everybody believes they are right and any discussion invariably turns into a shitfight. And nobody has the right to dictate to anybody else what they should feed, or belittle them or talk down to them from a superior height just because they believe they are right and the other person is wrong.

Nobody has a crystal ball. Only hindsight is going to tell you whether a particular food was good for a dog its entire life. You can't say at the age of 2 if a dog is going to live until it is 20. All you can do is base your opinions on what a dog looks like, acts like and how many trips it makes to a vet.

Live and let live people.

[blacklabrador]

Everybody believes they are right and any discussion invariably turns into a shitfight.

Only if people get defensive about what they are feeding. Otherwise it's just an adult discussion right?

I haven't seen anybody dictate to anybody else in this thread what to feed their dogs but I've seen lots of opinions expressed.

Basing what you feed on your own individual dogs rather than the species as a whole is one area that people go very wrong (except in the case of geniune allergies).

[ellz]

Absolutely. A dog is a dog. A dog isn't a human with four legs.

But a dog still requires a balanced diet, although they don't require the balance to be present in each and every meal as long as it balances OVERALL.

I still believe that is where many people come undone.

Yeah, sure I feed a dry food that many call rubbish. My dogs happen to do well on it. They look good, smell good and have plenty of energy.

BUT...it isn't the ONLY thing that they are fed. In fact, it would probably make up less than a 1/4 of their overall diet.

They also get meat and lots of bones (one of the joys of living in a country environment with two abattoirs within a few kms in either direction). They also get plenty of plant and vegetable manner. And their way of scavenging to get other minerals and nutrients is to enjoy the "spoils" of the output of the horses.

And yes, many will at that....but think about it......even Billinghurst discusses why they would do it. It is readily processed vegetable and grain matter with trace elements and minerals already partly processed and easily digested.

And then of course, there is the hooman food that they enjoy as treats and the yoghurt, cheese, eggs and other goodies that are added on a regular basis too.

So yes, I feed a less-than-quality dry food, but it is supplemented by a very watered-down version of a raw diet. And I'm very happy with the results and don't plan to change what I do in the near future.

[Rain]

If the dogs are so much better off on the above diets and Supermarket or non-premium kibbles are pretty much crap, why then are there soooo many dogs out there, on farms, in backyards, on tradies utes etc who live LONG healthy lives on this stuff?? And not to mention all the other "left overs" they get fed?

Growing up all our dogs were ever fed were 'left overs' and supermarket dog food, they also lived a full life with no issues and only went to the vet for desexing or tick issues. Never heard of barf feeding or super premium kibble until joining DOL.

[Mas1981]

Now my esperiance with a raw/by the book diet...was that i was feeding copious amounts of food to my GSD's and they were barely keeping weight on - certainly no money saving and as far as i was concerned no health saving either since they were having to eat so much to not even be in condition. I put them back on a high quality dry diet and they got their condition back and kept it up - not saying all high quality kibble got me that reaction (had same problem with Nutrience as i did with raw/barf).

However - I've got them back on a high meaty bone content & high quality kibble based diet (minus live chookies here's hoping) and they are doing well on that. (Have to get Sabe back into to his old self after seeming to develop every known skin allergy under the sun after rolling in pumpkin vines)

Raw isn't necessarily money saving - especially not these days as the butchers have caught on!

I have a skinny pointer here who requires copious amounts of food but I don't see him having to eat a lot as a negative to his general health (just to my wallet!). He requires 3 X what the labs do yet he weighs less and he always gets the fattiest bones I can find. As I said earlier in the thread he sometimes gets supplemented with high calorie puppy food a few times per week to help keep his condition. OH seems to think that a full body cast would probably work best just to stop the little bugger from moving all the time! He burns it quickly.

Labs are the easiest dog to put weight on, I have to watch mine very carefully or he puts on a lot of weight, people probably think i am starving him when they hear what he eats a day

[blacklabrador]

Now my esperiance with a raw/by the book diet...was that i was feeding copious amounts of food to my GSD's and they were barely keeping weight on - certainly no money saving and as far as i was concerned no health saving either since they were having to eat so much to not even be in condition. I put them back on a high quality dry diet and they got their condition back and kept it up - not saying all high quality kibble got me that reaction (had same problem with Nutrience as i did with raw/barf).

However - I've got them back on a high meaty bone content & high quality kibble based diet (minus live chookies here's hoping) and they are doing well on that. (Have to get Sabe back into to his old self after seeming to develop every known skin allergy under the sun after rolling in pumpkin vines)

Raw isn't necessarily money saving - especially not these days as the butchers have caught on!

I have a skinny pointer here who requires copious amounts of food but I don't see him having to eat a lot as a negative to his general health (just to my wallet!). He requires 3 X what the labs do yet he weighs less and he always gets the fattiest bones I can find. As I said earlier in the thread he sometimes gets supplemented with high calorie puppy food a few times per week to help keep his condition. OH seems to think that a full body cast would probably work best just to stop the little bugger from moving all the time! He burns it quickly.

Labs are the easiest dog to put weight on, I have to watch mine very carefully or he puts on a lot of weight, people probably think i am starving him when they hear what he eats a day

Some labs are. They all have different calorie requirements.

Edited April 5, 2010 by blacklabrador

[Mas1981]

Now my esperiance with a raw/by the book diet...was that i was feeding copious amounts of food to my GSD's and they were barely keeping weight on - certainly no money saving and as far as i was concerned no health saving either since they were having to eat so much to not even be in condition. I put them back on a high quality dry diet and they got their condition back and kept it up - not saying all high quality kibble got me that reaction (had same problem with Nutrience as i did with raw/barf).

However - I've got them back on a high meaty bone content & high quality kibble based diet (minus live chookies here's hoping) and they are doing well on that. (Have to get Sabe back into to his old self after seeming to develop every known skin allergy under the sun after rolling in pumpkin vines)

Raw isn't necessarily money saving - especially not these days as the butchers have caught on!

I have a skinny pointer here who requires copious amounts of food but I don't see him having to eat a lot as a negative to his general health (just to my wallet!). He requires 3 X what the labs do yet he weighs less and he always gets the fattiest bones I can find. As I said earlier in the thread he sometimes gets supplemented with high calorie puppy food a few times per week to help keep his condition. OH seems to think that a full body cast would probably work best just to stop the little bugger from moving all the time! He burns it quickly.

Labs are the easiest dog to put weight on, I have to watch mine very carefully or he puts on a lot of weight, people probably think i am starving him when they hear what he eats a day

Some labs are. They all have different calorie requirements.

From my experience I have never heard of one that battles to keep weight on.

[vk2mpj]

I was not implying that BARF or RAW feeders are food nazis (although some do have that appearance...)

Your quote

One question for all the BARF or RAW or so called Food Nazis...

Where did I say that?

If the dogs are so much better off on the above diets and Supermarket or non-premium kibbles are pretty much crap,

AKA Supercoat. Or were you referring to all the other drys and NOT Supercoat?

Observations, and REAL LIFE experience mate, personally knowing dogs, both farming and otherwise living into their teens and hardly seeing the inside of vet clinic (except for routine vaccinations, the odd snake bite etc..) sorry I don't have some fancy piece of paper to satisfy your scientific needs. But sometimes real life just likes to thumb its nose at all those theorists out there.

I ask you, have you any evidence to suggest otherwise?

No, only anecdotal evidence like yourself which suggests that dogs live long healthy lives fed on wild game such as rabbits. But then I didn't go making any unproven claims the way you did. Why do I need evidence?

Yes I did say all that, and you seem intent on reading something into it that isn't there. As others have commented on and pointed out...

It was a question aimed at barf feeders OR Raw feeders OR

these so called food nazi's. I was putting it out there for those who are so committed to their chosed diets...

I have yet to see what is so confusing about this statement

If the dogs are so much better off on the above diets and Supermarket or non-premium kibbles are pretty much crap,

It was a statement referring to Supermarket Kibble or non-premium kibble. No where did I mention nor imply a specific brand, you are the one who seems hell bent on bringing up brands.

As for unproven claims, am I not allowed to comment about dogs that I have come across in my life? Ones that have not beed fed anything other than the dredded supermarket foods, yet live long happy lives.

At the end of the day Ellz seems to be one who is speaking a lot of sense, feed what you want, and I'll feed what I want. I just think it is wrong that when a valid harmless question gets asked, which may challenge the opinions of some, they take it on themselves to pick it apart and insist on taking this thread OT, without offering any vaild response.

Unless some valid discussion arises from my question, then I shall be the better person and leave it for now. Sorry all for the tripe that has errupted as a result of my question.

Growing up all our dogs were ever fed were 'left overs' and supermarket dog food, they also lived a full life with no issues and only went to the vet for desexing or tick issues. Never heard of barf feeding or super premium kibble until joining DOL.

Same here Rain..

Edited April 5, 2010 by vk2mpj

[Troy]

Final warning ..... (I am being generous today)

Respect another person's choice to feed their dog whatever they choose and move on. All you need to care about is what you feed your own dog.

[huski]

With most dogs diet is trial and error. It can take time to find the perfect food, be that raw or dried or otherwise. I feed a mostly raw diet (Cherry is fed on Eagle Pack Holistic) and my dogs do far better on it than they did on super market dried or super premium dried.

There are some super premium brands that my dogs wouldn't do so well on, and others they did well on. Some dogs can eat just about anything and do ok on it, but doing ok and doing best are two different things IMO.