A Good Enough Reason Not To Feed Dogs A Commercial Diet ?

[megan_]

Moselle - you seem to be very happy to make assumptions about people you don't know. Most people who feed commercial diets (mine is high quality, all ingredients are sourced from Australia) feed their dogs some fresh food as well. Mine get kibble in the morning, and then a raw, meaty bone in the evening. I also give them sardines and veges on occassion.

My dogs are muchloved and well cared for. I choose to spend my time training them, taking them outdoors, working on Lucy's nerves etc rather than creating my own concoction of food (there are so many different opinions as to what constitutes a balanced diet anyway). If I wanted "convenience" I certainly wouldn't have gotten dogs!

Again, BARF is not the only natural diet out there, and it certainly isn't the closest one in terms of what is "natural" for dogs - surely the prey model would win hands down.

I wonder how many BARF feeders feed their dogs a commercial diet - that is what BARF patties are after all.

Runs out of thread quickly.....

[MonElite]

i tried barf/raw on my two GSD's i was having to feed huge amounts of food to keep any kind of weight on them - in the end we were going through several kgs each per day and the dogs were nearly skin and bone.

What do your dogs do? How many kg per dog did you have to feed?

[Aidan]

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?

Unless we have dingo or wolf-dog owners here, not a single one has the phenotype or genotype of a dog adapted to that environment. Our dogs are adapted through natural and artificial selection to live on the wide variety of foods WE eat or those parts we discard. This has been the case for more than long enough in evolutionary terms.

In any case, my dogs are older and fitter than the expected age for any comparable wild canid. They eat raw meaty bones, table scraps, grains, offal and commercial dog food. I don't go to any particular trouble except to avoid the absolute worst of commercial dog foods and those that list "maize" as the main ingredient.

[Moselle]

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?

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

Edited August 17, 2010 by Moselle

[Moselle]

Moselle - you seem to be very happy to make assumptions about people you don't know. Most people who feed commercial diets (mine is high quality, all ingredients are sourced from Australia) feed their dogs some fresh food as well. Mine get kibble in the morning, and then a raw, meaty bone in the evening. I also give them sardines and veges on occassion.

My dogs are muchloved and well cared for. I choose to spend my time training them, taking them outdoors, working on Lucy's nerves etc rather than creating my own concoction of food (there are so many different opinions as to what constitutes a balanced diet anyway). If I wanted "convenience" I certainly wouldn't have gotten dogs!

Again, BARF is not the only natural diet out there, and it certainly isn't the closest one in terms of what is "natural" for dogs - surely the prey model would win hands down.

I wonder how many BARF feeders feed their dogs a commercial diet - that is what BARF patties are after all.

Runs out of thread quickly.....

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.

[aussielover]

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?

Sadly, a lot of people do and more and more are starting to follow as well.

[Staranais]

Yes, a wild or feral dog that couldn't live on what they could hunt or scavenge would die.

I've lived & travelled in places with feral/pariah dogs, and the ones I observed ate a diet mostly made of (mostly vegetarian) human garbage (plus, presumably, whatever small mammals they could catch). I would imagine that most of the world's canines survived on this type of diet until quite recently. I have no idea how many of them suffered from malnutrition. The pariah dogs I met would probably have been very happy to eat the diet of any dog on this message board!

[stormie]

Dogs are vastly different to the dogs that live in the wild. We've bred all types of different breeds that now have different nutritional requirements to each other. If we all turned our dogs out to run free, you'd see many die off and eventually you'd type of dog left remaining - one that was best suited to the environment and diet that was available.

Growing Great Danes have very different nutritional needs to a growing Chihuahua. We've created the need for balanced, commercial foods with the breeds which we have created.

[poodlefan]

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

My personal view is that you need to do your homework on commercial foods and who makes them just as much you do on raw feeding. I also believe that all dogs require raw meaty bones unless there is some reason they can't digest them.

I find it difficult to fathom how all meat diets, or its new variant (cooked mince, veggies and pasta) get traction with dog people but they sure do in some circles. Similarly, how people can conclude that a commercial food that is predominantly grain is a suitable food for an obligate carnivore puzzles me greatly.

I would not, unlike some raw feeders, feed non-human grade meats to my dogs unless it was wild game ... its not just manufactured pet foods that you need to worry about in terms of how they've been treated.

Edited August 17, 2010 by poodlefan

[westielover]

Maybe this article may be of some interest to some.

[Mas1981]

There are 2 reasons I dont feed commercial food :

1: My dog is allergic to a whole bunch of things ( previous 2 dogs ate commercial food which consisted of mainly ostrich).

2: Commercial food does not list all the ingredients on the bag ( this was told to me by my dermatologist) and leads to problems because of reason 1.

[Aidan]

Maybe this article may be of some interest to some.

"On the evolutionary scale, this amount of time [14,000 years according to this article] does not allow for any drastic changes in the physiology and anatomy of a species"

Do you think there is a strong argument in support of this statement? Not picking on anyone in particular, I just want to hear an argument in support of this statement (or against, for that matter).

[poodlefan]

Maybe this article may be of some interest to some.

Usual pro BARF stuff.

I'd make a couple of observations.

Dogs are not wolves. I wish all comparisons between domestic dogs and wolves would just go away. Dogs been opportunistic carnivores for thousands of years (at least since man started tossing his chop bones away from the cave) and studies of smaller canids show they eat a hell of a lot more variety than large prey animals. Frankly I think prey model diets fall down for that reason AND the fact that most meats fed in your average prey model diet are farmed, not game and rarely fed whole.

Not all commercial dog foods are born alike. Lumping them all in together and making sweeping generalisations about the sources of their ingredients cheapens the pro-raw argument. The main ingredient in all commercial dog food is not grain. Grain can play a role in providing some nutrients and energy to dogs too.

I'd argue fewer Australian dogs are feed a 100% kibble diet than their USA counterparts and frankly I hope that continues.

Edited August 17, 2010 by poodlefan

[Andisa]

i tried barf/raw on my two GSD's i was having to feed huge amounts of food to keep any kind of weight on them - in the end we were going through several kgs each per day and the dogs were nearly skin and bone.

What do your dogs do? How many kg per dog did you have to feed?

I have been wondering about this too Mon Elite....

I am feeding 3 Rottweilers - 2 female, 1 male (all entire), they are medium in size and live happily on 1 barf patty and lamb off cuts. I alternate the lamb with chicken frames (often filled frames with ox cheek), chicken wings and casserole pieces. The only time I need to keep an eye on their weight is if I am feeding too much lamb because they will get fat, if I feed mostly chicken they will drop some weight. I feed mostly chicken or lamb and watch their weight. It is not hard to do being a short coat breed but you only need to feel the dog if it is coated to see if it needs more or less.

When they are in work they are fed a little bit more - but not much.

Some dogs do require more than others to maintain a healthy weight, a bitch I bred 3 yrs ago who is now in a pet home (daughter and half sister to my dogs) and she requires almost double to what my dogs do but even then that is not a massive amount of food for the size of dog. I have often said that my dogs are very easy to maintain their weight, if anything I need to keep a close eye on the girls because they get fat easily, the boy can handle more than them but I still need to be careful because he is not a big dog.

Edited August 17, 2010 by Andisa

[aussielover]

Maybe this article may be of some interest to some.

"On the evolutionary scale, this amount of time [14,000 years according to this article] does not allow for any drastic changes in the physiology and anatomy of a species"

Do you think there is a strong argument in support of this statement? Not picking on anyone in particular, I just want to hear an argument in support of this statement (or against, for that matter).

That is a very vague statement. The anatomy can certainly change in a very short time period- look at all the different dog breeds. Physiology is a little more complex but it is basically a function of anatomy. I'm not really sure what they are trying to prove, as dogs are not wolves anyway?

Also, humans have gone from being primarily hunter gatherers (around 12000 years ago) to surviving, even thriving on heavily processed food, which is very different to what we would have been eating thousands of years ago.

If dogs are happy and healthy, does it really matter what they are fed be it raw, prey model, commercial?

The biggest problem with commercial imo is that it can often lack variety and interest value.

I feed primarily dry- but also add in sardines, egg, vegies, scraps etc as many other dolers do.

Being a lab I'm not sure Mindy would actually care if she was just fed dry only- if its edible, its yummy

Edited August 17, 2010 by aussielover

[Andisa]

I grew up on a farm and my parents also owned a bakery, our dogs all got all sorts of left overs - pies, pasties, sausage rolls, bread and cakes (including cream fillings) - could not find a more unsuitable diet for dogs but they did well on it. They were fed scraps when we killed sheep for the freezer and ate cheap dry dog food. They were hardly ever wormed, flea treated and I don't think any of them were ever vaccinated past their puppy shots yet all lived well in to their mid to late teens with the odd dog reaching early 20's. I am a raw feeder now but think lifestyle has just as much impact on their health as diet.

Those dogs had plenty of exercise and even though they were fed unsuitable foods for a dog (quite often) it never hurt them.

Edited August 17, 2010 by Andisa

[stormie]

Dogs digestive systems may not have changed but their nutritional requirements have. As I mentioned before, the needs of a Great Dane puppy compared to a Chihuahua puppy are very different. Grow the Dane puppy on a food to suit the needs of a Chi and you'd likely end up with terrible growth problems that effect its skeletal system for life.

Most people do not have the ability to measure the amount of calcium and phosphorus which will be absorbed from each meal, in order to get these ratios right - something so important in large/giant pups.

I love a raw diet. Many people would probably tell me though, that the diet I feed my dog is not good, because its not BARF or prey model exactly. But he's alive and he's as healthy as he's going to be.

I will never believe, either, that commercial dry food is totally bad for our dogs. All our last 3 dogs (2 Goldens and 1 JRT) lived till the ages of 16, all being fed mostly supermarket food with table scraps and bones here and there. 1 Golden was pts due to spinal arthritis, the other actually died from eating a raw chicken frame which got stuck in her stomach, resulting in her aspirating her own vomit and damaging her lungs to the extent she couldn't maintain a high enough oxygen saturation rate to survive. The JRT died when a tumour in her liver ruptured. None of the dogs had any other health conditions through their long lives.

People can put up all the links they want of people saying how bad pet food is, claiming its full of our dead pets etc, but my 3 dogs were evident enough for me that it wasn't poison for them.

[poodlefan]

I grew up on a farm and my parents also owned a bakery, our dogs all got all sorts of left overs - pies, pasties, sausage rolls, bread and cakes (including cream fillings) - could not find a more unsuitable diet for dogs but they did well on it. They were fed scraps when we killed sheep for the freezer and ate cheap dry dog food. They were hardly ever wormed, flea treated and I don't think any of them were ever vaccinated past their puppy shots yet all lived well in to their mid to late teens with the odd dog reaching early 20's. I am a raw feeder now but think lifestyle has just as much impact on their health as diet.

Those dogs had plenty of exercise and even though they were fed unsuitable foods for a dog (quite often) it never hurt them.

Dog Heaven!!!!

[westielover]

removed - I don't want to debate about raw vs commercial.

Whatever works for everyone

Edited August 17, 2010 by westielover

[stormie]

But just because they way they digest food is the same, it doesn't mean they need to eat the exact same diet? Many dogs live indoors and do not exercise any where near as much as what a wild dog would have, so their fat requirements would be much lower as would the general calorie requirement.

We wash them more often, before shows, to smell nice inside, which can dry out their skin more. Artificial heating like air con can also dry them out more, increasing the need for more omega oils for healthy skin.

We have dogs with different coat lengths, not really designed for the areas in which they live.

Almost every way in which we keep dogs, is totally 'unnatural' so it makes total sense that the dietary needs of a dog will be different to those who are fending for themselves, living in the elements, catching their prey, regularly breeding etc etc.