>Laurie, this post really hit home with me.  I lost my 10 year old Lab to
cancer
>last Saturday and I know it must have been caused by the trash that was in
her
>dog food.  Next puppy will definitely be fed meat and bones.  Please let me
>know about feeding dogs this way, as I want to get it right next time.
>
>tia, Jan

If the list doesn't mind discussion of a paleo diet for dogs, I can at
least
give you the principles of the diet and some background.  (I became
interested in paleo diet for humans after I saw how much healthier my
dogs
are on a diet based on what is optimal for their paleo ancestors the
wolves...)

Essentially, if you were to dissect a wild wolf, a chihuahua, and a
wolfhound, you would find that they all have the same digestive system
design regardless of their size or whether or not they are
domesticated.
This digestive system is NOT designed to process huge amounts of
modern
grains!!! There are no such supplies of grain in the wild for wolves
to have
adapted to. Wolves are carnivores that eat meat, bone, organs, and
stomach
contents of prey, raw whole eggs when they can be found in spring, and
the
occasional ripe fruit in season.

The reason humans had no reason to modify the dog's digestive system
to
change it from what the wolf has is that wolves are capable of living
for
many generations as scavengers if need be (like climate changes or
catastrophic natural events). This is survival rather than optimal
eating,
but it has its place.  It is a shame if people in their ignorance keep
their
dogs on a survival basis rather than giving them what their bodies
crave,
and they are best designed to process and benefit from.

When a dog eats a diet it can really digest, its feces are small, and
not as
rank. My dogs' output is one THIRD in volume what it was when they ate
even
premium $1/lb kibble, and maybe 1/4 as stinky. Instead of killing the
grass,
it makes it grow SO well I wish I could train the dogs to poop in a
neat
even pattern across the lawn.  Oh, and when a dog is eating things it
can
properly digest, it seldom gets gas (usually only after some veggie
meals!)
So a dog that eats the raw diet is better company, and nicer to share
a yard
with...  (Happier too.)

Dogs until fairly recently were fed scraps from the butcher and the
family's
table and from when they processed meat for themselves, etc. It was
only
after WWII that commercial dog foods took off and became widespread in
the
US (it happened later in Australia and also I think in England).

So, what we are seeing now is the cumulative result of dogs being fed
a
species-inappropriate diet for multiple generations, plus the
complications
added by too-strong, too-frequent vaccines, and toxins in the air and
environment that singly or in synergy may all have a negative impact
on
overall health and soundness of dogs.

A vet in Australia observed that his patients who got the best modern
technology that money could buy in the way of kibble, vaccines, etc.
developed many kinds of problems, from bad hips to inadequate immune
systems
to chronic ear and skin problems, to infertility.

He also noticed that the country people and the poor folks who still
lived
like their parents and grandparents (and fed the dogs bones with a bit
of
meat on them, and table scraps) had dogs like those he remembered when
he
was growing up:  healthy, strong, sound, long-lived, not prone to
problems -- he saw these dogs for their vaccines or for injuries but
not for
these other problems that have become endemic in other dogs!

So Dr Ian Billinghurst read the classics about raw diets for dogs,
Madame
Juliette Levy, Wendy Volhard, and Richard Pitcairn, and studied the
optimal
diet of wolves in the wild.

He concluded the most natural, species-appropriate, digestible diet
for dogs
was the modern equivalent of a wolf's ideal diet -- 60-80% raw meaty
bones
such as chicken or turkey necks, backs, pork or lamb necks, femurs,
ribs,
etc. (raw bones are digestible and nutritious, and the calcium
balances the
high amounts of phosphorus in meat).

The other elements of the diet are organ meats such as a LITTLE liver
or
kidneys, plenty of heart (it isn't a filter, so it is cleaner meat),
and
then there are ground windpipes, a favorite of my dogs, and a great
preventive against joint problems (if the glucosamine you buy doesn't
say
shark cartilage-- which I hope it doesn't -- it is made from cattle
windpipes left as a byproduct of processing the animals for meat for
people).

They get a couple of small veggie meals a week to emulate the
partially
digested stomach contents of the prey -- wolves themselves do not have
the
digestive system to process such food, but they get it pre-processed,
complete with appropriate digestive enzymes, from their prey,
literally
because they ARE higher on the food chain.

The veggies have to be juiced or blenderized very fine because dogs
and
wolves cannot digest cellulose.  Most people who feed this diet add
oils or
fresh ground flax seeds for fresh EFAs, some source of trace minerals
and
iodine such as seaweed supplements, and will feed fish occasionally if
available.

My dogs eat chicken necks (with heads on is best, and I get all I can
when I
can get them, the heads are full of EFAs!) or backs with ribs, but
they get
a real variety, since that is more natural, and more balanced over
time.  So
they get wings sometimes, or less often leg quarters and even
hamburger when
on sale, or beef ribs, pork neck bones, or lamb necks. Most of their
meaty
bone meals are about half bone and half meat.

Their veggie meals also vary by seasonal availability to some extent
but are
heavy on leafy green veggies and yellow veggies. Tonight I used the
juicer
to puree together a big bundle of collard greens, a bunch of
watercress, a
large package of celery, two cucumbers, a large package of fresh
mushrooms
(for vitamins and minerals), a package of carrots, a couple of yellow
squash, a couple of big cooking apples, and about a heaping teaspoon
of
fresh ginger (though sometimes I use an equal amount of beet, both are
purifiers).

I NEVER use any members of the Solanacea family (tomatoes, white
potatoes,
eggplant, and peppers), as there are plenty of other sources of
nutrients
that do not have the same side effects. I also never use onions or
garlic
because over 40% of dogs have inherited an anomaly that causes Heinz
Body
Anemia if the dogs eat onions or members of the onion family (such as
garlic
or chives).  I don't see any reason to risk it.

Naturally puppies and dogs are like kids and don't like to eat their
veggies, so I will blenderize about a cup of flax seed, then add a
bunch of
whole eggs (shell and all) and blenderize that together.  This, when
mixed
with veggies, makes the green yuck a lot more appealing.  If the dogs
are
VERY bad and won't eat their veggies, I sometimes have to mix in
hamburger
or a couple of cans of sardines plus the oil, to make it stinky enough
to be
desirable <g>.

There are a number of good lists where dog owners can learn about the
best
books on the subject, and get the advice of people with more
experience at
feeding this diet.  Wellpet is one of the older and better ones. You
can
also do a web search on the BARF diet for dogs. (It stands for Bones
And Raw
Foods, or Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods).

HTH,

Laurie
(Mother Mastiff)
My dogs BARF

>>
>> Don't know diddly about supplements as an industry, but as a parallel to
>> your conclusion, I do know that the commercial dog food industry was
>> developed as a way of profiting from foods too spoiled to legally feed to
>> cattle or swine or poultry (grain with too-high PPMs of aflatoxins, and
4-D
>> meats, which means diseased, down, dying, or dead -- the stuff too far
gone
>> to even be seen by the USDA inspectors)....
>>