Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by christy fry on February 25, 2010 at 5:13pm

mine love carrots also!! I don't feed anything real special just blue buffallo and I'll also go to my local doggy boutique and buy some premade frozen raw medallians and give some to them a couple times a week.

Permalink Reply by Beth on February 25, 2010 at 6:29pm

I feed Iam's too, and my dogs are very healthy and happy. We feed the lamb and rice because Jack was having some loose stools on the regular mini chunks (only on long walks, not on normal potty breaks, but it was a real nuisance). They have great coats, great teeth, great muscle tone, great energy and regular poops. The only time they have ever been sick is when they eat something they find out that they should not have.

My parents fed Iam's to their lab and to our mixed-breed mongrel, and they both lived to be around 16.

Our breeder feeds Eukanuba and her dogs are fabulous-looking, at least the ones I've seen.

Considering the fact that they don't even know the "best" diet for people, I take it all with a healthy grain of salt. Read diets recommended by Dr Atkins compared to those recommended by Dr Ornish to get an idea. I've had people look at me funny for eating red meat and others look at me funny for eating pasta. I know people will say matter-of-factly that certain ingredients are awful for dogs, but within reason I think most mid-range and up commercial kibbles are pretty good and it's just what your dog does well on. I wouldn't feed Kibbles n' Bits, but I think that several of the foods that some others think are awful (certain Science Diet recipes, Purina Pro Plan, etc) are quite good. Some of the criticisms leveled at them seem to me to be based more on gut feelings than actual research (for example, corn in the form found in dog food is actually very digestible by dogs, though some are allergic and others don't do well with that level of fiber. Sure they may spray on fat to make it more palatable, but then again I put butter on my potato, salt on my veggies, and olive oil on my pasta all to make it more palatable, so I don't think that is any crime).

My parents feed Iams and their Chessie is in moderately hard work (goes hiking for miles several times a week and does some heavy swimming and hunts) and she looks fabulous too.

If you are interested, I had started a conversation awhile back raising questions about the ratings system used by a major dog food website:

http://www.mycorgi.com/forum/topics/questions-about

My feeling is that if your dog is doing well, go with what works. I worry more about hidden Chinese ingredients than whether or not there is a certain grain or not. But that's just me and other people feel very differently. I sometimes wonder what some people who spend months researching dog foods feed themselves, and if they are as careful in their own choices! :-)

Permalink Reply by Ashley and Copper on February 25, 2010 at 8:35pm

You are my hero! lol Everything you said I agree with 100%. I also put salt on my veggies and butter on my potato. I say ya only live once and while I try not to eat too badly, I'm not a health buff. Iams always worked for my boys and some people seem to get overly serious on this matter. I do stay away from the made in China stuff as well. My grandma had told me some horror stories about that stuff but other than that I have had no problems with choosing things for either one of my boys. Thanks so much. Love how you put that!

Permalink Reply by Sky and Lyla on February 25, 2010 at 11:20pm

You caught me Beth, I'm sure my dogs eat healthier than I do! :) One thing I do know though is that we all love our dogs and are doing what we think is best for them!!

Permalink Reply by Joanna Kimball on February 26, 2010 at 4:56am

I've talked with MANY people who feel this way, including breeders. They'll tell you stories of dogs who lived to be in their teens on Dad's or Ol Roy and that's why they don't require any kind of particular diet.

I think that you have to look not at individuals but at groups and studies. The plural of anecdote is not fact, after all.

For example, we know that diets with higher bio-available protein increase lean muscle mass in dogs, including aging dogs. We know that high-protein, high-fat diets help them recover from exercise and injury faster. We know that high-protein, high-fat diets support the immune system and wound healing.

The really valuable thing to realize is that when statements are made like that, it doesn't mean that there's a baseline "dog" and then you can improve on that by feeding better. No, it means that the dog is SUPPOSED to recover from injury quickly, maintain a lot of lean muscle mass, etc., and when you feed a high-carb low-quality diet you're HURTING the dog's ability to do the things that its body would normally do.

So sure, a dog could live to be 16 on a crappy food. But that's not something that's going to work across the whole population, and even that individual dog might have lived to be 17 or 18 if they had a decent source of nutrition.

Dogs' bodies work best - and this is not my speculation; it's something even the Hills people will tell you - when they're fed a diet that approximates handing them a whole rabbit, or half a deer. If you cannot actually do that (and a ton of people do), you look at what you CAN do, with preference given to the foods that are closest to that rabbit.

So the order might be 1) rabbit, 2) raw diet that "frankensteins" a carcass (chicken back, salmon head, turkey neck, beef liver, etc.), 3) pre-mix raw diet, 4) home-cooked diet following Pitcairn or similar, 5) grain-free kibble 6) high-available-protein high-fat conventional kibble, 7) mid-range kibble (like Iams) 8) generic or low-quality kibble (Dad's or Ol Roy) 9) unbalanced hand-fed diet.

Note what number 9 is; that's why so many vets are so against raw or homecooked diets. If you don't try to make a rabbit, but instead just feed raw meat or something, your dog WILL get sick, the same way you'd get sick if you ate absolutely nothing but red meat (no veggies, no fruits, etc.).

Here's the other thing: I've never EVER heard somebody say "My dog looks like crap but I'm going to keep feeding this anyway." Everybody thinks their dog looks fantastic, and they all use the same criteria - their coats are shiny, their poops are regular. Dog food companies KNOW this, and they formulate their foods to give a shiny coat and regular poops. I promise you, you can get a shiny coat and perfect poops on Kibbles and Bits or Beneful.

The difference from my point of view is HUGE - I can tell the difference between a raw-fed dog and a kibble-fed dog from across the room, and it has nothing to do with shiny. When you put a dog on a proper raw diet, the coat isn't just shiny; it's so thick you can't get your fingers down to the skin, and it only sheds a few times a year. I just finished brushing out all three corgis and there was no hair in the brush when I was done. NONE. And that's exactly what I expect, and I get worried if they lose hair daily. The increase in lean muscle mass is astounding; I used to get asked all the time (with the Danes) where and how I was roadworking them, because they looked so different from the other Danes in the show ring. I always said "They walk out and pee and then walk back in." With the Cardis the coat prevents you from seeing the big muscle groups but there's definitely an overall impression of tautness and their bodies are hard and tight under the skin. I want a youthful face and "young" head, even on the oldsters; no sinking of the muscles around the eyes and jaw. I also want to see absolutely WHITE teeth, all the way to the back, no matter how elderly the dog; no staining, no yellowing, no brown near the gumline. Those are the things that for me you simply cannot replicate on a kibble diet, no matter how good, and with the added benefit of tiny dry scent-free poop that dissolves in the rain.

However, you MUST be picturing that rabbit. You don't have to give a perfect diet every day, but over the space of a week or so it needs to be balanced or you will pay the price in your dogs' health. If you can't do it right (and it is NOT hard), and don't want to spend money on the premixes, I'd much rather see someone feeding a high-quality kibble than doing it wrong.

Permalink Reply by Ashley and Copper on February 26, 2010 at 10:03am

I do not feed and never had fed, crappy food to any of my animals. It seems to have worked for my dogs. I'm not naive in the fact that I think I can feed them tables scraps all the time or a food from the dollar store that is going to do them just as much good as cardboard. As much as I would love to get more time with my dogs as I could, there is no way to know if your dog is going to live longer because of a certain food. No possible way. Think of all the factors, anything can happen! You could feed them the best thing you can possibly come up with and they could get hit by a car, or die of old age, or get cancer and so on. There are people I know that are health nuts and they aren't invincible. I do what I can and the best way I can to make sure that my animals are happy and healthy. I cook Copper meat of his own when I cook because I do not want to make him sick with raw food. I don't know about everyone else but Copper has and Pooh had VERY sensitive bellies. This wasn't and isn't due to the fact that I just throw em some food out of the blue and their bellies aren't used to it. There were certain things Pooh would eat and loved but he would get sick. Also, my hat goes off to you as you said you can brush your corgis with no fur in the brush. I have never seen one that doesn't shed. How do you do it? Here is one more reason as to why I'm not feeding my dog a raw diet and every other kind of diet that comes before my ranking as a 7 on your list. He is still a pup and I do not believe everything I read on the internet. I do not want to get a recipe for disaster from a source that is not credible and have him sick or worse. I have been thinking about switching his food to the adult soon but like Beth said "what one does is allergic to, could be completely different than the next." Just like with people, I'm allergic to tomatoes, most people probably aren't. I appreciate your advice, I really do but I guess I just wasn't expecting to get put down on what I feed my dog. Have a good day!

Permalink Reply by Beth on February 26, 2010 at 10:21am

Just a point: you mention that the plural of anecdote is not data. True enough. However, what you have provided are anecdotes. :)

As I'm sure you know, longitudinal diet studies need to use hundreds or thousands of animals (to account for differences in genetics, chance, gender, intact or fixed, exercise levels, etc etc etc). A study using 12 beagles only tells you about those 12 beagles.

Do be legitimate, a diet study would need to either:
1) Feed a controlled diet to one group, and another controlled diet to a different group, with both groups being a fair size (not a couple dozen). You would then compare the dogs over their lifetimes, or
2) Use a survey method where you question hundreds or thousands of dog owners as to what they have fed after the fact, and hope that the are both honest and have good memories.

There is a reason why the second method, when used in humans, frequently uses nurses as subjects. They are in a health-care setting, understand the importance of the data being collected, and are self selecting for certain variables that otherwise need to be accounted for (such as income level and education).

Most of the first type of study with dogs is done on a fairly small scale, and is done by the big-name pet food companies.

If you have links to these studies that prove your hypotheses, I would be very happy to read them. In all my searching on line, I have not found such broad-based longitudinal diet studies that compare raw to kibble. What I do find, repeatedly, is groups of anecdotes.

I know people who feed grain-free, and I gotta say my dogs look better than theirs. Two of theirs are boxers, so their coats and muscle tone are easily visible to the naked eye. Now, I attribute a lot of that to the fact that they are all rescues.

Mine have great thick coats and no I can't get down to bare skin over much of their bodies (tummies excluded). And I can clearly see the definition of their muscles through the thick coat. Mine do a lot of hill work through virtue of where I live, and that is a lot of it. Madison's muscle tone has visibly improved dramatically from the time when we got her to now, feeding #7 on your list.

Basically I hear a lot of raw proponents say something along the lines of what you have said, which is "You feed kibble and you just think your dogs look good. But I feed raw and I KNOW my dogs look better than a dog on kibble." Now, you may not intend it that way, but implicit in that argument is the supposition that people who feed raw are able to discern their own dogs' condition, and those that feed kibble are perhaps not. Like I said, I've seen several dogs on high-quality grain-free and I can't see a difference.

Permalink Reply by Joanna Kimball on February 26, 2010 at 6:25pm

Do you want the studies that talk about resistance to disease, recovery from injury, exercise endurance, lean muscle mass, weight loss, longevity? I have ALL of those, just not sure if you want me to give you a lot of cites.

Permalink Reply by Beth on February 26, 2010 at 6:57pm

Yes, I would like them, because everything I have found says there are few or no big studies to back up the claims of raw. Now, if you are going to give me a study that shows that dogs do better on digestible protein from a meat source than from, say, corn gluten meal, that's not really backing up your list ranking up above. I'm talking about your claims about raw vs conventional kibble.

WIki says this:

"Few studies have been done to support the numerous beneficial claims of a raw diet. Raw feeders feel that the burden of proof rests on pet food manufacturers and veterinarians to show that commercial diets are superior and safer than raw diet." Which matches what I've seen, or rather haven' seen.

There have been some studies with cats. One started out promising:

"A 12-month study undertaken for the Winn Feline Foundation by researchers from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine sought to compare the effects of a whole ground rabbit diet with a high quality commercial diet on 22 kittens and adolescent cats. The ground whole rabbit diet (including fur and organs) was frozen in small batches and thawed prior to feeding. The researchers noted the superior palatability of the raw rabbit diet. Significant stool quality improvements were seen in the raw rabbit diet group after one week. After one month, the raw diet group had firm, non-odorous and well formed stools while the commercial diet group had soft formed to liquid stools. The raw diet group also appear to have better coat quality. There were no differences between the groups in terms of growth rate, degree of inflammation in the intestinal tract and the numbers of bacteria in the upper small intestine, although a slightly higher number of cats in the raw diet group were shedding pathogenic organisms (Giardia and Cryptosporidia) in their stools."

Very promising! But then things took a turn:

"Ten months into the study, one cat in the raw diet group died suddenly from dilated cardiomyopathy due to a severe taurine deficiency. 70% of the group had heart muscle change compatible with taurine deficiency."

They acknowledge handling or storage methods may have played a role:

" The researcher ascertained that the raw rabbit diet contained the minimal requirement of taurine but speculated that bacteria in the rabbit carcasses might have broken down some of the taurine. The processing and grinding of the rabbit might have also caused some of the taurine to be destroyed due to the low level of vitamin E in the diet."

So I suppose one must be very careful.

I found another study that showed that 30% of dogs fed raw chicken shed salmonella in their stool, compared to none on kibble. However, they acknowledge the sample size was too small to draw any meaningful conclusion; lack of funding was a factor (there were only 10 dogs in each group).

That same study introduction states:

"Claims made for this diet by its champions include improved immune function and overall health, increased energy, improved coat and skin condition, and decreased body odor for the dogs that are on it (1). No publications, other than anecdotal testimonials, support or refute these claims. In one small-scale study, the nutritional adequacy of several “natural” diets was examined: significant nutritional imbalances existed (2)."

Admittedly that was in 2002, so perhaps you have more recent sources. I would genuinely like to see them, because they seem to be kept off all the websites I can find.

Permalink Reply by Wendt Worth Corgi's on February 27, 2010 at 1:20am

Both Beth and Joanna have excellent points and this is an area that very much interests me. I do want to make one correction on your statement Beth about the study showing 30% of dogs eating raw chicken shed salmonella. Joanna had mentioned not to feed raw meat that this would make them sick. I also will say that many dogs have shiny coats, clear eyes, firm stools, and can even be somewhat toned. But the number one complaint is the shedding. I feed Eukanuba and yes my dogs have shiny coats, clear eyes, stools look great and produce healthy rolly polly pups but Sian who has been sent to Colorado is being fed a raw diet for the show ring and these friends of mine claim they don't have a shedding problem either like Joanna said. I work my dogs so they are well muscled but what if I switched to raw...would they be even better proportioned and handle more? I use to feed a cheaper kibble and switched to Eukanuba years ago when I had Akitas and I saw a huge difference in them. I know what it took to keep my horses in top condition for the show ring and many times it wasn't just in one bag.

I would love those sites Joanna if you would? Privately or publicly. I would also love to see a weekly feeding schedule that would be a balanced diet for your typical Corgi or one w/pups prior and post to lactating. Thank you.

Permalink Reply by Beth on February 27, 2010 at 11:04am

It's funny you mention horses, because I was thinking of that myself.

One of the things that bugs me is the idea that a certain diet (be it grain-free, high-protein, prey-model, etc) is ideal for all dogs. I know from my years of being a barn rat as a teenager (as well as riding and showing), and all those horse-care books I read that there are huge differences in dietary requirements among different types of horses. A Thoroughbred, or a warmblood or sport horse with a lot of Thoroughbred ancestry, typically needs large amounts of grain to keep on weight and stay fit, even when in relatively light work. As a matter of fact, a stable manager's big headache is the casual rider who gets a Thoroughbred off the track. Give him enough grain to keep him from looking ribby and he's fit to pop his buttons and his hapless rider can't stay on; cut his grain back to keep him not as hot and he looks like he's starving to death. Beet pulp, oil, and all sorts of things are used to try to find the balance between calories and energy.

On the other extreme, many grade ponies would founder or colic if given anything but the smallest amounts of grain, and a Shetland pony or something similar can live outside and be kept under fairly heavy work on nothing but hay and alfalfa cubes, with maybe a handful of grain in the feed tub to keep her from ripping down her stall when the cart goes up the aisle for the other horses.

Your typical grade "mutt" horse of random origin is somewhere in the middle, needing some grain if in heavy work, minimal or no grain if "at grass", and a small amount if in average work.

Now, the Thoroughbred is only a few hundred years old as a breed, and already we see this tremendous break in dietary requirements. As you know, hay and grain don't just have different calorie counts, but also very different nutrient profiles, and balances can be difficult to manage. Longitudinal diet studies seem a bit easier to come by for horses. One reason may be there is so much money floating around the horse world. Another is that there are plenty of big stables where a stable manager can tell you what every horse eats and its schedule to the minute for the whole day; they know what their pastures are seeded with, if there are cut-up apples in Suzy Q's mash because she's a fussy eater, they can tell you what type of apple and how many she ate in the last year. And finally, if a horse eating pounds and pounds of food a day eats one carrot that isn't accounted for, it's not nearly as big an impact on a diet as the same would be for a dog eating a cup of kibble a day.

Because of what I know about other domestic animals, I have trouble believing that the dietary requirements of a dog bred by poor farmers to work all day on scraps are the same as the dietary requirements of a dog bred by pharoahs to hunt all day in the semi-desert heat. Selection does matter, and selective breeding speeds up evolution tremendously compared to what we normally see in natural selection.

As for shedding, I have two and my male barely sheds except when he's blowing coat. I comb him once or twice a week to tidy him and look him over thoroughly, and I get a very tiny number of hairs, exclusively undercoat. He has a very hard outercoat. My girl, on the other hand, seems to shed undercoat constantly to one degree or another (though not nearly at the level as when she is blowing coat). She is fluff-factored and has the "glamour" coat; a bit longer than average, and very soft.

If my dogs were in heavy work (hunting every day, on a working farm, training for search-and-rescue) I would have them on a higher protein, higher fat, more nutrient dense kibble. But in their life as pets, keeping weight off them is more of an issue than building them up. To me it makes no sense to feed a denser kibble in smaller amounts and then add in more of the extras (pumpkin, green beans) to keep them happy. As it is, Jack spends a good five minutes after feeding time going back and forth between dog bowls, licking them and hoping for a bit more.

Permalink Reply by Beauty and the Beast on February 26, 2010 at 11:21am

I believe it really depends on personal experience.
Some dogs live on grain containing food with low meat content just fine and some don't.
Shiro had flaky skin, itchy eyes and recurring yeast infections, but that also had to do a lot with antibiotic treatments he had while still a puppy. So I switched him to a grain free food and within a month all the problems were gone.
So I guess look closely at your dog and see how he's doing on certain foods.
Also to control weight you can just feed less. 1 cup a day is enough for a corgi, but we also give some healthy snacks, carrots, proteins and veggies from our table.

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