What do people think of this diet?

The reason I'm asking is because I myself have had a very bad experience with it and so wondered what you all think about it.

My rottweiler was fed on the diet from a pup by the breeder and so we started to continue this diet for the first few days of taking her home as not to change the diet too rapidly. She ended up with food poisioning from this diet and was incredibly ill and at 8 weeks old she was lucky to recover from it and it not effect her growth too much.

Has anyone else had a bad experience? Or have you had good experiences with this diet?

It depends which diet exactly you're talking about, there are many different ways to raw feed. I've never had a problem with any of my dogs, the two I have now have been raw fed since pups, and the two oldies I rescued and have long since gone, were transferred to raw as they weren't doing very well on commercial complete foods, and they both did brilliantly on it. Out of both of mine I've raw fed since pups, I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the tummy upsets they've had, and I wouldn't put it down to their food, but general bugs they've picked up. Indie's now 5 1/2, and Tau's 4 1/2, the only time either of them see the vet is for their annual boosters (touch wood). I do my own raw diet, and buy the meat from the butchers, so I know just how fresh it is and it's fit for human consumption

Nothing but good experiences. I buy all my meat from the butchers or supermarkets so know it's from a reliable source (very occasionally I'll buy minced products from AMP, but again, it's a good source), and make sure I store it correctly. Mine very, very rarely have tummy upsets, and if they do, it's normally because they've picked up a bug, rather than food related.

Sorry to hear your pup was ill, but providing you take great care over purchasing, storing and serving the food, then you shouldn't have any problems.

It's a dogs natural diet, after all

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''Dogs are like chocolates, you can never have just one!''

Personally I havent had any bad experiences, with any of them, in fact their digestion process and poos, seem far better with raw, although they still have a small portion of dried food for breakfast, the larger main evening meal is raw.
I tend to by the AMP prize choice frozen blocks though, or fresh mince and meat from the super market thats human quality, and keep that in the fridge until ready to serve and just warm it for a few secs in the micro wave before serving to make sure its not too chilled.

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Personally no I do not advocate feeding raw. I have seen too many dogs get very sick and even die as a result of feeding raw diet, particularly raw bones. Between food poisoning in young puppies, intestinal impactions, broken and cracked teeth and in a couple of cases even intestinal perforations from supposedly "safe" raw bones it is not something I would ever consider feeding a dog of my own, nor advise any client of mine to feed either.

The raw principles are not logical either. The idea of feeding a domesticated species what its closest wild cousin would eat is not a sensible one. For a start a dog is not a wolf, they may be closely related but they are not the same species. For another thing wolves in the wild live only 5-7 years. We'd all be a bit upset if our dogs started dropping dead of old age at 5 years old. And whats more the diet an animal eats in the wild is rarely optimal. It may be adequate and they may have evolved to cope with it but for optimal health a diet that is carefully balanced to provide for all the animal's requirements is going to result in a longer and healthier life.

I was personally involved in a student study while at vet school and we tested almost 200 apparently healthy dogs fed a raw diet. All bar two had vitamin or mineral deficiencies severe enough to be considered a clincial problem. We also gave a selection of the dogs bone scans and tendon ultrasounds. In some of the dogs fed a raw diet from puppy hood significant abnormalities were found in both bone and tendon.

Given all this information I will always feed a balanced high-quality prepared food and as a practising nutritionist will always recommend that my clients do the same.

Six years or raw feeding and not one bad experience. . Except when chopping up raw offal and it makes me feel sick!

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After seeing how well my ferrets thrive on whole prey diet, I had to try the dogs on a more natrual diet.

No complaints here at all

Did you by any chance publish the results of this survey within the University? I'd be really interested to read it, as I know there's not a lot of University articles against or for raw.

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Sorry to disagree Lou3, but my bitch, Tau, is one of a handful of 0:0 hip scored, and 0 elbow graded Labs in the country. Nothing wrong with her skeletal development. Nor has she any tendon problems, she's as fit and lithe as a cat, although we don't mention the 'c' 'a' 't' word here

I'm dashing at the moment, but will come back re the vitamin/mineral thing, as I have done quite a lot of research into what foods have what content in, and do add blended veggies and extras to help give them a wide range of nutritional food, from which they should derive what they need. The food is all fresh and unprocessed, unlike commercial foods, and I believe much healthier.

I've heard of cases of dogs choking and dying on complete foods, so feeding any food, including commercially available brands is also a risk. I haven't had one incident with bones, either getting lodged or perforating guts/intestines etc, and have helped quite a few people switch to raw, as well as feeding my own dogs this diet. I also have yet to have anyone come back to me and even say their dog's condition isn't as good or has in fact deteriorated in comparison to commercial foods. Every single one has said their dogs appear to be in as good, if not better, condition, and they are happier than feeding commercially prepared foods.

Now one proviso I always say with raw feeding is that if your dog is doing fine with a commercial brand and you're happy with their feeding regime, then don't bother switching, unless you really want to give them the fresh ingredients.

Never had a problem either and around 80% of members on the malamuate forum also feed raw, the only bad experience there was a chicken bone that got wedged across the roof of a dogs mouth, dog panicked and off to the vet but removing it was simple!

My vet has never experienced any obstruction/food poisoning either, he said he has more cases for obstrucion with dog and toys or hide chews than anything else. I can't understand why your dog got food poisoning with you but was okay with the breeder, unless there was a mixture of cooked and raw food in the stomach at the same time during your change over. The reason dogs don't usually get salmonella etc. is because raw is digested quickly, too quickly in fact for bacteria to get a hold - if it's in the stomach at the same time as cooked, the cooked will slow down the whole digestion process and the raw digests too slowly, making way for bacteria build up in the dogs stomach and food poisoning. That's the reason raw and cooked should never be mixed together either in the same meal or too soon after a kibble/cooked meal.

I too would like to read the above mentioned study if it's available, to see the kind of research that has been done into the drawbacks of raw feeding, as I can only see the benefits myself.

Ther are plenty of links on the net telling you just whats in commercial dog food; http://www.thedogfoodconspiracy.com/...od-secrets.php

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Flynn - Kali - Britches - Bruce - T-Bo - Marty



"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack"