Ol Roy dog food - Page 10

Since SP has more or less made my appearance mandatory, lol, here we go.

Kibble and raw.

Raw food has the *potential* to have bacteria on it.  Its rare if you're feeding human grade food, but it does happen.  Lately with more and more frequency, sadly.

This is not, however, an issue for raw-fed dogs.  They have extremely short digestive tracts [unlike our very, very long ones] and they have much more stomach acid than we do, to kill off nasty things [as well as dissolve all that bone.]
Raw food goes in and out of a dog in less than eight hours.  It just doesn't spend enough time in the gut for any bacteria that may be present, and hasn't been killed by the far more acidic stomach acid, to colonize.

Kibble does a couple of things to a dog's digestive system.
First, it slows everything down.  To begin, the food has to be rehydrated by the dog, before it can be digested.  [this is not a factor if, as SP said, you're rehydrating the food yourself prior to feeding.]
Second, grains just take longer to break down and digest. 

But then there's a third thing that kibble does.
It changes the pH of the dog's stomach.  To digest carbohydrates [which kibbles are loaded with], the pH has to change.  It becomes less acidic. 

So, if you're feeding kibble, you're taking away the two protective mechanisms against bacteria-related illness from raw food- the quick passage, and the caustic stomach acid.

Most people don't have an issue if there are 24 hours between a kibble feeding and a raw feeding.
Hell, some people manage to feed them together and never run into an issue.
Chances are they got lucky and never got meat with bacteria on it.

Unfortunately, there's just no way to know.
After almost losing my dog to colitis, I personally won't ever feed raw and kibble again.  Its one, or the other, for me.

I totally agree with you aaron! I have been feeding my girl mostly raw since she got her perm teeth!  Any time she gets kibble it is premoistened to  guard against bloat!  Never seen a wild dog or wolf pushin a shopping cart or building a camp fire to cook over!

You've never seen a wild canid pushing a shopping cart, Raymond?  Me either.  They also eat from rotting carcasses, and a number of other less savory things, too.

I personally like the idea of raw feeding.  As I said, I've seen the difference, and the best kibble doesn't really compare to the health of a dog fed only raw. 

Ol' Roy almost killed my Prince, and I'll never stoop to feeding that again. In reality, as long as my butcher friend has animals to kill, I can have plenty of fresh meat, bone, and such for Oakley.  I am still working on finding a source for chicken, but so far the cheapest I can find is a ten pound bag of leg/thigh quarters, for 65 cents a pound.

Crys

 You shouldn't have to worry about bacterias with dogs.   You need to move them slowly into the raw diet.  But Dogs are similar to Hyenas.  They have very short intestine which means they have to eat like 10x-20x more then humans (compared to body weight).    But allows them to eat corrupt food that we could not eat.   Grabbing the good stuff and passing it before it does any damage.

I usually let my raw meat (horse) hang until it got that strong citrus tang (smell) and they went crazy for that smell.   If they had to choose between very fresh meat and stuff that I had hung for few weeks,  they always took the meat that had that special citrus smell.

And as SP said,  I also soaked my kibble (when I was feeding kibble,  usually during winter).   I simply used boiling water (tab) and let it cool.     I did this since I let all my dogs eat in close proximity to each other.  So they would eat fast so that their dish wouldn't be taken.   They could finish quite fast and often move and take over another's dish.  Gave me a very good idea about the pecking order in the bunch.   I usually let them do that. 

Did the same to my puppies.  Simple "O" shaped puppy dish with enough food for them -1.   Then I watched over the weeks which puppies grew fat and which grew lean.  I then knew who was a bully/assertive (the biggest one)  and knew that he/she needed a home where the owners where used to dogs and could take assertive actions.

And I knew that the lean one would be nervous / afraid / neurotic,  and matched them to a quiet home where they could hopefully grow and gain confidence.    For instance, Carlos (the dog in my profile picture) was one the lean ones when he was young.  Got bullied by all his siblings, always smallest.    Sold him to a retired fisherman in a very remote village in Iceland,  who fed him on dry cod most of his life,  he grew up to be a big strong assertive dog.  Great form.    Quite a surprise for me.


Oli

 And as to the point of Eating raw chicken=killing chicken,  thats a total myth.

My dogs never tried to eat any horse :)  And they had the opportunity.   Food is food.  I simply never allowed them near the actual "slaughter" process.   

I have never known a dog in a raw diet acting aggressively after starting the diet (its either in him/her or not).

ps.  It's only about 200 years since we started to give our dogs food each and every day,  before that time (10.000+ years)  they where supposed to get most of their food themselves. (rabbits, squirrels, birds,  etc)   Can't remove instinct like that over only 50--60 years.

I had a daughter of Apoll vom Laacher-Haus (who at a certain point in time, every single Narcotics dog in Iceland and all the bomb detection dogs where her progeny.   The guys in the K9 dept.  loved her offsprings.  I also sold a lot of her pups to officers in the US Navy base, that was here in Iceland (they saw her dogs in action).  )

Well,  She really liked lamb.  So the plot of land I was leasing for my horses (large, few hundred acres) ..  I would get wandering lambs from the neighbors.  She would every now and then,  grab a lamb and eat it almost whole.    
I never did anything about it since,  she was not killing for killings sake.  She was hungry and it really is a natural instinct.  So I simply paid the farmers and told them they could shoot her anytime she went into their land. (she never did,  kept to me like a shadow.  Wouldn't even take food from strangers)


Oli

No surprise that your female was drivey, as Apoll vom Laacher-Haus had Gundo vom Trienzbachtal as maternal grandmother.  I too had a dog with Gundo three generations back on the top of the sire line who had non-stop energy and a pretty tough character.     

Sure would be nice to have those lines more available today.   

I remember the first time her offspring went into service.  Before that time the K9 officers had always said that it was a matter of training, not breeding.  

Then for the first time the dog went into a narcotics search into one of our prisons,  their jaws fell when they saw the dog search,  get hit by an inmate, ignoring it,  keep searching,  get hit again, giving a growl,  attempt to kick him and he grabbed the leg and pulled the inmate down and threatened him and then kept on searching.  After that they where convinced that they had been wrong in the "training, not breeding" policy.

But yes,  she had a great drive.  She could single handedly shepherd like 20 horses to the funnel in a closed off area that was about 100 acres, and she loved doing it.

You know, Oli, I was thinking something along the same lines.  If allowed to be present during the butchering process, a dog would be more likely to kill.  That makes more sense. That is the reason why, when my husband butchered a hen I caught eating eggs (this was before I had Oakley), I tied up Misty, well away from sight and sound of where we were working, and didn't turn her loose until we had the chicken in the house in a pot, the guts and feathers incinerated, and the blood bleached and rinsed away. 

When we process wild game, we keep the dogs contained and well away from the processing area, too.

This has been a very interesting topic, and made even more so by your posting to it, Oli!

Thanks!

Crys

 Donald,

I agree there.  Apoll produced IMO great dogs,  good for work and show.  Perfect combination of drive and temperament. 

One of my best girl.

Oli: 
My black girl I put pic of on the post your Black shepherds, was a girl out of Nick  V Lascher-Haus  of which Apoli and  Ledi Von der Luisenstrasse produced

Nick was bred  to Dtiara vom Geigerhaus out of Vedor vom Fourniermublenbach and  Quanda v  Kirschenschrot with Orthos v Tiekerhook on the bottom of the mother side.

She is all about herding and very super calm temperament but when she goes to work she is drivey and very tough.   She is very tough and very very alert to every squirrel, every wild life anywhere withing a block of my place.

But she is gentle as a lamb to her offspring and to kids and other adults..one fine girl...she is my deer meat lover. I have good friends who bring me plenty of deer meat and I feed my females mostly the deer meat.

I use raw several weeks and then use kibble the later part of the month soaking it before putting down as mine all gulp their food.

I also had a lady at Walmart where I buy raw liver, ask who it was for and  when