hey're omnivores.
This is an argument that has been travelling around the globe forever by some people, simply because they've observed that dogs will eat foods outside of meats, ( I think).
Personally, I doubt the Smithsonian Institute is wrong. All animals, when it comes to diet, are defined by their physical capacity to process certain foods (teeth, and their digestive system, etc) , and dogs have the teeth of a carnivore , not an omnivore like bears do. Mother nature doesn't lie, and I for one, will never stand up and say I know more than the scientists at the Smithsonian. Can you?
While it's true that dogs are not discerning eaters, sure they will eat carrots and blue berries, but they'll also eat feces, 3-week old road kill and used underwear - and if they are starving will eat dirt, wood, shoes, belts , drywall, carpeting and slews of other things.
A dog's teeth are incapable of crushing cellulose found in vegetable matter, ( this is a scientifically proven fact), so any food outside of meat offers no bio-availability to them - according to biologists/zoologists, so why would Mother Nature deem them an omnivore, yet not provide them with tools to process and digest these other foods?
So you cant just feed them raw meat or you'll end up with a nutritional deficiency
I wholeheartedly can tell you that you are absolutely wrong about that. The idea behind an appropriate raw diet is to feed a huge variety of meaty bones and whenever possible ( and it IS more and more possible), whole carcass to help ensure optimum nutrition - and by the way , to date there is no, "professional canine dietician", on home made diets. There are holisticians, and hoards of other people including vets, who can come up with gambits of their own recipes that constitute what dog nutrition should be. So home made diets are entirely dependent on whomsoever has developed it. Ironically, to date, the true professional canine dieticians out there, are still the scientists who work at dog food manufacturing plants. These people can at least tell us the minimum nutritional requirements needed by a dog for optimal nutrition. ( I won't count zoologists, because traditionally they aren't feeding domestic dogs, but wild animals of an entirely different nature).
A big problem with raw meat diets are also parasites.
In wild meat and game, yes, sure. In government regulated store bought meat? I doubt it, and the rule of thumb with both wild meat and fish is to freeze it for 2 weeks prior to serving it to dogs to eliminate the parasite problem. I can tell you first hand none of my dogs have ever had parasites. I have their stool tested annually. I also have annual blood tests done on our dogs and if they had nutritional deficiencies, I'm more than sure, certain markers would show up in their results.
but no matter what route you pick; raw meat, home made, or products like hills and medi-cal, your going to be spending alot of money to provide optimum nutrition..no cheap way out so just pick whats best for you and your dog.you know him best!good luck
This I absolutely agree with. We are what we eat and if we eat poor quality foods ( no matter what they are), we are not striving for optimal health in our dogs.
Bear in mind that commercial dog food hasn't been around all that long and was designed to support the "waste-to-profit" industry. It doesn't negate the fact that a dog`s digestive system, to date, have never been designed to eat processed foods.- and I'm fairly sure that on the steppes of the Himalayas, chows were never fed supplements, and it's more than likely they ate natural , raw foods just like most of them there still do today.
PS - by the way, I'm still working on my dissertation in nutrition and can tell you from first hand knowledge that in the many agricultural areas of Ontario, farm dogs are still only fed table scraps and whatever wild game they catch around the farm ( mice, rats, groundhogs, rabbits, etc), and most of these dogs still live to 18 - 20 years old. These dogs rarely, if ever, go to a vet, and to date, statistics don't show them dying of parasites -nor that parasites represent any major issue.