I have had some questions asked lately about Raw Food, my opinion on dog foods in general, and about off season training. So, here is my two cents. These are just my opinions, so take it for what it’s worth…
A lot of the raw food that we (my wife and myself) get is purchase from a butcher here in town. Turkey tails or turkey necks usually make up their morning meal, or the meal after exercise in the morning. We buy in bulk, separate everything into gallon zip lock bags, then freeze it until it time to be used. In the evening they eat tripe or ground meat. The tripe has a lot of nutrients in it, as it is basically internal organs, so when they eat that they do not need anything added to the meat, other than a salmon oil pill which they always get in the evening. If it is ground muscle meat, not tripe, we add a vegetable mix in. We usually will go somewhere like Whole Foods and have them save their lettuce trimmings, old apples, etc… You actually want the vegetables to be past rip when you blend them as it is easier for a dogs system to break them down at that point. Conveniently that makes these things easy to get for free, as they would likely just get thrown out if you don’t ask for them. We put all the vegetables in a big blender, mix them all up, then freeze the mix in small Rubbermaid’s. When you need more vegetable mix you just pull one out of the freezer. You can search online to see what kinds of vegetables you should and shouldn’t feed your dog. There is no exact measurement that we use in terms of how much of what. The rule of thumb that we use is that greens make up the bulk of the mix, and other fruits and vegetables (mostly vegetables) are added to that. This mimics what a dog would naturally eat in the wild, as they may not necessarily eat fruits and vegetables, but they do eat animals that have grasses, miscellaneous wild fruits, wild vegetables, etc, in their organs. So by default they are ingesting these nutrients. All it takes is a table spoon or two added to a meal once a day. There are a lot of good books on the market these days about Raw Food, but just remember that it is not as hard or as complicated as most books make it seem. Dogs can eat raw bones of basically any type, even chicken bones, though we don’t give them raw pork or bones from pigs. I think that there is a good reason for that, but I can’t remember right now what it is… Bones become dangerous when they are cooked, as it is when they are cooked that they splinter. A raw bone will rarely ever splinter, and raw bones have a ton of really healthy nutrients in them. Cooked bones have none and they are dangerous. If your dog has never eaten raw food or raw bones start them out easy and supervise them. You don’t want them swallowing large bones whole, raw or not. Turkey necks and turkey tails, or chicken necks, have small bones in them that are easy for a dog to crush. I would start a dog that has never eaten raw food with bones in it on either turkey tails or chicken necks. With time a dog will teach itself how to eat raw food. We can leave whole raw featherless chickens out for our dogs and they will eat them safely, but they have been eating nothing but raw their whole lives. Remember that this is raw food and dogs can get sick from bacteria’s if it is not handled properly. Keep the food frozen or refrigerated until used, and clean up just like we would for ourselves. Dog bowls have to be washed, counters have to be wiped down, etc… Again, this is just how I do it, so please do some research on your own and figure out what works best for you and your dog(s).
When I was at the SHOT Show a couple of years ago I was talking to a guy who worked for a manufacturer of dog food supplements about dog food, and at the time I was shocked about what he said to me. In hindsight I am not very surprised at all as I believe that only a small percentage of people in that industry, and even a small percentage of veterinarians for that matter really understand pet nutrition. I think that a lot of veterinarians have been brainwashed to believe that major brand “dog food” is the best thing to feed your dog. Just look around most veterinarians offices at all of the brand logos, and advisements of these major dog food manufacturers. That is like your family doctor believing that the best thing for their patients to eat is McDonalds, and posting up the logo of the Golden Arches all over their office. Anyway, this guy told me that a coyote in the wild only lives to be about 4 years old, and all it eats is raw food, so raw food must not be good for dogs. My response to that comment is this; Dogs have been on earth for basically 50 million years, and for 50 million years they have eaten raw foods. It has been only in about the last 70 years that dogs have eaten what we refer to these days as “dog food”. Based on that information alone it is very clear that a dogs system is designed to eat raw foods. It is not designed to eat corn fillers, grain fillers, meat byproducts, preservatives, random chemicals, and other garbage that is in most “dog foods” today. And to respond the comment about the relatively short life span of a coyote, I think that it is very safe to say that it is due to factors such as sickness, injury, stress, and dieses. A coyote lives a hard life. They have to find a way to survive in weather below zero degrees and above 100 degrees. They have to hunt for food year round, and find water to drink even in the driest of years. They sometimes eat sick animals and have to scavenge dead animals. They can be injured while hunting, and can hunt for long periods of time with no food. This puts an enormous amount of stress on them. In my mind it is very clear that these are the reasons that coyotes don’t generally live very long, not because they eat raw food. Domesticate a coyote , feed it quality Raw Food, and see how long it lives. I guarantee that it will live to be very old… This guys argument was equivalent, again, to someone telling me that I am better off eating processed foods, preservatives, and chemicals equivalent to what’s in Cheetos and McDonalds than healthy raw whole foods. Seriously?
My wife and I took a class one time on Raw Food for dogs and the teacher had a German Shorthair with her that looked to be about 8 or 9 years old. The dog had eaten Raw Food its whole life, and it was 15! Can a dog live to be 15 years old or more on cheap “dog foods”? Absolutely. It is also possible for a person to smoke their whole life and die happily in their 90’s of something totally unrelated to smoking. The odds certainly aren’t in your favor though.
There are some very good “dog foods” on the market today, but there are probably 10 times as many really poor dog foods on the market. Please do some of your own research and do not simply believe what you read in advertisements. If the first ingredient in your dogs food, or any ingredient for that matter, is a corn meal, corn anything, or grain anything, I believe that it is garbage. That is just my honest opinion. Look for a dog food that is “GRAIN FREE”. Google “Grain Free Dog Food” and check out all the information out there. Corn and grains are a nothing more than fillers. So basically it is put in the food to fill space so that they can put less of the good ingredients in. You will find that with a “Grain Free” food your dog will have to eat less, and will poop less too, as it is no longer passing fillers with no nutritional value through its system. Dogs need very little carbohydrates in their food, and I believe (many people believe) that it is the high levels of carbs in the corn and grain fillers that cause allergies, sickness, and cancers. Dogs need high levels of protein and high levels of fat, so pay attention to those percentages. Please read the book, Food Pets Die For, and again, please take the time to do some research on your own. The internet can be a powerful tool. Again, there are very good “dog foods” available these days. Food that you can feel good about feeding your dog, so raw is not the only good option. If you want to do a partial raw diet you could do something like simply adding a raw egg to your dogs food, which has a ton of nutritional value. Or you can do a raw meal in the morning and a quality kibble in the evening. There are a lot of good options out there, so don’t feel like it has to be one thing or the other.
As far as offseason dog work goes, as I mentioned before I try to keep them on a year round conditioning program. Basically that means that they just get to run a lot. I believe that a lot of injuries occur in hunting dogs because people don’t do anything with their dogs for most of the year, they take them out for a handful of runs before the season starts, then run them into the ground during hunting season. The thing is you can decrease the weight of your dog in a month, for example, and you can increase its muscle strength in that same amount of time, but you cannot increase the strength of tendons and ligaments in that amount of time. So you might have a dog that looks fit, but it will still be prone to injury, and it is almost always tendons and ligaments that cause serious injuries, not muscles. A strained muscle is not that big of a deal, but a blown out ligament sure is.
Regarding off season “training” I reinforce basic commands around the house and when out running with the dogs. Commands like “whoa” and “come” are easy to reinforce basically anywhere. I try to run the dogs a lot on wild birds (not when they are nesting) as that is obviously the best way to duplicate hunting wild birds. If I use pen raised birds, I almost always use pigeons, and I set up scenarios that mimic hunting situations as closely as possible. I used to shoot a lot of pen raised birds in the off season over my dogs, but anymore I rarely shoot any at all. Pointing dogs love to point, and their reward is the opportunity to do just that. A good point, walking in and flushing the birds while the dog(s) hold that point, and the reward of some positive attention to your dog(s) goes a long way in the off season. You can certainly do a lot more than that, and with a young dog I definitely do, but these days owning experienced dogs I don’t do much more than this is the off season. I always say that if you have a dog from a really good hunting line, you just need to give it the opportunity to learn. Not all dogs have the same potential, so all you can ask of your dog is to hunt to it potential. It can never do that though if it doesn’t have the opportunity.
The reality is that a dog’s life is pretty short, and at the end of its life there would be nothing worse than regret. Make the best decisions for you and your dog(s) and be content with those decisions. Make a point each day to give your dog(s) some genuine love, as one day you won’t have that opportunity anymore, and you will wish that you still did. Everyone out there that has ever lost a pet knows what I am talking about.
Jay Kincaid
