Trying a raw food or frozen diet for your dog

Our 40 years living with dogs have made it abundantly clear that feeding a balanced raw diet — which emulates what Buddy would eat in the wild — is the best and most efficient way to feed a dog. A correctly formulated raw diet provides all the known nutrients in a form the dog can quickly digest and turn into energy. Dogs fed this way tend to live longer and healthier lives than their counterparts who are fed commercial dry foods.

According to Pet Businessmagazine, which is the trade magazine for the pet food industry, one-third of all dog food sold now in pet stores and some supermarkets is in the form of “natural” or “raw” diets. This includes kibble with organic ingredients, frozen food, and dehydrated foods. Some of these foods are complete in themselves, but others suggest adding raw ingredients.

We have always felt that many disease states — including musculoskeletal disorders like hip dysplasia, skin diseases, and gastric upsets — certainly are exacerbated (if not actually caused by) poor nutrition. Our belief about this has since been confirmed by veterinarian Marc Torel and scientific journal-ist Klaus Dieter Kammerer in their book, The Thirty Years War: 1966–1996(Transanimal Publishing House). For more information on feeding raw diets, visit rawfed.com/myths/research.html.

Many natural and raw diets are available for you to choose from, but making the correct choice is even more difficult than comparing commercial dry foods. We apply the same criteria to the examination of natural and raw food diets as we do to commercial dry foods: Both need to be clinically tested and provide a balanced diet for a dog. Diets, especially homemade ones (raw or cooked), that don’t meet these criteria can do more damage to your dog than dry dog food.

Many of the new raw and frozen diets aren’t balanced and haven’t had any long-term clinical testing. Some even use ingredients that are known to be canine allergens. Some use indigestible vegetables, and some lack fiber and the correct ratio of nutrients. Other diets suggest feeding raw chicken wings or backs; that sounds easy enough, but it’s hardly a balanced diet. Just because a food’s ingredients are advertised as human grade, organic, or whatever doesn’t mean they’re good for your dog. So, clearly you must be cautious when choosing your dog’s raw or frozen diet. Write to the manufac-turer and ask how many years of clinical testing have been done on a particu-lar diet. You’ll be surprised by the answers. Generally testing is done over a six-week period with dogs in a laboratory.

So are any of the available raw or frozen diets balanced? Of course. Just be vigilant in choosing the correct one for your dog. Read the label to make sure they’re complete. If they aren’t, read the guidelines as to what you should add to make them complete. Long-term feeding of an unbalanced diet can create a battery of new health problems not seen before in dogs.

Before changing Buddy’s diet, we recommend that you take him to the vet for a baseline blood test. After Buddy has been on his new diet program for six months, have the vet perform another blood test and compare it to the previous one. The follow-up blood test will tell you whether his new diet is an improvement and whether he’s in nutritional balance.

A dog’s digestive system isn’t the same as a human’s — it’s much shorter and food is processed more quickly. The dog’s stomach acid is very strong, and in a healthy dog, this acid kills any bacteria that enter it. A sick dog, or a dog switching over to a raw diet from a kibble diet, needs a transition diet to rebuild that stomach acid to the point where it can deal with either E. coli or salmonella.

Feeding raw meat or raw chicken to a dog can cause digestive upsets if the meat contains high levels of bacteria in the form of E. coli or salmonella. Although a dog that has been fed raw foods for a long time can easily deal with both of these bacteria, a sick dog or a dog just being transferred over to a raw diet may experience digestive problems. We suggest you buy your meat or chicken from a good supermarket where the products are for human consumption.After the transition diet is followed (see the later section “Transferring Buddy to his new diet”), you need to use a simple method of killing bacteria the first time uncooked meat is used: Put the meat or chicken into a sieve in the sink, pour boiling water over it, and cool it before feeding. Doing so kills the bacteria. After taking this step for a couple of weeks, the stomach acid will be strong enough to deal with the bacteria without problems, and you can intro-duce the raw meat.

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