# Raw food diet



## kashcheema (Apr 11, 2020)

Hi all,

What is everyone’s perception on a raw food diet for havanese pups and older dogs? I’ve read many benefits of this and have seen first hand the difference it makes to coat, teeth, breath smell, etc. I don’t mean whole chickens and bones here by the way, but more like the products Bella and Duke provide here in the U.K. I’ve never been a fan of the canned foods due to the ingredients quality, preservatives as well as the nutritional content. 

Regards. 


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

I think there are many good, appropriate ways to feed dogs. People should do their research and use what works best for them, their dogs and their lifestyle.


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## kashcheema (Apr 11, 2020)

krandall said:


> I think there are many good, appropriate ways to feed dogs. People should do their research and use what works best for them, their dogs and their lifestyle.


Of course, I understand but what's your view on this please, hence the question?

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## mudpuppymama (Mar 24, 2012)

My dogs are 12 years old and I have been feeding them a raw diet for over 10 years. I believe this is what is best for my dogs, however everyone has to decide what is best for their own dog. One thing you could do is try it and see for yourself if it makes a difference. You will get tons of differing opinions on this so you really have to decide for yourself. Like any type of food, it is important to use a good quality product that is balanced. I am a person who takes in information, however I like to see things firsthand and there is no way to do this without just trying it. It certainly will cause no harm to try it for awhile as long as it is good quality and balanced.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

kashcheema said:


> Of course, I understand but what's your view on this please, hence the question?
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I think raw is fine. I don't feed it because I have a compromised immune system, so it's not good for ME to have bearded dogs eating raw then whuffling around my face. 

That said, it's hogwash that dogs who are fed raw automatically have "better coats". If your dog doesn't have a healthy coat, you are doing something more wrong than just feeding it food that has been cooked or processed in some way. How do you think these dogs coats could be "improved"


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## EvaE1izabeth (Nov 14, 2017)

There are a few threads that have links to studies on some of this, but they are probably more than a year old. Something to look into as you are researching commercial raw food is the different methods of processing. There are a few different ways that they process the food in order to presets as many of the nutrients as possible while making the food safe for dogs and those handling it, and there are advantages and disadvantages of each. Personally, I think high quality is the most important, but I don’t know what that looks like where you are since it can be subjective and the brands will be different. 


Since you’re seeking out opinions, this is definitely that. People have strong opinions about what they feed, but I don’t believe the answer is the same for everyone. 

I’m not interested in cooking for my dog because it requires a lot of nutritional planning. My first choice was frozen raw patties, and I transitioned from the food type recommended by our breeder a little before he was a year old I think. I see frozen as a good alternative to canned food because it has better nutritional value and an added benefit is it doesn’t smell as bad as canned food. It ended up not working out for us since it has to be defrosted before meals and it isn’t very portable. I eventually settled on a combination of high quality baked kibble and freeze dried raw patties. I also supplement with fresh food. This is what works best with my schedule and the way we live, as well as our ideas regarding nutrition. 

This is completely my opinion, but I also think there’s a point where the trade off in nutrition starts to diminish when it comes to comparing high quality foods. For instance, I could do freeze dried patties all of the time instead of for part of his meal, but I personally think that the added benefit isn’t proportionate to be cost difference. It would make more sense to me to move to fresh food rather than only feed freeze dried patties because they’re so expensive, and I don’t think the nutritional value is double that of high quality kibble. To me it’s a good compromise to buy a bag of freeze dried once a month and mix it in. 

If I change food in the future, it will most likely be to something like Honest Kitchen, which is really interesting to me, but I don’t know what’s equivalent in the UK. It’s a base mix you add fresh protein to. I like the idea of the fresh dog food delivery service, but it’s really expensive. We started family meal kit delivery a few months ago and we really, really love it, so the idea is appealing. I’m just not sure if I want to commit to it for two dogs, since we’d like to add another Havanese to our family at some point. I don’t feel like we could go backwards from fresh food if I changed my mind.


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## Melissa Woods (Feb 21, 2019)

Agree that there are many good options. Raw would horribly horribly make me ill. Like it's seriously a mental health issue for me. My dogs get fresh (from a service who knows what they're doing) delivered to my house, mostly because it doesn't have a smell to it. Downside is it is expensive. 200ish a month for 2 small dogs. Now, if you are going outside of commercially prepared diet (there are commercially prepared raw foods and fresh)--whether raw or homemade fresh food, you HAVE to do it right or risk serious problems. so that is the downside. plenty of feeding options, but commercially prepared food is balanced correctly for dog (regardless of WHICH option you choose).


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## EvaE1izabeth (Nov 14, 2017)

krandall said:


> I think raw is fine. I don't feed it because I have a compromised immune system, so it's not good for ME to have bearded dogs eating raw then whuffling around my face.


Yes, this is a legitimate concern. Raw increases the risk of salmonella in particular with immunocompromised individuals. I read several studies on this and chose a brand that used a specific type of processing, I don't remember the name of process, but it resulted in the least amount of bacteria. The trade off is that means less nutritional value, but in this case I'm okay with the marginal nutritional improvement because the cost is equivalent to other high quality food.


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## Molly120213 (Jan 22, 2014)

I feed kibble that has a raw coating topped with freeze dried raw mixers. I add some water to the morning meal only, as my dog does not always eat her evening meal.


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## mudpuppymama (Mar 24, 2012)

As far as the dog’s coat, I think healthy dogs have better looking coats. So whatever food results in a healthy dog should mean a healthy coat as well, whatever food that happens to be. My dogs do better digestion wise on raw. I am not sure about coat impact.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

EvaE1izabeth said:


> Yes, this is a legitimate concern. Raw increases the risk of salmonella in particular with immunocompromised individuals. I read several studies on this and chose a brand that used a specific type of processing, I don't remember the name of process, but it resulted in the least amount of bacteria. The trade off is that means less nutritional value, but in this case I'm okay with the marginal nutritional improvement because the cost is equivalent to other high quality food.


The problem with freeze-dried raw is that I have yet to find one that does not contain fish oil... which Kodi can't have. Same problem with all the fresh/delivered food options, which I've also considered. (or some other ingredient he can't have! LOL!)


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## kashcheema (Apr 11, 2020)

mudpuppymama said:


> As far as the dog's coat, I think healthy dogs have better looking coats. So whatever food results in a healthy dog should mean a healthy coat as well, whatever food that happens to be. My dogs do better digestion wise on raw. I am not sure about coat impact.


This i agree with. My brother has a Rottweiler pup (7 months old) and then one thing he gets commented on most is his coat. The difference between his coat next to the Rottweiler on my road is day and night. My brother's pup is on a raw food diet which is delivered every month frozen.

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## JaJa (Jun 28, 2020)

Mudpuppymama, do you make your own raw food diet or have it delivered? I’ve been thinking about this possible option for a while. I have a friend who makes her dog’s food (cooked) herself and also gives them supplements based on her vet’s recommendation. Right now, our dogs have part high quality kibble and chicken, chicken liver, carrots, pumpkin, coconut oil, 1 teaspoon of peanut butter, blueberries and a couple of supplements our vet recommended since they don’t get full portions of kibble.


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## mudpuppymama (Mar 24, 2012)

JaJa said:


> Mudpuppymama, do you make your own raw food diet or have it delivered? I've been thinking about this possible option for a while. I have a friend who makes her dog's food (cooked) herself and also gives them supplements based on her vet's recommendation. Right now, our dogs have part high quality kibble and chicken, chicken liver, carrots, pumpkin, coconut oil, 1 teaspoon of peanut butter, blueberries and a couple of supplements our vet recommended since they don't get full portions of kibble.


JaJa, I mostly make my own. However, I do also feed some ground whole prey from My Pet Carnivore. Making your own is not that hard but you do have to make sure it is balanced and put effort into sourcing ingredients. The sourcing of ingredients has gotten easier since when I started. For example, I have items such as heart, chicken necks, liver, kidney, spleen, pancreas, tongue, testicles and raw green tripe. When my husband goes to the freezer he asks, "where is the human food?" There are many opinions on how to feed homemade so good to have a mentor and see what works best for your dog. I think some of the commercial raw products are good so that is an option for people not wanting to make their own and the balance should be there.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

kashcheema said:


> This i agree with. My brother has a Rottweiler pup (7 months old) and then one thing he gets commented on most is his coat. The difference between his coat next to the Rottweiler on my road is day and night. My brother's pup is on a raw food diet which is delivered every month frozen.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


But you don't know what the other dog is eating. It could also be on raw, but not a balanced diet. A good healthy diet is not necessarily raw, and a raw diet is not necessarily a healthy balanced diet.  Raw can be great, but not necessarily. It's a choice, that's all.


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## Melissa Woods (Feb 21, 2019)

I am extremely leery when I hear that diet affects coat dramatically. Hair is dead. If hair was affected by diet, I'd have perfect, shiny hair. Instead, I deal with dry hair. The way to better hair, for me, is through products! Now, MALNUTRITION will affect fur/ make human hair fall out. So I can imagine that a poor, unbalanced diet would affect coat. But generally, a high quality diet of any kind is going to result in a normal coat and an especially beautiful or poor coat under those parameters is probably just the way the dice rolls. Or a grooming issue. But feeding kibble vs raw vs fresh will not result in a dramatic coat difference. Neither will slathering coconut oil on a dog's food or any of the other myths.

All that to say, a balanced diet is a balanced diet.


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## mudpuppymama (Mar 24, 2012)

krandall said:


> But you don't know what the other dog is eating. It could also be on raw, but not a balanced diet. A good healthy diet is not necessarily raw, and a raw diet is not necessarily a healthy balanced diet.  Raw can be great, but not necessarily. It's a choice, that's all.


I agree. All raw is not created equal. In addition, there are many other things that impact a dogs health such as over vaccination, stress, and exposure to chemicals to name a few.


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## kashcheema (Apr 11, 2020)

krandall said:


> But you don't know what the other dog is eating. It could also be on raw, but not a balanced diet. A good healthy diet is not necessarily raw, and a raw diet is not necessarily a healthy balanced diet.  Raw can be great, but not necessarily. It's a choice, that's all.


The other Rottweiler Bella eats canned food as i know the owners.

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## EvaE1izabeth (Nov 14, 2017)

Some wet food is higher in nutritional value than kibble. We had to mix wet food with our puppy’s kibble in the beginning and I had a really hard time with it because of the smell, even though I bought high quality. To most people it was probably like a strong canned stew, but I was glad to be done with it at 6 months. The reason I originally tried to switch to frozen is because it doesn’t smell like canned/wet food, but it retains more nutrients than kibble.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

kashcheema said:


> The other Rottweiler Bella eats canned food as i know the owners.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


Just the fact that she eats "canned food" is NOT why she does not have a good coat. You can learn nothing from an "N of one". MANY successful show dogs eat nothing but kibble and have beautiful coats. Genetics have to do with it, other parts of care have to do with it, hormones... on and on.


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## kashcheema (Apr 11, 2020)

krandall said:


> Just the fact that she eats "canned food" is NOT why she does not have a good coat. You can learn nothing from an "N of one". MANY successful show dogs eat nothing but kibble and have beautiful coats. Genetics have to do with it, other parts of care have to do with it, hormones... on and on.


I understand however I'm sure the diet plays a factor in the coat. Albeit not much.

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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

kashcheema said:


> I understand however I'm sure the diet plays a factor in the coat. Albeit not much.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Sure. A POOR unbalanced diet, fed for a long time can affect the coat quality. But the fact that it is canned vs. raw doesn't make it better or worse. That tells you nothing about its nutritional value.


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## mudpuppymama (Mar 24, 2012)

kashcheema said:


> The other Rottweiler Bella eats canned food as i know the owners.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


There are food categories and then various levels of quality within those categories. For example, a dog could be eating Alpo or Old Roy which I doubt stands up against others in their class.


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## EvaE1izabeth (Nov 14, 2017)

I think diet plays a part but only to the degree where it optimizes coat potential, which is based on other factors. That’s why it’s really impossible to compare or measure by observation alone, and when we do it’s really anecdotal. There will always be a story of someone changing diets and their dogs coat dramatically improving, but it’s rare, and I think more often the change improved the quality or nutritional balance of the food, or addressed a food allergy or other underlying issue unique to that dog. Where diet makes the biggest difference is long term health, but even then there are limits to it’s benefits because of genetic factors or predisposition to certain diseases. I’m not dismissing the importance of diet, just being realistic about how much control we really have over these things and it’s impact. 

If you choose diet based on your personal beliefs regarding nutrition, and then research the highest quality within your budget, you’ll find the right option. But don’t expect it to make drastic differences in your pet, is I think the general consensus. 

When it comes to comparing foods that are generally high quality, and it’s the difference between 8/10 and 9/10, the difference is negligible, but the difference compared to 3/10 is huge. 8/10 is the better choice if it’s the best choice for the family. 7/10 might be the best choice if a particular food addresses a unique health problem. And THEN there’s the matter of, what determines the criteria for a 10/10 food anyway? In the u.s. this question opens a whole different can of worms because the standards and federal regulation of dog food is so poor.


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