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Location: Glasgow, UK
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 810
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Hali - you're absolutely right. Dogs can and do get energy from carbs. It's a complete myth that they can't. They don't NEED carbs. Nor do they NEED meat - there are plenty of healthy, aged vegetarian dogs! But most (probably all) types of working/athlete dog have been shown in studies to perform much better with carbs in their diet. Depending upon sport/work (i.e anaerobic/aerobic) anything from 10 - 70%.
Originally Posted by
Evie
You want the best for your dog? In my opinion that is a raw prey model diet. If you want help and info on how to feed that I'm willing to offer you my help; otherwise I'm not sure what the point is.
Hi Evie.
Yes, I want the best for my dog. No, I don't think the raw prey model is something I want to try. It really seems wrong for my dog. There are lots of equally healthy and very different ways of feeding a dog, so don't take my regection of your preferred feeding method to be a critisism.
The point is as it says on the tin (or thread title
) "Raw Beginner - Help Needed with Optimising Diet for Performance".
I think some of you are confusing two issues:
1. Is raw food good for dogs? (My research has led me to suspect is will be good for mine)
2. Do dogs need carbohydrates? (I'm pretty certain mine does to be at her best and to live the life that she's come to enjoy).
I'm interested in feeding my dog raw food. But I'm not buying into the methodologies that most raw feeders seem so keen on. I'm more interested in the raw meat/kibble mixes that sled dog and greyhound trainers typically feed their dogs. Not because I plan to feed my dog like a working greyhound or sled dog, but because I feel that these are the people that really test their dogs diets. They can't afford to let emotion or appealing feading methodologies dictate how they feed their dogs. If they get it wrong their dogs don't perform.
You are absolutely right! Burns is a very highly regarded food developed by a vet that was concerned about the poor quality of dog foods. Prior to creating the kibble he advised his clients to feed their dogs a mixture of 1/3 brown rice, 1/3 veg and 1/3 cooked meat with as much variety as possible. Apparantly those that did it were rewarded with astonishinly improvement in the health and fitness of their dogs. Very similar to the kind of improvements that BARFers and Prey Modelers say they see. My dog really does thrive on Burns - both in terms of health and fitness. There's a man that trains whippets and greyhounds at our local racing club. He used to feed a raw diet, but after switching to Burns he says he's never looked back. His dogs perform much better on it. He uses the Active formula, although the Burns people suggested to me that for sprinters their maintenance diet might be better based upon the figures from the book I quoted earlier. They also say it's completely fine to mix Active and Maintenance kibble to obtain the exact ration of carbs/proteins/fats to suit your dog and his sport. So if any of you have performance dogs and want to optimise both health AND performance it might be worth giving Burns a trial run. You could mix it with some raw food provided you're careful to workout the protein/fat/carb requirements of your particular dog.
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that we switched Beanie back on to Burns last night after she hit an all-time low in the park yesterday. The day before yesterday we decided to take the plunge and try her on raw only - no kibble for her evening meal. We also upped the fat content in her diet. Boy did her performance suffer for it! Paul had to bring her home early from the park because she was slow, panting, knackered and thoroughly dejected because she was getting trounced by dogs she normally runs rings around. This is an absolute first - it just wasn't our little dog.
We're just back from a three hour walk in the park. After just two kibble only meals she's improved significantly. She's still not back to her pre-raw energy levels but much better than she's been. The big test will be race day on Sunday. I would hope that three or four days back on kibble should have her back to her old self.
The plan is to keep her on burns until she's fully mature. The raw diet we've been feeding her for the last three weeks is having a dreadful effect on her performance. She's still fit and fast, but a shaddow of what she was on Burns. Now sure, she might adapt to raw if we just stuck it out, but she's still not fully mature and I simply don't want to risk keeping her on a food that her system clearly isn't coping well with. When she's fully mature we'll have a stable benchmark of her performance on kibble which will allow us to objectively assess the results of any dietry changes we make. Hopefully by then I'll have a good plan for introducing raw food WITHOUT a drop in performance (And if I'm lucky with an improvement in performance
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