Fellow dog owners - what food do you feed?

[Skiploder]

Dogs are not obligate carnivores. Cats are obligate carnivores.

Obligate carnivores are those that require a diet almost exclusively of meat. Being obligate carnivores, cats require a compound found exclusively in meat and other animal tissues - taurine.

Taurine is a necessity for all animals, but because it is absent in plant material, herbivores and omnivores must produce it from other amino acids in their diet. Obligate carnivores must eat other animals that contain taurine in their meat and organs. Cats are hence obligate carnivores.

Dogs can synthesize their own taurine from other amino acids in their diet, which indicates that they are not obligate carnivores in terms of physiology. However not all dog breeds are the same. Some giant and large dog breeds tend to have shorter intestines than smaller dogs (which is measured relative to body length). Also larger dogs can be afflicted from taurine deficiency (due to higher excretion in their urine) more often than smaller dogs. Therefore large dogs probably require more meat in their diets than small dogs to ensure good health.

The BS blanket statement that dogs do not benefit from fruits or vegetables is just that - BS. Cats don't, dogs do.

Dogs - as do many members of the order carnivora - will eat anything they can in the wild. Dogs may not have amylase in their saliva, they secrete it from their pancreas - something that cats cannot do. Amylase is the enzyme that digests starches. Again, come to the argument with facts, not blanket statements, and certainly not your individual preferences.

Dogs have evolved/adapted to eat plant material - period. They can extract nutrition and sustenance out of it.

I have had dogs lead long and healthy lives on kibble and I know people who have had dogs lead long and healthy lives on proper raw diets. I have fed my dogs raw in the past and have been honest that I saw absolutely no difference healthwise.

All of this talk about allergies and other problems with digestion has less to do with canine nutrition and more to do with the epidemic of inbred and functionally deficient dogs that dominate the landscape. Food allergies and environmental allergies are issues in which diet can play a factor, but which poor genetics is an undeniable cause. Most food allergies in canines centers on intolerance to proteins - not grains. Talk to someone who tests dogs for food allergies and ask them what the number one food allergy is for dogs.......hint - it involves proteins - not carbs.

I mountain bike with my patterdale and hunt with her 9 months out of the year. Like most patterdales, she comes from stock not burdened by out of control line breeding, or by fads that promote physiological mutations that favor form over function. On her grain free kibble diet, she can hunt on a 90 degree day, digging into den after den for 4 to 8 hours, or run along a mountain bike for miles. Your pugs, bulldogs, et al cannot do that on a raw diet, a kibbled diet or on any diet.

For all of you that think that being a carnivore means only eating raw meat - what is a bear classified as? How about a bamboo eating panda bear?