Fran is getting fat. Must excercise her more.

The entry forms for the dog show arrived and one of them said Bella is elligible for PUPPY STAKES cos she won a best puppy in group before.

O well.

She lost these few times to the scottie puppy. Zzzzz ..

MYTH: BONES ARE DANGEROUS AND HAVE NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE.

Cooked bones are quite dangerous. Cooking changes the structure of the bone, making it indigestible and easily splinterable. Raw bones rarely splinter and are fully digestible, even the collagen proteins that some people claim are "indigestible." It is mostly the byproducts of the digested bone that form the bulk of a raw-fed animal's feces. Dogs and cats do not need the fiber from grains and vegetables, and feeding such foods only results in the big, soft, malodorous stools everyone complains about. Let me repeat this for good measure: raw bones are completely digestible and are not dangerous for your animal. They are no more dangerous than kibble, and the only reasons they are made out to be dangerous are a) people misunderstand that raw bones are fully digestible while cooked are not, b) people want to scare you into thinking you are going to kill your dog if you give them bones, and c) bone-induced problems are blown way out of proportion in an effort to maintain the status quo of feeding kibble. What these people forget to tell you about are the 60,000 dogs suffering from bloat each year--of which nearly 20,000 die (Burrows, C.F. and L.A. Ignaszewski. 1990. Canine gastric dilatation-volvulus.

Journal of Small Animal Practice. 35:295-298. In Lonsdale, T. 2001. Raw Meaty Bones. pg 117)--or the number of dogs dying from choking on kibble--which is a more common occurrence than one hears of!! They also forget to mention the numbers of dogs that choked on or swallowed tennis balls, rocks, sticks, and a variety of other objects. These incidences FAR outweigh the numbers of dogs that have problems with raw bones. Just take a survey of veterinarians in your area and see what the most common blockage or choking culprits are in their specific practices. Don't forget to ask how many dogs they've treated (successfully and unsuccessfully) for bloat.

Yes, problems can occur with raw bones, just as problems can occur with feeding the "safer" kibble (bloat, choking, telescoping bowel, aspirated kibble leading to pneumonia, etc.). These problems typically occur in dogs that gulp their food or are fed small things like chicken wings and necks (the prime suspects of choking incidences on raw). Other culprits are the large weight-bearing bones of herbivores, things like knuckle bones, femurs, etc. These, ironically, are the kinds of bones pet food manufacturers and some vets recommend dogs receive regularly to help keep teeth clean! These bones chip or break teeth and can have pieces of bone flake off. If you are concerned about choking or about bones getting stuck or about broken teeth, here are some things you can do:

~Feed appropriately sized pieces. Don't be feeding a dog the size of a Rottweiler a little chicken neck or wing! Feed that dog a whole chicken. Bigger pieces force the dog to slow down and chew.

~Feed raw meaty bones frozen or partially frozen. The dog will have to work at it much harder and will be forced to slow down.

~Don't feed the big weight-bearing bones of large herbivores.

~Feed MEATY bones that are surrounded by and wrapped up in plenty of meat. Don't feed bare bones or bones that have hardly any meat on them.

~If you are still worried, learn the doggie heimelich maneuver and monitor the dog while it eats (which should be done anyway, regardless of what the dog is fed!). And always remember: more dogs die from choking on kibble or from bloat than from choking on raw bones. As for bones not being nutritious:

"Bones from prey are required by wolves as the major source of calcium and phosphorus for the maintenance of their own skeletons. Bones, in fact, are a surprisingly well-balanced food for canids" (Mech, L.D. 2003. Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, pg125).

A FIRST YEAR VETERINARY STUDENT COMMENTS
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OK, we just started Nutrition on Monday and it's already absolutely
unbearable. I guess I am just hopelessly naive, but I'm not sure I
actually believed until I got there, that they could think it was worth
anyone's time to devote a whole class to pouring dog or cat food out of a
bag and into a bowl. And that a woman who spent seventeen years of post-
high school education in veterinary nutrition studies could honestly
think that commercial food is the only viable option to feed pets. She's
not even making an attempt to teach us anything except how to evaluate
dry foods, how to read dry food ingredient lists, how to do all these
ridiculous calculations about Kcal, resting energy requirement, etc.

We had two hours of it today, once at eight and once at four. I didn't go
to the eight o-clock class, because every time I go, it literally ruins
the rest of my day. But, two friends, one raw-feeding and the other doing
her research to start, spoke to the professor at the end of the class
about some things she said that they questioned or didn't agree with.
They tried to pose their questions politely, but apparently the
conversation degenerated pretty quickly.

One of the things they asked about was her mantra, which she regularly
asks the class to _chant_, "pets need nutrients, not ingredients",
meaning, of course, that it doesn't matter what's in the food as long as
the companies guarantee certain nutritional content. My friends brought
up some non-species-specific ingredients, like corn, soy, wheat, etc. and
asked if she didn't see a problem with that. Her reply was that corn gets
a bad rap, that it's a perfect healthy ingredient, and that Native
Americans survived on it well enough, so why not dogs? (I'm not joking)
She also told them that high cooking temps/extrusion doesn't have any
affect on the health of the food at all. When they mentioned raw and some
good results they'd seen with it, she said that George Burns smoked and
drank every day and lived to be 100, but that didn't mean those were
healthy things to do.

She also said that raw is dangerous because of food borne pathogens,
referencing an E coli. 01:57 outbreak at a Jack In the Box as proof, even
though that deals with _humans_ eating _cooked_ meat?!? She then told
them that they're just being influenced by fad diets on the Internet with
no science behind them, and that she shouldn't just believe everything
they hear or read. When they tried to stand up for themselves, she fell
back on the "I'm one of only 50 certified veterinary nutritionists in the
country" as if that ended the argument. They were both so furious they
could hardly speak when I got there.

Then, for our second hour this afternoon, she taught us the nine steps
she uses to evaluate a commercial food if a client wants her opinion. See
what you think of these:

1. The bag, box, or can should contain the phrase "complete and balanced".
2. Products that contain this claim must also follow with one of two
AAFCO statements, i.e. the product was tested through feeding trials or
the calculation method.
3. The label should contain a toll free phone # so you can ask the
company questions if necessary.
4. The product should have a digestibility of at least 80% (you may have
to call the company to get this figure).
5. If you are feeding a dry product, it should contain a preservative
(all of which are completely safe according to her).
6. Reputation of the company.
7. Cost
8. Animals require nutrients not ingredient (this one has about three
paragraphs explaining why corn, soy and other ingredients are perfectly
suitable for dogs).
9. How is the pet doing while consuming the product?

That's it. Nothing about what the ingredients are, ingredient sources. As
long as it fits the above criteria, it's fine in her book. The really
ridiculous thing is, she keeps contradicting herself. She told us about
the experiment where they made a food out of leather boots, old tires,
peanut hulls, whatever, that met the pet food companies nutrient
requirements, but then she stressed that she thought Purina is a really
quality brand of food that has an unjustified poor reputation (she's
basing this on the fact that they claim their digestibility is 84%, which
is supposed to be good, I guess). She also talked about ingredient
splitting and how bad it is, but then showed us several labels of
acceptable (to her) pet foods that had five or six split fractions of one
ingredient.

I could go on with this forever, but I think this letter's long enough
already :) I just need to blow off some steam; I think I'm going to have
a sneer permanently affixed to my face after a couple months of that
class.
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