Fruits & Veggies?

[FurMonster Mom]

I do not feed Babee fruits or veggies.  She gets the same kind of meals as the cats; meat, bones, & organs (80-10-5-5).

I made this decision based primarily on all the information I've seen on the physiology of dogs as carnivores and the correlation with wolves and their natural diets.  As carnivores, dogs do not have the digestive "setup" to break down plant matter (cellulose).  Heck, it's even stated at the very beginning of that lovely sawdust article put out by a pet food industry mag.
It's my understanding that wolves will occasionally dig up tubers during hard winter months, but that it is usually a last resort as a survival mechanism.

So, why do I constantly see sites (even Raw Foodie sites) that say it is necessary to include fruits & veggies in a dog's diet?
It's even stressed that fruits & veggies need to be cooked to break down the cellulose/fibers for the dogs to even get any kind of benefit from them.... so again, why?  It's not as if wolves tote around a little Bunsen Burner to cook their 'taters... why would you treat a dog's diet any differently? 

And while I'm on a roll here... can somebody explain the whole "dogs need carbohydrates" thing to me?  I don't get it.



Incidentally,  when Babee had her latest bloodwork done as part of her Addison's maintenance, everything was "normal".
.

[Mo]

The pet food industry is good at convincing people.  They say that it is good for your pet, and the vet says that it is good, so why would anyone think otherwise?  Besides, doesn't "Fancy Feast Elegant Medleys Wild Salmon Florentine with Garden Greens in a Delicate Sauce" sound much more appealing to a person then "chicken heart & tongue in a blood marinade"? 

I don't remember who was the first who thought that dogs need a large amount of fruits/veggies in their diet, but I think it has to do with the BARF (bones & raw food) method of raw feeding.  I personally don't think dogs need plants at all, especially after looking at the diet of a wolf.

The following quotations are taken from L. David Mech's 2003 book Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation. Mech (and the others who contributed to this book) is considered the world's leading wolf biologist, and this book is a compilation of 350 collective years of research, experiments, and careful field observations. These quotes are taken from chapter 4, The Wolf as a Carnivore.

"Wolves usually tear into the body cavity of large prey and...consume the larger internal organs, such as lungs, heart, and liver. The large rumen [, which is one of the main stomach chambers in large ruminant herbivores,]...is usually punctured during removal and its contents spilled. The vegetation in the intestinal tract is of no interest to the wolves, but the stomach lining and intestinal wall are consumed, and their contents further strewn about the kill site." (pg.123)

"To grow and maintain their own bodies, wolves need to ingest all the major parts of their herbivorous prey, except the plants in the digestive system." (pg.124)

Taken from http://rawfed.com/myths/stomachcontents.html

Dogs are so much like wolves physiologically that they are frequently used in wolf studies as a physiological model for wolf body processes
(Mech, L.D. 2003. Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation).

Additionally, dogs and wolves share 99.8% of their mitochondrial DNA (Wayne, R.K. Molecular Evolution of the Dog Family). br>This next quote is from Robert K. Wayne, Ph.D., and his discussion on canine genetics (taken from www.fiu.edu/~milesk/Genetics.html). "The domestic dog is an extremely close relative of the gray wolf, differing from it by at most 0.2% of mDNA sequence..."

[Amber]

I was just about to start a topic on this but I came across this one which is why I am necroing this thread.

Cats don't need vegetables, period. I know that. I also understand that dogs are facultative carnivores, which is not the same thing as being an omnivore.

However, I may be making progress to getting River on RAW, and I have to decide whether or not to include vegetables/fruits in her diet. People can say that wolves don't eat fruits and vegetables all day long, but there are videos to the contrary. It varies by region/time of year. It may not make up a large part of the diet, but they eat fruit and berries sometimes. I don't know if they naturally eat veggies, but a plant is a plant. They eat some plant matter by their own free choice, for whatever reason.

Saihlei, a dog I rescued and fostered for a couple of months before placing her in a home used to raid our vegetable garden every chance she got. She was particularly fond of strawberries, melons, and tomatoes (I know, I know that was bad, I tried to keep her out of the garden as much as possible.) My brother has game camera footage of wild coyotes in his father-in-law's back yard eating pears off the ground and off of low hanging branches, and they supposedly go after the crab apples too.

I would like input on this. I don't really remember where I was going with this... it takes too ong to type on a phone. So until I find my train of thought again... comments?

[Pookie]

I don't think there's any harm in letting a dog eat some  fruits or veggies, as long as they're not toxic.  My understanding was that dogs are carnivores, however in times when prey is difficult to find or catch, or of starvation, they would eat plants.  But I could be wrong, and maybe they just like plants now and then for the added fiber or variety.   

[DeeDee]

I would like input on this. I don't really remember where I was going with this... it takes too ong to type on a phone. So until I find my train of thought again... comments?

I grew up with our dogs eating our table-scraps, including all the vegetables we ate. My parents' dogs grew up like that. What we ate was a large part of Daddy's GSD's, with canned Ken-L Ration added so they'd have enough to eat. My parents memories of their dogs, and how long they lived, are a large part of why we've moved back to a more natural way for V&B. But going back to a more natural way means feeding them leftovers from their humans as was done for hundreds of years before the inception of McDogfoods. That included vegetables.

Dannyboy used to steal ripe tomatoes too. He also had a thing for carrots and salad. Sharkly was a normal piggy-Corgi and would eat anything.

Vlad and Barkly have always gotten a raw veg & fruit puree even when I was still feeding a partial kibble diet. They love it. I give it to them for their lunch because I know there are fresh antioxidants in it that can't be gotten any other way. I also still give them leftover vegetables from our dinner.

Vlad has become a terror now that he discovered Asparagus though. I have to get really firm with him about staying away from dining humans when I cook it, and it still doesn't always work to curb his head-butt-begging. Vlad will also act like that with oranges if someone gets one. After we've eaten, Barkly will eat everything but broccoli, but he doesn't beg for anything the way Vlad does.

Really the only things I don't give them on a regular basis are items poisonous to them and things like potatoes and grains or other fattening, low-glycemic foods. I buy their veggies for pureeing on a seasonal basis. Whatever's cheaper, but I always try to have at least one each of red, yellow, and green veggies. If I HAVE to, I resort to the freezer case to make sure they get one of each color. Generally I try to always include bananas and one other fruit that aren't what I buy for myself each week. Fruits I eat are shared treats when it's not mealtime.

I realize that most raw feeders eschew feeding dogs anything but meat products, but I've tried not giving them the raw puree. Vlad started begging all the time, and they were grazing on grass every time they went outside. Grazing told me that now they were missing something, so that's why I started it back and haven't quit again.

All of those reasons are why I give mine fruits and vegetables despite the fact that they're carnivores. It's really controversial though, so I don't know what to tell you.

[Middle Child]

I don't think there's any harm in letting a dog eat some  fruits or veggies, as long as they're not toxic.  My understanding was that dogs are carnivores, however in times when prey is difficult to find or catch, or of starvation, they would eat plants.  But I could be wrong, and maybe they just like plants now and then for the added fiber or variety.   

Sounds like opportunistic feeding to me.   It's there, so I'll eat it.

[Amber]

Thanks

I remember the rest of my thought process now. Since I can't keep weight on River on grain-free kibble, is she likely to do badly on raw? I understand on a basic level that the two are not even remotely the same, but honestly, before she had so much trouble with grain-free food I would never have thought that a dog could possibly need grain in her diet to do well... it goes against everything I *thought* I knew about dog nutrition. And its causing me to question EVERYTHING.

I don't know how one goes about including grain in a raw diet, of if I even should. Now that she is back up to a healthy weight I am extremely nervous about potentially causing another decline.

Amber despises turkey but loves sweet potatoes, so in order to get her to eat turkey I mix some sweet potato baby food in with it. I don't do this often, just when I come across a deal on turkey that I don't want to pass up, and I don't do this with other proteins. Should mixing organic baby food vegetables and baby cereal in with River's raw help keep weight on her? Will it cause problems?

And me feeding River raw is currently dependent on her eating the same Hare-Today grinds I get for the cat. I know when transitioning a dog one typically removes the skin and doesn't feed organ meat initially... with the HT grinds it is all included together, so there is no way to remove it. When Kite was a pup, I did at one point attempt to get her on raw food, and even with just skinless chicken quarters she had explosive mucousy diarrhea, (I suspect it was because I didn't know whether or not to check for enhanced meats back then) and I was forced to put her back on kibble after only a week. If River doesn't transition seamlessly, without ANY problems WHATSOEVER, any chance I have of feeding her raw is going to go out the window, so I need to know exactly what I am doing before I even attempt it.

[Pookie]

Don't wolves also eat the stomach contents of their prey?  I've heard conflicting information on that so I'm not sure.  But if so, remember that what's in the stomach is digested for them, kind of like Dee's puree (no offense, Dee!).  You're also not talking a huge amount of plant matter compared to meat, bone and organ.

You could try just adding a veggie puree or some chopped veggies to her current diet, just to see how she'd handle it.  Veggies, like grains, would add fiber.  I'm not sure I would feed grains with raw, since it's my understanding they digest at different rates.  But you could feed the puree separately instead of mixed with the raw.

Going back to the wolves for a moment, they eat prey that eats grass (grains), however those grasses aren't GMO like what's in most wheat/flour/etc. products that we have access to.  That would be another concern of mine if you were to add grains to River's diet.  Other plants (fruits/veggies) don't concern me, but grains do.  Just my 

I hope I didn't make things even more confusing!

[Shadow]

 

I remember the rest of my thought process now. Since I can't keep weight on River on grain-free kibble, is she likely to do badly on raw?

http://www.thewholedog.org/artkibble.html

[DeeDee]

  But if so, remember that what's in the stomach is digested for them, kind of like Dee's puree (no offense, Dee!). 

None taken. Pureeing them gets Barkly eat all of it. Otherwise he picks around and eats only the fruit and carrots--leaving about 3/4 of what's there for Vlad to scavenge. Fruits and carrots alone aren't going to give him all of the antioxidants I want going in him.

[Amber]

I don't know if everyone saw the other thread, so I will explain again.

River maintains  a healthy weight on the grain-inclusive varieties of farmina (and on the lamb and millet Canine Caviar, but *I* like Farmina as a company better). On every single grain-free kibble I have attempted to feed her - Orijen, the Farmina grain free line, Instinct, Earthborn Holistic, Solid Gold (I got desperate), etc. - she dropped weight rapidly, no matter how much I fed her or how many meals I broke it into. I intially balked at the idea of putting her on a grain inclusive kibble... but I got desperate enough to try it, and she does much better on kibble with grains than without. It doesn't make any sense, and like I said, it flies in the face of everything I thought I knew, but that is how she is. She is parasite-free and her thyroid and bloodwork were fine, but she was so thin at one point that I was seriously worried about her, the vet was worried about, and I was constantly accused of trying to starve her to death. It was horrible, and I do not under any circumstances want to go back to that.

Hence my concern about her potentially dropping weight on raw. If she can't maintain on a grain-free, moderate carb kibble, will she be able to maintain on a grain-free, very low carb raw diet? I just don't know.

If nothing else, I guess I could try a modified Volhard method and give her veggies/cereal/egg/goats milk for one meal and the HT grinds at the other, since it may not be a good idea to mix them. But then there is a voice in the back of my mind going "grains are BAD! you KNOW that. DON'T feed her grains. She doesn't need them! You are going to give her *insert disease here* if you feed those!" and on the other side of the table is a voice that says "Well your logic almost killed her, didn't it? Shows how much you know. You were WRONG and you made her SICK somehow and apparently SHE does NEED grains in her diet. You can think all you like but her condition doesn't lie." And I am going back and forth between being one or the other. And I am probably going to think myself into a corner and just keep feeding her kibble, wondering why I can feed a cat, but not a dog, when dog nutrition is supposed to be easier. Right.

[Lola]

Our dogs (and cats) all went from kibble to canned, and then to raw.  No one had "exploding" diarrhea.  There were some loose stools, for a very short period of time.  Maybe a slower transition?

Also, any chance of just feeding River more... to keep the weight?

[Amber]

See below

[Amber]

You know what? I was going back through my pictures of River and none of them show her as skinny as I remember her being. Not a single one. Lean, yes. Last couple of ribs visible, yes, at times, but not vertebrae counting skinny. I think it is possible that I just let everybody else freak me out so badly that I started seeing what they were describing instead of what was there, and am remembering my panic more than what she actually looked like. The vet really threw me but all of the office dogs are what I would call moderately overweight so perhaps his perception is just different than mine. I may be making something out of nothing.

Perhaps River knows how much she needs to eat better than I do, and by encouraging her to OVER-eat, I created problems that would not have otherwise been there.

I think I am going to take this more slowly. I will transition her from the Farmina to HK and then from HK to the raw HT grinds over the course of a couple of months, and worry about whether or not to add veggies after she is fully transitioned.

[Lola]

Can you weigh her once a week or so?  That would remove all doubt.