Scientifically sound advice vs. personal experiences

[EWO]

This spins off from the conditioning post. The example is the use of cornflakes in the keep. Scientifically speaking there is no real benefit for the conditioned dog but ol' Johnny has won four or five using corn flakes. With that said, doing these dogs is as much art as it is science. Where do the lines collide? Where is the gray area?
I have always used fat as a food source. All sorts of fats from lards, to beef fat, to oils, to chicken fat, etc..etc... Scientific research is now leaning toward more fat for the working dog than ever before. ( everyone knows an old timer that knows more than anyone else and so do I). He says fry everything you can find in cheap vegetable oil or lard. (Chicken backs work best along with cow cheek). Let the grease cool, the top layer will gel, congeal, or set-up. He scoops two tablespoons into the feed every day for six weeks prior to starting the keep. Everyday he fries something else in that same grease allowing it to gel on top and he uses that again. It is something about the frying part that breaks down the animal fat and just works better for the dog. He says it gets the dog use to using fat for fuel during 'harder' times. In the past few years I am reading this as newly found research or based on recent scientific studies. This guy has been doing this with dogs for thirty to forty years.
Let me just say this old timer is a far cry from a researcher, a scientist or even what one would call a learned man. So some where the personal experiences were researched and proved by the scientific community (or disproved for that matter).
Any other science vs. personal experiences similar to this? EWO

[FrostyPaws]

Fat for working dogs has been advocated for sled dogs for many years. It's not a new scientific deal for them. We, as bulldog people, are usually behind in most things, and the use of fat for working dogs is no different. A dog that won 4 or 5 with corn flakes is simply a good dog. When you consider the minimal amount of carbs dogs utilize, you can chalk that up to carbs being a non-issue.

Frying and cooking things up in grease is fine and good, but I wouldn't use the same grease for six weeks, and there are health reasons for this. I don't believe this statement. "the frying part that breaks down the animal fat and just works better for the dog". The fact that he's feeding it for 6 weeks prior to starting the keep is what allows the dog's body to adjust and use it more efficiently as time moves on. All of this being said, if he's using fat on kibble, then he's not helping the dog near as much as he would if he swapped the entire diet over 6 weeks before a keep.

Things such as fat and what not are things that are passed down from one person to another. Considering the old timer probably lived when there was no commercial grade dogfood, fat was probably a mainstay for a dog all those years ago. So it's not unbelievable that someone of that age would feed fat to a dog, but that's not to say he knew all the benefits of feeding fat to a dog years before it was ever proven to actually BE beneficial. The sad thing about old timers is that alot of the stuff they know is stuff that is outdated and no longer relevant. So, in a sense they do know more than others, but in another sense, a great majority of them have no idea of the changes in nutrition and science that could benefit them UNLESS they are keeping up with it themselves.

My own personal experience comes from the increase of water intake. I'd never used as much water in a keep as I do now until a friend of mine told me how he utilized the water during his keep. So, as I started implementing his ideas, I started noticing things changing somewhat in the dogs. A few years later when I started getting more and more into the nutritional aspects of dogs, I came to understand really how HOW important water is for dogs in a keep. I learned how much water a working dog can lose in one day of activity, and as I started paying more attention, I started to weigh certain dogs before/after their work to see how much actual weight they lost during a workout. So, while I thank BMac for putting me on the water path, I also have to give the scientific community a thank you also for helping me to really understand the significance of water during a keep. I'm just glad the dogs are able to benefit from what I've learned over the years.

[EWO]

Agree with the post. I believe both this old timer and the sledders fed lots of fat because it was readily available for both. For whatever reasons the extra fat content benefited the dogs and I doubt either group had scientific backing, nor did they care. Just like the corn flakes, if it was working it was working. That was the point of the post. Your experience with water intake works for you and would for others but what if twenty years from now it gets published as the next big thing in performance dog research. Whether it was passed along to you or you developed the plan yourself it was derived from your personal experience. The guy with the doctorate is going to get the credit for the scientific research/discovery. With that, twenty years from now you will be saying I was doing this twenty years ago. Much the same as this old timer as well as his sledding counterpart. That was the point of the post. How long before personal experience develops into scientific discovery. EWO

[Officially Retired]

Agree with the post. I believe both this old timer and the sledders fed lots of fat because it was readily available for both. For whatever reasons the extra fat content benefited the dogs and I doubt either group had scientific backing, nor did they care. Just like the corn flakes, if it was working it was working. That was the point of the post. Your experience with water intake works for you and would for others but what if twenty years from now it gets published as the next big thing in performance dog research. Whether it was passed along to you or you developed the plan yourself it was derived from your personal experience. The guy with the doctorate is going to get the credit for the scientific research/discovery. With that, twenty years from now you will be saying I was doing this twenty years ago. Much the same as this old timer as well as his sledding counterpart. That was the point of the post. How long before personal experience develops into scientific discovery. EWO

It's not that "corn flakes were working" ... it's that the dogs won in spite of the misguided use of corn flakes (not because of)

Jack

[EWO]

Let me just say this old timer is a far cry from a researcher, a scientist or even what one would call a learned man. So some where the personal experiences were researched and proved by the scientific community (or disproved for that matter).
Any other science vs. personal experiences similar to this? EWO

that is what I was saying. The corn flakes were not the reason the dogs were winning, they were winning in spite of the corn flakes. And in time, science proved the personal experience to be non-effective. But, if a guy was winning feeding potatoes and onions he would be hard pressed to make drastic changes to what is winning. George Halas won Superbowls with O-lineman and D-Lineman running many laps at slow speeds for "endurance" and although both he and Lombardi and all the greats until recently this was how football players were conditioned. Now football players like many athletes are conditioned more along the lines of sport specific. But if they were running laps (feeding corn flakes) others would follow suit either right or wrong.
My point is that there is no scientific studies to improve the performance of a fighting dog. There are no labs out there matching conditioned dogs to prove and dis prove theories. At some point people's personal experiences collide with science.

It's not that "corn flakes were working" ... it's that the dogs won in spite of the misguided use of corn flakes (not because of)

Jack

[R2L]

Its why people give the wrong advises all the time, and everyone is saying opposite things.
Their dogs are winning, so what they do in their keep is working

[Officially Retired]

True.

[CRISIS]

whats a better source of carbs potatoes or corn flakes?

[FrostyPaws]

What I was told in regards to water intake had been proven long before I started utilizing what my friend advised me to do. It had been proven long before he decided to try it, but he's never read any nutrition books about performance dogs to gain that except from his own experience. It's not as easy as to say personal experience develops into science, or vice versa, because that simply isn't the case.

Your old timer fed fat because it was readily available to everyone in that day and time. You're right and wrong in your scientific study idea. Proper nutrition and work will improve a dog's performance, and there is plenty of science out there for anyone to utilize to their advantage. You're right in that there is no lab out there that's attempting to enhance a dog's genetic potential for fighting.

[EWO]

I should have titled the post a little differently. I was aiming more toward the personal experiences of yesteryear (fat content) being proven or dis-proven (corn flakes) by science in more recent times. Not so much as one vs. the other. He fed a lot of fat because that was a lot of what was left over living on the farm. His dogs were successful with it. Just the same as the guy winning with corn flakes. Both were winning with good dogs first and foremost, but science caught up to both groups and pretty much said one works more than we thought (fat) and the other really has no benefit to the dog (corn flakes). EWO