conditioning on raw ( water in take)

[Officially Retired]

Nice info Frosty, that is what I like in nice and cosy forums like this one, exchange of info without egos and bs.
If I may go a bit theoretical, only to express a thought of mine, we know that dogs do not swet, so no water lost for cooling purposes. We know that in humans a gram of glycogen holds 2.5 - 3 gr of water, so for every 4 grams of weight lost 1 gr of glycogen has been used, could this be a way to calculate how much glycogen the dog used and use it for replenishment purposes? Of course I might be completely stupid and make an ass of myself, but it just came to me and decided to express it.

Although dogs don't sweat for cooling purposes, they do lose a truckload of water out of their mouth (slobber) for cooling purposes ...

[EWO]

An awesome thread. Very informative. I leave fresh water out for the dogs during the work. I add water to the raw mixture as well. I have found that the dog will come off the water on his own. After three weeks or so of work, being fed on a timed basis and having the food mixed with water the dog does not touch the bowl. When he comes off I pick up the bowl and then dial him in on weight with food and water the rest of the way.
The amount of water loss varies from dog to dog. I have a dog now that will drop 2-3 pounds after a hard day. I weigh him before work and after work and adjust the meal/water accordingly. I weigh him again 10-12 hours later and adjust the evening meal accordingly. I am not sure I am on the 1oz. per lb. ration but I am thinking it is very close. He gets about 16oz. per meal which works out to 32oz. per day for a 44lb dog. After factoring in the amount of water in the raw feed I would guess there is another 10oz or so within the feed (meats being app. 70% water).
I will try to dial the water in closer to 1oz per pound to see if I can see a difference. My guess is if I do not change anything else the dog will 'come off' the water a little earlier if I ensure the 1oz per lb ratio.
Great post. EWO

[R2L]

Its been a few weeks and i been trying out some stuff too. But i have to come to the conclusion that a dog who's given a 20-30% of his water in the morning weighs more at weighing time then when adding that same water to the rest of it, together with the meal, after the training. There was only 8-9 hours between giving water in the morning and training time and the dog had only 1 moment(30 minutes though) to empty instead of 3. So i stopped doing that and started giving it all together. I think u also have to take in mind the temperatures. A dog who is trained in 15-20 degrees celcius will obviously lose more water then one trained in 5 degrees celcius. So its not like 1oz is a standard for everybody. Here its around 5 degrees celcius at this moment, im adding 20 oz of water to the raw, which has like 10 oz, so 30 oz all together for a 41 lb dog after 30 minutes of millwork. Will increase the intake a little together with the food as the work gets harder. I will also try to give the same training for 3 days with the same amount of food, adding like 0,7 oz per lb one day and 1 oz per lb the other day and see if there is any significant differences at weighing time. It would be a shame if you think your dog is on weight while its to wet and u end up coming like 100-200 gr under.