This whole thing about arsenic is kinda funny. Arsenic is found in drinking water, in lots of vegetables, in the environment. So while the presence of arsenic in chicken could be alarming, there are not lethal doses of arsenic in chicken. If it were, folks would be falling over dead. They're not. Even if your dog is NOT getting raw chicken, it's still getting arsenic every day of it's life from drinking water.
There are higher levels of arsenic in WELL water than it is city water, so if your grandparents or even you are on well water, you're drinking more arsenic water. Arsenic is used in oil products, so anytime you're around your car, or anyone else's car that's idling, you're inhaling arsenic particles. Is arsenic a carcinogen? Yes, and you are exposed to everyday whether you want to be or not. So are all of our dogs.
If a person is concerned with a lack of vitamins/minerals, feed vegetables with the diet. In one serving size of chicken, usually 4oz, there is 6% iron. In red meat, I think the number is 10% or it exceeds it. There are plenty of other sources of dietary iron to take the place of what's lacked in chicken. There are so many ways to feed a raw diet that differs everyday to cover all the bases by simply adding vegetables or fruits with the diet.
There's a reason why a dog, that's fed a raw diet, as opposed to a kibble diet, has less stool. It's because the dog is utilizing more of the product for actual energy. Excess waste is exactly that, waste. It's product not being absorbed by the body, whether human or dog. The old timers weren't gods of composing a raw meat diet. If they were, there wouldn't have been a quantum leap forward in performance. They were men who fed the dogs what they had available. Availability and raw diet are not created equally. Kibble is convenient food for us and the dog. Convenience doesn't equate to better. The same old timers thought, and some still do, that combiotic was the best antibiotic ever created. They believe you should cut off any type of supplementation at least 7 days before the match or they will make the dog run hot. They also thought that dogs that fought for the stifle were curs due to them going away from where the action is happening. With time comes knowledge. The knowledge on nutrition today is light years ahead of what old timers new ten years ago much less 40+ years ago.
I'm not sure how dogs that are fed a raw diet can't really handle pressure when it's put on them. That makes absolutely no sense. There are people everywhere that compete with dogs fed a raw diet that handle whatever pressure comes their way. Some win, some lose, some die. It's the exact same of dogs being fed kibble. If a person doesn't have a handle on what it takes to feed a raw diet for competition that our dogs are built for, they shouldn't be feeding. That has less to do with handling pressure and more to do with knowledge deficit. The same can be said for someone feeding kibble that has no idea on what it takes. The comparison of greyhounds and bulldogs doesn't make sense for me. Greyhounds need a higher carb diet as they're running a sprint. Dogs that are being conditioned for any type of endurance/stamina event will need higher fat, then protein, then carbs. That is why people use oils and fatty meat or fat from a butcher. It's a more calorie dense diet which is what's needed in regards to dog endurance.
I fed kibble to a yard of dogs for many years. I didn't have a lot of health related issues with the dogs aside from a few here and there that didn't react well to the food. Most of the time, I could switch that dog's particular food to something else, and the trouble would be alleviated. I've had other issues when feeding kibble in regards to skin issues, and when some enzymes were added to the food, the skin issues resolved themselves. The dog's system couldn't process something in the food, and enzyme supplementation was needed. I don't have any of those issues with the raw diet. I have a lot healthier dogs than I did before. They look better; they feel better. The older dogs are more active now. I've had other issues resolve themselves simply by not feeding kibble any longer. The dogs that get worked look as they should on the chain, and they perform as they should when it's called upon them to do so. This topic will always have people that believe in kibble over raw and vice versa. We can only go with our own experiences and/or the research that some of us have done that can/does support our beliefs, whether right or wrong.
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Originally Posted by Limey Kennels
