Behavoir?

[dyachei]

OMG why would I lie about someone having dogs that old. I mean come on, LMAO that is too funny. I am not exaggerrating or lying or anything in any way. He just had his 24 yr old malinois pass a few weeks ago (and this dog was taken care of just as you are starting out now Electrophile........so maybe you will be so "lucky," since we all know it's all a game of chance, right? ok.......) and he still has at least one black lab that is around 20. That's the ones I know about. I haven't asked the ages of his other 5 or 6 dogs. I happen to have worked for a lawyer (when I was pre-law) that has a lab that is about 12 and it looks like it's on it's death bed.......seriously it's terrible (which the dog happens to be on some Science Diet prescription crap which I don't understand because the poor thing still has allergies so you'd figure they'd try to change it up some, if you wanted to know). yeah yeah this is "non-scientific" and all that, play it up however. you. want. What I do know, is this guy is a freakin specialist for heaven's sake...........so if anyone knows anything about nutrition, I would make a wild guess and say..........

Curious, Electrophile, which vaccinations did you decide to do and at what ages? We finally just got a doberman pup for schtuzhund and I'm trying to get some different ideas on this from someone on the same page as me. Seems like all the doctors here want to push us into getting corona and lepto when I don't htink there's a need. Can I tell them thanks, but no thanks, I just don't want it? It seems like they don't think anyone can do their own research.......I was able to get my other dogs done w/out lepto, but this was a different doctor.

I see y'alls' points, but just because you don't want to believe it, that doesn't mean I'm stretching the truth and I must say, that offends me a little for you to think I would.........I'm not some 13 yr old brat trying to win an argument for heaven's sake. And didn't I call it that someone would Google something I said?

Calm down. I wasn't attacking you, I was answering her question. I'm happy that your friend has dogs that are so long-lived. Nobody thinks you are some 13-year-old trying to make a point. I always take what people say a little skeptically because I've had a lot of people lie to me to make their points, don't take it personally.

I don't know that using the exception is helpful in an argument unless its through research. There are too many factors that influence a lifespan. You don't know it has anything to do with nutrition, and you don't know that it doesn't. it isn't a controlled study and therefore making correlations is hard.

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[VAgirl]

You don't know it has anything to do with nutrition, and you don't know that it doesn't. it isn't a controlled study and therefore making correlations is hard.

Agreed. That's the major thing with anecdotal evidence. You can attribute it to whatever you'd like, but that doesn't make it proof.

And I'm absolutely for feeding animals the most nutritious thing possible. I just don't think it's necessarily going to guarantee them to live any longer.

 

[JerseyisCutest]

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[Electrophile]

I, for one, have a masters degree in biology and did 4 years of research on Purina and Harlan Teklad's rodent diets (they are very similar to many commercial dog diets) and how what diet a mouse is on will change how it responds physiologically to an endocrine disruptor, so I do know a little something about nutrition. And for the opposite reason, I am likewise extremely skeptical that these companies are foolproof in their endeavors to make animal feed. Purina pretty much told my faculty adviser that that they have NO CLUE what is going into their feeds as far as phytoestrogen levels of the soy and the pesticide and mercury loads respectively in the corn, wheat, and fish they use. Endocrine disruption research and its results hinges on these "constant nutrition" diets, much more so than even Fido and Fluffy on their rations of dog and cat chow, and they can't even get them right? Yeah, way to go. I also know how to think like a scientist and that logically, it makes sense that the best diet for an animal would be the one that it has evolved to consume.

Jersey, as far as your vaccination question, I'm a minimal vaccinator and follow Dr. Jean Dodds's recommended protocol. The only problem was my puppy had a reaction to the DHPP vaccination at 3 months. He got it on a Monday afternoon. By Thursday, his drive was a little off. By Friday, he was sleepy and a little lethargic. By Saturday, he had bloody diarrhea and was having difficulty walking (I had to carry him outside to potty every hour) and had warm to the touch skin all over, especially in the joints. We ran him over to the vet school ER and nearly $400 later, he had an elevated white cell count, dehydrated despite drinking some water, a temp of 105.2 F, parvo ELISA negative, fecal unremarkable. He got better within a day or two of SQ fluids and a bland diet of canned duck and cooked chicken. So you may see why I am a minimal vaccinator now. He's almost 6 months old, so I'll probably end up getting his titer tested every few years, but not vaccinating him for distemper/parvo again and rabies only every three (he hasn't had his rabies yet). No lepto, no bordatella, no corona as they are usually pretty worthless.

 

[bakaduin]

I also know how to think like a scientist and that logically, it makes sense that the best diet for an animal would be the one that it has evolved to consume.

Just curious, you talk as if evolution is over. Cavemen ate plenty of raw foods. Before Native American's knew how to grow crops they survived mostly on hunted meats and what else they could gather. Our diets are very different from early humans yet we've seemed to survive and even thrive. Are we doing it wrong? Dogs have been eating kibble for how long? Is it not safe to think that their digestive systems have slowly been adapting to these types of diets? Perhaps not, because they are not naturally breeding and humans mostly do the selecting rather than nature. But I dont think its a stretch of the imagination to think that dogs can survive and thrive on a kibble based diet rather than a raw one.

 

[JerseyisCutest]

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[nyanko]

So JerseyIsCutest, what you are saying is that we can use longevity as a metric to determine whether dogs are doing okay nutritionally but we can't do the same for humans? Makes...um...perfect sense?

 

[ri23]

No one ever responded to my evolutionary question about feeding one giant meal every day or every other day, being that's how they would eat in the wild; or do we just selectively use evolutionary arguments?

 

[dyachei]

And I have yet to see anyone explain to me why a more natural food isn't healthier based on the ingredients. I don't see how feeding all those chemicals and grains in Iams/Science Diet/whatever to my dog is in any way good.

Several people have explained that some prescription diets have helped their dogs with specific problems that a more natural food does not address. Just because you disagree doesn't mean its not valid.

And honestly, if you don't want to feel like everyone is attacking you, stop taking it personally. IMO, SDN is about sharing of information and open discussion of said information. In all of my posts I've responded with my thoughts on the subject, and its not a response to you because you're you, but because if anyone had written that, I'd respond the same way. If you want to continue thinking I'm out to get you, why don't you just PM me and we'll talk about it.

 

[JerseyisCutest]

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[dyachei]

No one ever responded to my evolutionary question about feeding one giant meal every day or every other day, being that's how they would eat in the wild; or do we just selectively use evolutionary arguments?

Its a slow process, and we haven't been feeding them kibble for a significant enough period of time, evolutionarily. Remember that evolution (if you believe in it) is a very slow process that can occur over millenia. They probably would do fairly well if we fed them a large meal every other day, but with a consistent diet, they do better. Just because something has happened evolutionarily doesn't mean its best for the animal, either. In some places, evolution calls for what's available and its discovered later that certain other options may be better with the equipment already in place (meaning any body organs, genes, etc.)

 

[JerseyisCutest]

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[bakaduin]

To answer the 2nd part of your question.........well first of all I don't get it. I feed my dogs once a day? It doesn't hurt them at all to go a day without food either.

You can say whatever you please. I just don't like it when people suggest I"m lying. THAT is what I have a problem with, and you would too. You were suggesting that only about me, so that was personal.

What hes saying is you and electrophile use the argument that raw diets are best because thats what dogs were meant to eat. Well dogs also are "opportunistic carnivores" and would eat when they could find it. Perhaps theyd get a rabbit one day and not eat again for 2 more days before finding another meal. Does that mean that to follow the natural evolution of dog diet we should only feed our dogs every other day at best? He also adds that dogs usually eat only one big meal yet most people feed there dog two times a day.

And why stop at dogs! Horses naturally like to eat many small meals but for our convenience and other reasons many times we feed them big meals of feed.

 

[bakaduin]

Well maybe you need to explain this to me.......how did these added things help? And how do you know that SOME TYPE of natural food would not hae cured the problem? It doesn't seem like people actually went to someone who knows all about the different brands and types and tried that so can't say it wouldn't have, right? There are different types and brands of natural food, they aren't all the same.

s/d helps because its low in magnesium, phosphorous, protein and changes the pH of urine to more acidic

z/d is allergen free hydrolyzes protein breaking them down so that an allergic reaction is virtually impossible.

w/d is fiber rich

u/d added taurine, carnitine, omega 3s, buffers, etc

k/d low protein, low phosphorous

etc. etc.
I could go on.

 

[Electrophile]

No one ever responded to my evolutionary question about feeding one giant meal every day or every other day, being that's how they would eat in the wild; or do we just selectively use evolutionary arguments?

Actually, I did write this out in my big long post that Internet Explorer ate. Twice. *grumble grumble*

My dogs are on a raw diet (I think I mentioned this last page maybe?) and they eat once a day and have a fast day once a week. They do quite well on this.

 

[JerseyisCutest]

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[Electrophile]

Just curious, you talk as if evolution is over. Cavemen ate plenty of raw foods. Before Native American's knew how to grow crops they survived mostly on hunted meats and what else they could gather. Our diets are very different from early humans yet we've seemed to survive and even thrive. Are we doing it wrong?

Judging how 60% of the adult population and 1/3 of the kids in America are overweight, yes, I do think something is certainly amiss here. Try reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. It certainly raises some interesting questions about our omnivory.

Dogs have been eating kibble for how long? Is it not safe to think that their digestive systems have slowly been adapting to these types of diets? Perhaps not, because they are not naturally breeding and humans mostly do the selecting rather than nature. But I dont think its a stretch of the imagination to think that dogs can survive and thrive on a kibble based diet rather than a raw one.

Most dogs have been on kibble for 50-60 years. In terms of macroevolution, this is not enough time to change the physiology and anatomy of their digestive tracts to be different from wolves, their common ancestor. If it's been 60 years, that's maybe 20-25 generations or so of dogs with a liberal estimate.

 

[dyachei]

To be totally truthful with you, I don't know what that stands for. s/d and such. Maybe I do knwo and I'm just not used to seeing it like that. If you don't want to tell me, I can always do a favorite of many people here and GOOGLE IT!

they usually stand for the thing they are trying to help for example, j/d is joint diet and includes things like glucosamine for joint health.

I think s/d is to get rid of struvite crystals so its probably something like struvite diet. Not 100% sure, but this is what I remember from the Hill's talk at UTK.

 

[JerseyisCutest]

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[ri23]

What hes saying is you and electrophile use the argument that raw diets are best because thats what dogs were meant to eat. Well dogs also are "opportunistic carnivores" and would eat when they could find it. Perhaps theyd get a rabbit one day and not eat again for 2 more days before finding another meal. Does that mean that to follow the natural evolution of dog diet we should only feed our dogs every other day at best? He also adds that dogs usually eat only one big meal yet most people feed there dog two times a day.

And why stop at dogs! Horses naturally like to eat many small meals but for our convenience and other reasons many times we feed them big meals of feed.

Thanks for explaining what I apparently needed to . By the way, I am a female though .

 

[ri23]

Do you not agree that people are living longer b/c of medicine? This man's dogs had nothing wrong with them in the first place so advanced medicine (not including preventative stuff of course) hardly has a hand in it. And that does make perfect sense.

If you feed a raw diet you should switch up the ingredients every few weeks or so, on my understanding, to make sure they are getting every thing they need. Kibble is already formulated with everything they need, so you wouldn't need to switch it up. And we all know that switching kibble cold turkey often causes diarrhea anyway, right?
To answer the 2nd part of your question.........well first of all I don't get it. I feed my dogs once a day? It doesn't hurt them at all to go a day without food either.

You can say whatever you please. I just don't like it when people suggest I"m lying. THAT is what I have a problem with, and you would too. You were suggesting that only about me, so that was personal.

I don't believe that I ever suggested you were lying about something. If you feel that everyone is attacking you, maybe it's the way you've addressed some comments. As a community, the members of SDN are usually pretty helpful, but you've seem to come in and stir the pot quite a bit. When people answer questions that you ask you don't seem to take the time to read and understand what they were saying, rather you go on with the same rhetoric.

As for Electrophile, though we seem to have different opinions, the way she presents her information seems less defensive and she seems very knowledgable about what she is discussing. I'm not saying that you aren't, but the way you are expressing your opinions doesn't make it seem that you are open to new ideas or engaging in intelligent debate.

 

[JerseyisCutest]

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[fargeese]

There is a minimal amount of glucosamine and chondrotin in j/d for dogs, but the Hill's vet told me that it was just marketing gimmick because people think it works, and that the ingredient that actually helps with joints is the EPA, an omega 3 fatty acid, which explains why the food smells exactly like dead fish. That being said, it really does help my poor lab mixes with their bad hips. I have also seen cats and dogs at death's door from kidney or liver failure turned around by switching to l/d or k/d science diets so I am a believer in those diets too.

Raw is not the answer if your cat is going into kidney failure, unless you have a magical way to take the protein out of meat. I am not adverse to the argument that feeding an animal with good food from the beginning can head off problems (i.e. a too high protein diet + treats = kidney troubles) but some problems, like my dogs' hip problems, inherited from their dam, will always eventually present, no matter what the diet.

I think too we need to look at the bigger picture. Posters are arguing for a high cost, inconvenient raw diet, and I am just trying to get people off Ol' Roy. I think that Science Diet is a much better food nutritionally than most of the kibble on the market, and since it is much more convienent and cheaper than raw, it is what I am going to recommend, because you have to look at what your clients are going to do realistically.

I was not paid for this endorsement, but if Hill's would like to kick in some money to the vet school fund I am not adverse to bribery, heh heh.

 

[Electrophile]

And why stop at dogs! Horses naturally like to eat many small meals but for our convenience and other reasons many times we feed them big meals of feed.

(bold mine)

Yeah, and adults eat out fast food something like an average of one meal a day or every other day? So don't get me wrong, I'm guilty of it too as I eat out 2-3 days a week. I don't know as much about equine nutrition as I do dogs and rodents, but as they are also grass eaters, high quality pasture is going to be the best bet for them, not grain. Same with cattle. Then we have the studies that show that things like beef and lamb are more heart healthy for us consumers when the animal is grass fed with more omega 3 FAs rather than grain/corn fed, which is why I try to get as much of my meat from local farmers market who graze their stock start to finish. I like supporting local sustainable agriculture. Along with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (which has seriously been my favorite non-fiction book of 2007), check out the benefits to humans of feeding food animals an evolutionarily appropriate diet:

http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm

but some problems, like my dogs' hip problems, inherited from their dam, will always eventually present, no matter what the diet.

I think too we need to look at the bigger picture. Posters are arguing for a high cost, inconvenient raw diet, and I am just trying to get people off Ol' Roy. I think that Science Diet is a much better food nutritionally than most of the kibble on the market, and since it is much more convienent and cheaper than raw, it is what I am going to recommend, because you have to look at what your clients are going to do realistically.

Oh yeah, I absolutely agree with you on Ol' Roy. Can we say But to me, Ol' Roy is to Science Diet as Science Diet is to say, Innova EVO. Or as Innova EVO is expensive, Canidae and Chicken Soup are virtually the same price as the Science Diet but with superior ingredients. And if people are really balking at the price of those, the cheapest somewhat okay food that I've found is Diamond Naturals Large Breed. It's $22 for a 40 lbs bag, and if someone can't afford that, honestly, they shouldn't have a dog. Cat and small breed owners in particular aggravate the crap out of me when they buy really nasty cheapy food. Try feeding 2 Malinois, 1 Malinois/GSD x, and a Siberian husky/Rottweiler x. Seriously though, if you guys want to recommend a good food to a small dog owner or cat owner but they are balking at the price, tell them to buy in bulk and freeze what they don't use right away in the freezer. For our nutritional studies, we could freeze the Purina mouse diets for 6 months at least (we received big batches at a time to minimize variation, not that it helped much).

I totally understand that not everyone wants to do a raw diet, though honestly it's not that much more work other than going out to the garage to get some stuff out of the deep freeze. If I had to do a home cooked diet, that would take a lot more discipline and probably a lot more adding in of supplements and that sort of thing. So I'm not insisting everyone go raw or go home, but just using some common sense, I hope you all will learn to have an open mind when your clients ask you about holistic foods and raw diets.

 

[bakaduin]

Electrophile-
While we certainly disagree on this topic I have to say you make such great, fact based, arguments! You really seem to know your stuff! Its been nice learning from you.

 

[Electrophile]

Thanks! That was a great bonus to graduate school: learning to ask questions and ask "does this make sense?" Many vets and pre-vets were biology majors. They need to think like biologists. Like I don't see Hill's or Purina developing a kibble for people like me with pet snakes. They would get laughed at, right? So why it's so crazy to think it's a good idea to feed your pet an appropriate diet for their species is just beyond me. But our future clients are big time concerned about pet food, so we all should be knowledgeable and not just be sheep to the slaughter since I think we've seen over the last year that the pet food industry is not as infallible as they would have us believe. Anyways, in the end, you really are what you eat.

 

[Beagingese]

I find behavioral work fascinating and I love watching shows like "It's Me or the Dog" because there are great tips. We'll see how involved I get...

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

I would someday like to do research on behaviors such as cribbing and weaving in horses

I learned in Ethology that cribbing causes a rush of air into the trachea/lungs and activates endorphin release. Weird, huh?

Snakies! Electrophile, what snakes do you have?? I have two Western hognoses, a leucistic Texas rat, and a ball python I adopted from my Pharm prof....I lurve me snakes!


Has anyone seen the study done with mice fed a processed versus minimally processed diet (ie high versus low glycotoxin, could be expanded to say "commercial/dry" versus "holistic/raw/minimally processed" ) Its AMAZING all the differences they found in these mice, from kidney function to insulin resistance to lifespan!!
http://ajp.amjpathol.org/cgi/content/abstract/170/6/1893
Once I'm done with school, I plan to go on to residency/PhD and this is the kind of stuff I want to do! It's great.

Sorry for sidetracking....this is a behavior thread heh...well, at least my first sentence was relevant! Sorry.

 

[Electrophile]

Snakies! Electrophile, what snakes do you have?? I have two Western hognoses, a leucistic Texas rat, and a ball python I adopted from my Pharm prof....I lurve me snakes!

I've got a male anerythristic boa constrictor imperator named Severus Snake (hehe) and a female jungle carpet python named Sheila. Used to have a Brazilian rainbow boa named Smaug who escaped from his feeding cage one night and I had to move three weeks later. Never found him.

Has anyone seen the study done with mice fed a processed versus minimally processed diet (ie high versus low glycotoxin, could be expanded to say "commercial/dry" versus "holistic/raw/minimally processed" ) Its AMAZING all the differences they found in these mice, from kidney function to insulin resistance to lifespan!!
http://ajp.amjpathol.org/cgi/content/abstract/170/6/1893
Once I'm done with school, I plan to go on to residency/PhD and this is the kind of stuff I want to do! It's great.

Sorry for sidetracking....this is a behavior thread heh...well, at least my first sentence was relevant! Sorry.

Cool, I'll have to go read that!

 

[BostonLvr]

I've got a male anerythristic boa constrictor imperator named Severus Snake (hehe) and a female jungle carpet python named Sheila. Used to have a Brazilian rainbow boa named Smaug who escaped from his feeding cage one night and I had to move three weeks later. Never found him.




Cool, I'll have to go read that!

Ooh snakes! I have a Brazilian/Columbian Rainbow Boa named Pharaoh.