Oh my. This could be a good discussion, I hope. 
Where to start?
First of all, I want to clarify that I specifically said in the other thread I do not recommend feeding raw to a PUPPY. While it is true I do not actively ADVOCATE feeding raw diets to grown dogs, I acknowledge it can be done as part of a balanced diet, if someone is willing to work really, really hard at it, and if everyone involved understands the very real risks of transmission of very serious pathogens such as Salmonella and E. coli to others in the household. But a puppy does not have a well developed immune system and is not ready for such a challenge, and so my statement still stands—I don’t recommend feeding raw meat to a puppy. In addition to bacteria, a baby is also quite a bit more susceptible to protozoan infections such as Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum. And yes, raw fed puppies have presented with ataxia, hind end weakness, cardiomyopathy and then dropped dead due to Neospora so I am not making it up. And before you make the argument that dogs do not become ill with Salmonellosis, this is precisely the cause in most cases of “garbage gut” seen by veterinarians when your pooch eats something he should not and gets a case of diarrhea and vomiting. Other causes include Campylobacter, which is also zoonotic (i.e. you can get it).
I guess I’ll prove my “cred” by telling you what I already know about BARF so you can then decide if I am talking from a place of ignorance or enlightenment. Dr. Ian Billinghurst popularized the bones and raw foods diet and suggested it consist of 60% raw, meaty bones and 40% be made up of a wide variety of foods “the type and quantity of foods a wild dog would eat” such as “lots of green vegetables (to mimic stomach contents of prey), some offal (liver, kidneys, etc.), meat, eggs, milk, brewer’s yeast, yogurt, and small amounts of grain and legumes.” As I understand it, the meal plan itself is balanced overall, but each meal itself is not balanced, and herein lies the problem. Getting the micronutrient balance correct is a near impossibility, and this can have serious, serious consequences.
In particular, the major issue I have with the BARF diet is that it is very difficult to balance nutrients so that the calcium to phosphorus ratio is proper on a high meat diet. This is not to say it CANNOT be done, only that it is very DIFFICULT. Meat is phosphorus heavy, and unless the dog is consuming HUGE volumes of bones—actually consuming them, and even then we have not determined the bioavailability of the calcium in consumed bones—the calcium to phosphorus ratio is quite likely to be inverted, leading to a whole host of developmental and metabolic issues. There is just no way to make up for this with vegetables. Nutrient analyses of these diets have found them to often be deficient OR excessive in many nutrients, typically either too low or too high in magnesium, zinc, much too high in vitamin E, too low in iron and manganese, too much vitamin D, too little potassium, and possibly calorie deficient. Many essential amino acids are often out of balance as well, especially linoleic acid. In addition to nutrient excesses and deficiencies, there is risk of mechanical blockage, GI perforation, and aspiration from the feeding of bones. This is the same problem I have with the feeding of rawhides, by the way. Most of the emergency abdominals we did at vet school were rawhide related.
Dogs are NOT just domesticated wolves (it appears to be the other way around). Anyone who maintains they are might find this paper interesting: Science. 1997 Jun 13;276(5319):1687-9. Multiple and ancient origins of the domestic dog.VilàC, Savolainen P, Maldonado JE, Amorim IR, Rice JE, Honeycutt RL, Crandall KA, Lundeberg J, Wayne RK.Department of Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1606, USA.
“Mitochondrial DNA control region sequences were analyzed from 162 wolves at 27 localities worldwide and from 140 domestic dogs representing 67 breeds. Sequences from both dogs and wolves showed considerable diversity and supported the hypothesis that wolves were the ancestors of dogs. Most dog sequences belonged to a divergent monophyletic clade sharing no sequences with wolves. The sequence divergence within this clade suggested that dogs originated more than 100,000 years before the present. Associations of dog haplotypes with other wolf lineages indicated episodes of admixture between wolves and dogs. Repeated genetic exchange between dog and wolf populations may have been an important source of variation for artificial selection.”
Dogs have evolved as very distinct animals, and are omnivores, not carnivores. They have no obligate need for meat at all (UNLIKE cats), in fact, and thrive on a variety of foods. As a point of fact, the top allergenic foods in dogs are, in order: beef (35%), dairy (20%), wheat (15%), chicken (8.6%), egg, lamb, soy, corn (2.5%), pork, fish, rice. So the much maligned corn is one of the least likely allergens, while beef is the number one cause of food allergy in dogs.
This is getting too long, so I won’t address anything else in this particular post except to say that those questioning my motives in the other thread really ought to learn a bit about me first. I happen to be a housecall practitioner, so I don’t sell ANY food in my practice. I actually prefer to formulate home cooked diets, truth be told (except puppies). However, I do not think that Hills is the anti-christ, either, and they do make some very good foods that meet some very specific patient needs. Believing otherwise is foolhardy and based on prejudice.
I am a holistic practitioner, to boot. I specialize in nutrition, pain management (acupuncture before drugs, as a matter of fact), hospice care, birth to geriatric care, and wellness and preventative care. I have a vested interest in making sure to tailor my recommendations to an individual patient’s needs because I depend entirely on repeat business and word of mouth, so I spend a lot of time researching the best available methods and means available to help each patient. I take my job very seriously. If I believed my given patient would best thrive on a raw fed diet, or my client really wanted me to help formulate one, that is what I would, and have done, with the appropriate cautions.
I also happen to believe there are indeed some very good breeders out there who may know a lot about a given breed. However, I would caution one who thinks taking veterinary advice from someone who has experience with a breed is the same as having attended veterinary medical school. It isn’t. I can’t speak for others, but my education consisted of quite a lot of nutrition, and we have 5 Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionists on faculty. I took advanced elective courses in addition to our already quite extensive curriculum and feel very confident I received a top notch education in the nutrition of not just dogs, but cats, horses, and cattle as well. And not one course was given by a pet food rep, thank you very much. But feeding is about a lot more than knowing a breed, and if you’d like to get into the medical aspects, we can do that, too.
