Raw Feeding-Why it makes sense

Going to start this off with asking, have you ever really looked inside your dog's or cat's mouth? I'm asking this because if you have, the one thing you should have noticed is their nice pointed sharp teeth. None of their teeth are flat, they still look like their ancestor's teeth. Trust me none of them were eating a bag of dried up nuggets that had to be sprayed to make it smell edible.


Dogs were reclassified as Canis lupus familiaris by the Smithsonian Institute in 1999

• Class-Mammal     
• Order-Carnivora
• Family-Canadae
• Genus-Canis 
• Species-Lupus (Wolf)
•  Sub Species-Familiaris (Dog)

Dogs and Grey Wolves are so closely related that they can still breed and bare offspring, where as a Coyote and Grey Wolf cannot.  A Dog's and Grey Wolf's mitochondrial DNA differs by only .2%, while a Grey Wolf and his closest cousin the Coyote differs by 4%.

So what does all this mean in a nut shell? It means your dog is a carnivore, he requires meat, not meat like food in his diet. His teeth are still made to rip and tear his meals, not try and bite into kibble. Dogs have been around for thousands of years, dry kibble has been in a bag for about a hundred years. If your dogs are anything like mine were, they are not waiting that long for their next meal.

Now let's look at the dog's digestive break down,

• They lack Amylae (An enzyme that breaks down starches) because of this, kibble causes more harm than good to the teeth.
• They have an enzyme in their saliva called Lysozyme, this starts to wash away the bacteria that we think of on raw meat. It actually destroys pathogenic bacteria.
• A healthy dog mouth has a PH between 7.34-7.80, but can fall as low as 0.5 when you introduce sugar/starches into the diet.  
• Their digestive acids in their stomach are 3 times stronger than ours, this is why they can eat not only meat and bone and digest it, but it also makes for bacteria from raw meats less likely to make them sick, or bacteria a chance to colonize.
• Dogs have 42 sharp teeth, these teeth are designed to rip, tear, and shred their food. They also have 2000 taste buds.
• A dog's jaw cannot move from side to side which is what ours does. This means they cannot grind their food such as kibble. And really if you think kibble cleans their teeth try using a saltine cracker to clean yours.
• Their digestive tract is much shorter than others. Theirs range from 20-80cm, while ours is 1.5 meters. 
• Finally, a raw meal takes between 4-6 hours to digest, while kibble can take 10-12 hours, yet it can be 24 hours before that meal passes through to the other end.

Next in the series: The different types of raw diets.