I have a 2.5 year old spayed female labrador, good health, active, great dog. I feed her Canidae dry food and have been hearing quite a few ads for "Dinovite". Has anyone heard of this supplement and does it work? She sheds a lot (as do all labs) and her breath is pretty bad (I brush her teeth 3-4 times/week). I have read Leerburg articles regarding the raw diet, but not ready to do that.

 Quote: mary gunter

I have a 2.5 year old spayed female labrador, good health, active, great dog. I feed her Canidae dry food and have been hearing quite a few ads for "Dinovite". Has anyone heard of this supplement and does it work? She sheds a lot (as do all labs) and her breath is pretty bad (I brush her teeth 3-4 times/week). I have read Leerburg articles regarding the raw diet, but not ready to do that.

Can you link us to the ingredients? "Does it work" for what?

About the breath: Has a vet looked at the teeth/gums for infection? (BTW, good for you to be brushing; this is a very good thing to do for a dog on commercial food.)

Here you go:

http://www.dinovite.com/ingredients.html

From that link:
Ground flax, kelp meal (Ascophyllum nodosum), yeast culture, ground grain sorghum, diatomaceous earth, zinc methionine, montmorillonite clay, yucca schidigera, alfalfa meal, ascorbic acid , Lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation product dehydrated, Lactobacillus casei fermentation product dehydrated, Bifido bacterium bifidium fermentation product dehydrated, Streptococcus faecium fermentation product dehydrated, Aspergillus oryzae fermentation product dehydrated.

I'm not a fan of most proprietary blends. I want to give the items I want to give in the amounts I think are appropriate.

The very first item kind of irritates me, because the text implies that the Omega 3s in the product suffice to make up for the Omega 3 shortage in almost all modern diets (human and canine).

We've talked many times here about the conversion of short-chain Omega 3s (from, for example, ground flaxseed, an inexpensive source of ALA) to the beneficial DHA and EPA --- humans have this conversion mechanism (although inefficient, and controversial, at maybe up to a max 15% rate), but dogs do not. Their conversion rate is almost zero.

So if we don't supplement long-chain Omega 3s (from marine products), the dog pretty much doesn't get them.

I would give fish oil and natural E (to protect the oil PUFAs), kelp that's tested for heavy metals, live-culture yogurt and maybe a probiotic supplement added in, and ester C if I wanted to give C.

All JMO.

 Quote: Connie Sutherland

I'm not a fan of most proprietary blends. I want to give the items I want to give in the amounts I think are appropriate.

I'm with you, Connie...I much prefer to give supplements separately.

Mary, I just want to add...Not ALL Labs shed a lot. Mine actually sheds less than any other Lab I've had and I think the primary reason for that is...Yep, a raw diet. He also has beautiful, clean teeth and fresh breath, in large part due to the diet.

Totally respect your feelings and I'm not pushing you...But I just had to slip that in.

Feeding raw is the best thing I ever did for my dog. But, I live in an area that has this:

http://www.rawsforpaws.com

So it's easy for me to get what I need at a reasonable price. If you can track down a local supplier that will see you these things for reasonable rates, you've got 90% of it covered.

Get a free freezer off of craigslist to store it. Get a MyWiegh i5000 scale from Old Will Knott for $40 or so. Buy enough bowls to make up 2 weeks worth of food at one time. Freeze all but 3-4 days worth of it, and cycle the ones you take out of the fridge with the frozen ones. I spend under an hour every two weeks preparing food. And at the prices I'm getting on raw, it's cheaper than high quality kibble.

The only annoyance to feeding raw is mine likes to take everything out of the bowl and put it on the floor before eating it, so I have to clean the meat juices off of my garage floor every week or so.

In the end, it saves me money, and the dog has no shedding or skin issues, bright white teeth, neutral breath, and poops only 1-2 times per day (which doesn't smell terrible from 100 feet away like when I fed kibble). Once you have you supplier tracked down, the rest is super easy.

Thanks for the great replies. I am looking into the raw diet - went to my local farm supply store today and they have packages of frozen raw diet, but very expensive. I think I will start with supplements and see how that goes, and add some raw meat bones for her to chew on.

 Quote: Mary Gunter

.... I think I will start with supplements and see how that goes, and add some raw meat bones for her to chew on.

You know the difference between RMBs and recreational bones, right?

http://leerburg.com/feedingarawdiet.htm#RMB

 Quote: Mary Gunter

... went to my local farm supply store today and they have packages of frozen raw diet, but very expensive. ....

There are some great premade raw diets.

Be careful not to rely on a frozen diet made up by someone else just on the assumption that it must be good because it's raw.

I would want an ingredient list, including amounts, and I would probably take home that list and ask on this board how it looks. I've seen and read about some really bad butcher-made and rancher-made (and one breeder-made) raw diets, frozen and fresh, that I would consider to be nutritional disasters.

(This is not a reflection of the frozen diet you saw, but just a cautionary tale: One frozen diet, incredibly, had no bones and no substitute calcium source. I was stunned, and when I thought of what a catastrophe this would be for a puppy with growing bones and teeth I almost cried. And the owner who sent me the PM thought that she was doing a wonderful thing for her dog by buying this expensive but horribly inappropriate locally-made food.

A good thing that came out of the terrible dog food disaster in 2006 was that lots of folks turned to fresh food. A very bad thing that came out of it was some people thinking that any fresh diet, no matter what, was better than commercial foods.)

The premade stuff is very expensive. It's fine for a puppy, tiny dog, or a cat. But unless you're rich, it's way too expensive for a big dog. It would cost me over $9 a day to feed premade raw, and I'm doing it now for about 80 cents.

Plus, I have a good place to put leftovers that I won't finish. At least, provided they don't have added salt, sugar, or contain things the dog shouldn't eat.

In addition to the leerburg diet, I supplement with Nupro. You have to be careful because too much supplements can be bad. For example, vitamin A in huge quantities is poisonous to both humans and dogs. But, the amount required to cause problems is huge. Just remember with supplements, and organ meats, that more is not always better.

It does require some thought. But I've been doing it for years for myself, so making the transition to doing it for the dog wasn't very hard. Now that I think about it, the dog and I are both probably eating nearly the same diet.

Wow! $9 a day! I didn't know it was so spendy!

I am so glad I prepare it myself.

Doesn't Nupro contain calcium? Or did you mean the joint one?