Someone on the board said, "Don't overthink it." That hit home with me. Then back in October, there was a great discussion about feeding raw. We had been vacillating back and forth and just decided to go for it. I figured I would give it 3-4 months to see a difference.

It was rocky at first and I know we made mistakes. I couldn't find everything we needed, like chicken backs, though we are good now. You'd think we had been looking for hummingbird tongue. He gets frozed veggies (thawed). I also give him canned, but I rinse well to remove the salt. Then squish them through my fingers.

Note to Connie: Is it OK to rinse canned veggies?

I bought the Omega fish oil and vit E caps at Cosco. It would be perfect if he would eat the capsules, but I have to stab them and squirt it on his food. When I use all these I will find the oil and use a spoon. I finally found kelp powder, just this week and we have been feeding raw for over a month.

I really like the idea that you can balance the nutritional needs over days or weeks as opposed to everyday. If I miss something, we add it the next day. We followed the sample menus that Cindy has posted on the L site. They are still stuck on my fridge. Also, her portion and weight calculations were invaluable. It was a little pricey at first because I was buying at supermarket prices. If I bought 4 or 5 lbs of hamburger, I just eyeballed 4 or 5 portions.

My 11 year-old male shepherd is thriving. He loves the chicken backs, which we finally found cheap and in large quantities. The dog's teeth are cleaner, his breath smells better and he has more prance in his walk. His coat is gorgeous. I couldn't ask for more.

Print out Cindy's menus and go for it. You won't be sorry...though your family may scoff--as mine does. I love doing this. I lost 2 unrelated shepherds to cancer and I know there are no guarantees, but I feel as though I am being proactive and fighting back.

Love me, love my dog.
Ruth Counter

I feel exactly the way you do, Ruth.

I know people who keep canned vegetables around for backup, and yes, rinsing the salt off is good. Even better is getting the "no salt added" version, if you want to use canned as part of the produce.

I use frozen vegetables a lot for convenience when the farmers' market is slow, in mid-winter.

What I think is that if we are careful with the calcium phosphorous ratio, feeding close to what the dog would eat from a kill, and if we give variety, then we are doing much much better than the opposite of variety found in kibble.

I agree that Cindy's menus are a great way dive in!

Dogs are omnivorous scavengers. To my mind, the one thing their systems are really not built for is a grain-heavy, well-cooked, unchanging diet.

It worries me that the average lifespan iof GSD's (and a lot of other pure bred dogs) sems to be so low.

My personal dog at the moment is an Australian Kelpie (see link if interested http://www.noonbarra.com/?gclid=CPjkt7KqmoUCFRTNSAodFB3kRw)

She is 14 years old and while she has slowed down a bit she is in fantastic shape. I compare her to other dogs the same age and it's sad.

My Girlfriends dog (a Westie) is the same age as Tess and she is blind, deaf, has severe skin alergies,respiratory difficulties and arthritis. I still walk Tess at least 4km/day and on weekends she does two 10km walks and handles it fine. Her eye's are great and she doesn't have a hint of arthritis.

I guess it's just the breed. Kelpies were bred to work, with no importance placed on appearance (which is still the case today in the working lines). They had to be able to cover up to 100km a day and handle harsh Australian conditions and those that couldn't either didn't survive or were quickly culled.

I have read articles suggesting that the average life expectancy of GSD's has decreased due to the gene pool becoming too small.

I am inclined to agree with this, especially since most GSD's are either dead or ver much incapacitated by the time they reach 14. In contrast, many Kelpies I know that are the same age as My dog are in similarly good shape and in some cases still working livestock.

Just to qualify here I'm not trying to bash the GSD (or any other breed)

In fact I have been reaserching GSD's extensively as I am currently tossing up whether to get a GSD or another Kelpie as my next dog.

I just think it's sad that the life expectancy of many breeds seems to be soo low. I am very much in favour of all working dogs having an open registry where any dog can be bred to any other dog in order to improve working ability.

Our family dog when I was growing up was a GSD mix named Frisky. She lived about 15 (a drop, never knew her exact age, but we had her 14 yrs). She was very heathly up until her last 8 or so months. And, you guessed it, was fed Ol'Roy. BUT, she had tons of exercise and, due the budget constrains of raising 10 kids, was only kept up to date on her rabies vacs. She even had the occasional squirrel and woodchuck (talk about natural raw), and ate berries of the wild bushes in the summer. My whole family loved that dog, and she left a big hole when she died.

I now have to wonder if the combination of exercise and minimal vacs contributed to her longevity.

The most facinating thing reguarding diet that I've read has been in Wendy Volhard's book. I know she doesn't feed all raw, but the fact that she has Newfs that are living to 14 and 15 is amazing.

I used to see this woman in my neighborhood walking around a very old looking dog; I stopped to chat with her one day and was informed that the dog was a border collie, and he was 20 years old!

I have no way to verify if it's true or not, but the dog sure looked old (he's gone now). I was happy to see him still getting his daily walk at that age. My guess is that she fed kibble.

I wrote an article about this that has evolved into a popular web page

http://leerburg.com/bridge.htm

 Quote: Michael_Wise

What did the rest of you with past dogs feed and how old did they get? I guess the question should be what were they like in the last years of their lives?

When I was a kid we had a black Lab that ran away from it's home after having puppies at two and getting hit by a car at three, which is how WE ended up with her; when she ran away she came to our house, so her owners said we could keep her. She ate a can of Alpo every day, and had purina dog-chow kibble available at all times. She had all the reccommended vaccines (don't think there were that many back then though), ran loose all over town and often brought home dead things. She lived to be SIXTEEN. She had arthritis the last few years of her life, but other than that she was fine. She actually died because she was hit by a car at the bottom of our driveway; she wasn't even in the road. I look back and CRINGE. It makes me wonder how long she would have lived had she had proper care?

 Quote: Ed Frawley

I wrote an article about this that has evolved into a popular web page

http://leerburg.com/bridge.htm

You were right about having tissues next to the computer.

I've never fed raw until the GSD pup I now have. My previous dogs were all fed kibble/canned mix.
One pup died of distemper before the vaccine came out.
Two lived to be 13 (fed on Fives kibbles - anyone remember those?). They died of old age.
One lived to 14 (fed on Purina). She developed cancer in her last 6 months.
One lived to 11 1/2 (initially fed raw by previous owners, then they switched to kibble cause it was more convenient for them but not sure when they switched). I also fed her kibble (Chicken Soup) and canned (Merrick). She died of kidney failure.

I think that just as in humans, dogs die at different ages. A lot probably has to do with where they live, how clean the air is, what they eat and how much exercise they get. There are no guarantees that even if all "factors" are perfect that a dog or a human will live to a ripe old age. Our ancestors didn't have processed foods or preservatives - they had much cleaner air and some worked hard (exercise equivalent). But they didn't live as long as people live now. Before antibiotics came, many died of infections for which we now just pop a pill. Adelle Davis, touted as a pioneer in healthy eating, died at 70. My mother who ate anything and everything she wanted, died at 87, although she developed alzheimer's in her last few years.

I just think we do the best we know how for our pets and try to give them a healthy life for whatever time they have with us. For me, that's feeding RAW. It may not guarantee my pup a longer life than my other dogs, but he's happier eating it and time will tell how much healthier he will be overall. For now since he's so young, I can only go by the fact that he loves his raw diet and I want to give him what he loves. I believe in the raw diet.