Quote: Duane Hull

...the health conscious/holistic movement in dog nutrition has forced the dog food companies to up their game...

This is such a great point, and I totally agree. Of course, the only downside (if you can call it that) is that we now have so much more to choose from that it often involves a lot of time and research to decide what formula is best for our individual dogs. But I'd much rather have to take whatever time it takes than to have no choice but to feed what's frequently referred to around here as crap-in-a-bag!

As to dogs having different metabolic types, I don't see how they could not. It's very much accepted, I believe, that humans do not all thrive on exactly the same type of diet, so why shouldn't that be true of dogs, especially when you consider how the hundreds of modern breeds came about. They are mixes of many types of ancient and not-so-ancient dogs from parts of the world that varied greatly in geography, climate, food availability, etc.

And then even among dogs of the same breed, they are still individuals. So it just seems to me to make sense that what's good for one isn't necessarily good for another.

 Quote: Cheri Grissom

As to dogs having different metabolic types, I don't see how they could not. It's very much accepted, I believe, that humans do not all thrive on exactly the same type of diet, so why shouldn't that be true of dogs, especially when you consider how the hundreds of modern breeds came about. They are mixes of many types of ancient and not-so-ancient dogs from parts of the world that varied greatly in geography, climate, food availability, etc.

And then even among dogs of the same breed, they are still individuals. So it just seems to me to make sense that what's good for one isn't necessarily good for another.

Very true, I see it every day with mine. I have 3 Amstafs one brother sister combination and one roughly 7 months older and I feed RAW. If i feed the brother the same as the others he gets fat very easily (he does the same amount of work if not more) but his sister is very lean and muscular and stays this way unless I REALLY increase her food intake and the other one stays lean also.
It used to drive me nuts I thought I was starving him as a pup as if he ate even 1/2 of what the others did he was a little wombat and I struggled to take weight off him, it's not so bad now he's older but he still can't eat as much as the others.

 Quote: Brad Higgs

..... if he ate even 1/2 of what the others did he was a little wombat and I struggled to take weight off him ....

In case any other non-Australian needs to refresh their memory on what wombats look like:

http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/wp-content/blogs.dir/253/files/2012/04/i-b0e4b2040283b45cb0544d246973d8ee-Wombat%20II.jpg

http://techhouse.brown.edu/~dmorris/photos/australia/wombat.html



I know I burst out laughing when I typed wombat at Google Images.

Red meat and white meat have different effects metabolically speaking in the body. One type can thrive on red meat (I do) more than another. This is true with dogs. They also need different ratios of fat in their diets as well.

If a dog does better metabolically on a kibble diet, the raw diet (protein, carb, fat...or red/white meat ratio) could have been adjusted to fix it. It can be frustrating this hit and miss, but its worth it.

If a dog has a tenancy to gain weight real easy (or has other issues like digestive or inflammatory) the ratios could be adjusted. My chow mix was one of those (a lot of it is from being spayed/neutered, and some breeds need less food too) but I fed her a low fat diet with both red and white meat and occasional ripe fruit and some veggies. She was one of those always hungry types but was a lot more satisfied when I adjusted her diet to less fat more protein.

Any dog that has a voracious appetite (aside from psychological boredom, SOME pet dogs that beg for treats constantly are under-stimulated mentally) probably isn't getting the right mix of fuels causing food cravings. But then there's Labs and beagles appetites...LOL can't explain that.

I knew a fat little Norwich terrier that looked just like a wombat! LOL