Will, I have an apron that says..... "Well behaved women rarely make history". You can borrow it for your next cooking/dog training seminar experience!
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Debbie

I hear this a lot whenever people talk about feeding raw. I don't feed raw because I am lazy. I am the what ever doesn't kill you makes you stronger guy. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> I have had dogs and lots of them for a long time. I have watched them eat the nasty nasty NASTY, foul foul FOUL, for a long time and the closest I ever saw to sick was when they ate too much and had to propel some out. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> I should of had salmonella about a hundred times as well. I like the cooking shows and never wash as much as they do unless I have company. Like I said, What ever doesn't kill you makes you stronger! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

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My vet says much the same, and ditto with e.coli. She also says that the feces from dogs fed infected foods can be a human environmental hazard.

So......................................after you clean up after your dog, WASH YOUR HANDS! LoL

A few years ago I did a road trip with my son, Bernhard Flinks and his son. I had coolers of raw chicken which had been kept on ice.

Once morning - several days into the trip I got up - fed the dogs took them for a walk and ate an orange on the walk - had not washed my hands. Four hours later I was as SICK as I had ever been. I dont even like to think about how sick I was with Salmonella poisoning. The dogs never missed a beat. Two dogs ate the same chicken. NOTHING.

So the point is I would guess that a dog can get sick if the food is bad enough - but dogs are not humans and we feed raw and have never see this. The people who write these articles have theiur heads in the wrong place - my guess is most make money off of selling dog food. Certainly this is the motivation of a lot (not all) of Vets.

I will tell you one thing - you will NEVER see me touch raw chicken or a dog food bowl and not wash my hands again - not ever in this life time.

When I first started feeding raw to my dogs, 1 year ago, I would get ill every time I went major grocery shopping for the dogs (I buy in bulk, so it is not uncommon for me to handle 200#s of meat at a time). My symptoms were mild to moderate, and would happen only when I had packaged large quantities of meat for the dogs (I do individual portions, weighed out for 2-3 months), no matter how scupulous I was about sanitation (and I was QUITE liberal with the bleach).

Now, no more problems. My GI tract has adapted to the larger exposure to bacteria, and I no longer get syptoms of food poisoning. I still wash my hands, wipe things down with an antiseptic, and so on, but my body seems to have adapted.

Needless to say, my dogs never had a problem with this. But dogs have the GI tract of a carnivore, humans don't, and have the short gut set up to handle nasty baceria and break down meat.

Of course, keeping the food as fresh as possible minimizes the risks associated with feeding raw. And if your dog has a suppressed immune system, I wouldn't do raw.

Ed, I don't think the vet links contridict any of the comments about dogs being less subseptiable to Salmonella poisoning than humans.
http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/20400.htm
"Dogs and Cats: Many dogs and cats are asymptomatic carriers of salmonellae. Clinical disease is uncommon, but when it occurs, it is often associated with hospitalization, another infection or debilitating condition in adults, or exposure to large numbers of the bacteria in puppies and kittens."

(I know that in hospitalized horses it can be a big worry...)

And vets point out that there is not just "one" Salmonella, but a whole variety of them, each finding a specific species as host. The salmonella found in Pigs "S typhimurium and S choleraesuis", is not the same as found in Chicken and Turkey "Salmonella pullorum and S gallinarum'.

...Not that it makes any difference when one is feeling like death warmed over! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Doesn't freezing the meat before actually feeding it kill most of the harmful bacteria anyway? I know in some parts of the country, where dogs can come down with salmon poisoning, they say to freeze the fish before feeding it to the dogs, rather than just catching it or buying it from the store and tossing it right to the dogs to eat right then.

From Salmonella.com:

A: Salmonella is not completely killed by freezing, especially when present in food. Freezing is NOT an effective way of decontamination. The Salmonella that survive freezing can grow during defrosting at elevated temperatures (above refrigerator temperature).