I'm feeling pretty bad about my decision to feed raw these days. I'm not feeling bad because I think it was a bad decision, but because I dropped the ball. I learned the basics and then stopped worrying about it. When I made the decision to keep Gata on raw it was my responsibility to keep up on the research, to take control. I got lazy. I don't know that I caused her collapses as a result of my laziness but I certainly contributed to them.
There is a perception out there that raw is easy, anybody can do it. You just mix a bit of this and a bit of that together and over time balance is achieved. Now maybe it is that easy for the average pet dog. But Gata is not the average pet dog and I don't train and condition her like the average pet dog. Her life is more like that of a high performance athlete in various stages of preparation for competition. Unfortunately, that's not how I was feeding her.
Now to be fair, it's not like Gata doesn't look to be in perfect health. Until Auburn, no vet had even considered the possibility that she wasn't getting adequate nutrition. Her coat looks splendid - rich, intense color and good shine, her eyes are bright, her toenails are healthy and grow fast. She certainly has not been sick very often. But we've had this issue with collapses since the summer after she turned 1.
Dr. Gillette focused in on the diet pretty early on. Not in an anti-raw way but in a very focused way - are you supplementing her with anything? Is she getting fat from anything else? We talked about the types of meat, the specific cuts of meat, the different fat contents of each, the types of oils that I have been giving her, etc. Based on our discussion, she has probably been fat deprived since she was weaned. Wow ... That's not good.
OK, but what exactly does that mean? That was my goal when I left there and is what I am reading up on in my spare time I was pretty motivated after the discussions with Dr. Gillette. I became even more motivated when I got the results of her blood work and urinalysis and saw that her triglycerides are consistently low. She has no fat stores available to her to fuel her incredibly big motor ... So I guess she really has been running on pure heart and desire. What an incredible dog to do everything she has without the proper nutrition.
I think I'll go beat my head against a wall a few more times before I get back to my reading. I will be taking my responsibility more seriously in the future. I probably won't take her off raw, she's been on it her whole life, but I will supplement it with other things. Hopefully, it will help. I'm not sure that I would put another dog on raw in the future. The big question is what to do about Tor; leave him on raw with the same modifications as Gata or ???
It's an interesting observation that raw may not be in the best interests of a performance dog. Natural dogs, as in dump and village dogs, are not really on raw diets, but they are on varied diets and certainly they don't live long. Looks like more work needs to be done on the value of raw for life stages and what a good raw diet should look like. Hope you find the answers for Tor and Gata.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm sure we will be having some serious discussions about diet. He didn't seem to be anti-raw. He just wanted to make sure that it was a good diet that provided all the necessary vitamins, minerals, FAT, and CARBOHYDRATES. He was more or less OK with the vitamins and minerals, though not fully convinced (nor am I, to be totally honest). But he was quite unhappy about the lack of fat and carbohydrates. So, yes, it will be interesting to see where this goes.
ReplyDeleteI'm VERY interested in what you learn. I wonder if there are other blood tests that could be helpful in checking diet completeness. You mentioned Triglicerides..
ReplyDelete