So probably a dumb question,but am genuinely curious and don't really understand so hoping you will go easy on me lol

I have heard all the arguments for feeding a raw diet,and as I understand it the main factor is that it is a natural way of feeding and what dogs were originally designed to live on??
Assuming that is the case (and please feel free to call me a muppet if I have got even that basic fact wrong lol),then what's with all the fish foods that are around and highly recommended?? Would dogs eat fish as part of a natural diet?? I appreciate that some might if they were in an appropriate location,but generally I'm assuming not??

I will admit to being anti fish anyway as I have a severe allergy and get sick to death of every dog and cat food containing fish products/meal/derivatives (quite why chicken food needs to have fish meal in it I'm not sure,I would prefer not to have to check for hidden extras personally but hey ho it seems to be the way of the pet food world these days),BUT never the less am genuinely curious about it being so favoured in the dog food world.Is it very good for dogs?? Is it just that it's good for bulking out foods or making them more palatable??

Like I said apologies if it's a silly question but I really don't get it,and it drives me potty when I can't figure something out!!

Fish is handy, and as it contains lots of nutrients like Omega 3 and 6 then yes it's seen as something of a superfood at the moment, as well as being relatively hypo allergenic.

If you wished to feed a raw diet then you don't need to include it if you don't want. But it might be advised to add some fish oils in capsule form just to make up the omegas, modern farmed meat can have lower levels unless you are lucky enough to get organic meat.

Oh and the animal the dog has evolved into, since breaking away from the wolf some 20,000 years ago, is now an accomplished omnivore, able to make use of many foods it wouldn't have encountered beforehand. Fish would have been a rarity except to those who lived on the coast but even then made use of ........says she whose puppy ate a stinking rotting cuttlefish at 14 weeks, and didn't get so much as the runs, and now same dog at 5 years is enjoying his first self-service blackberry harvest!

> I have heard all the arguments for feeding a raw diet,and as I understand it the main factor is that it is a natural way of feeding and what dogs were originally designed to live on??
>

I feed a raw diet but not because it is the way dogs were originally fed but because I don't like feeding my dog lots of additives. I firmly believe that people should feed the diet that suits their dogs, themselves and their finances. I also don't feed raw exclusively and do feed kibble now and again in case the need ever arose for him to be somewhere where raw feeding couldn't be maintained. I do agility with him and next year am hoping to camp at some of the weekend/week long shows so feeding raw for the duration wouldn't be possible. Having his digestive system used to kibble hopefully guards against stomach upsets if raw is not available.

I do feed fish to the dogs - but then one of my dogs has been known to help himself from the pond so eating fish could well have been a possibility for him in the wild :-) I guess some dogs centuries ago wouldn't have had access to lamb/beef etc depending on the part of the world they lived in but happily eat it on a raw diet so fish could be in the same category?

No question is ever a silly question - if you don't know the answer the only way to find out is to ask the question :-)

I feed raw with a bit of kibble too, and aside from the health benefits I also find raw to be significantly cheaper.

> I also find raw to be significantly cheaper.

Wish that were the case here, but I have found that it would cost me twice as much as my kibble (around £30 per 15kg bag) to feed raw, so raw is a treat.  A meal of kibble cost mine 50p each.  Raw with supplements etc would be more, as they would need around a 1lb of meat.

I feed 2 30kg Setters and a 25kg Kelpie raw, it costs me £45 per month so roughly 50p per dog per day.  I found complete was costing me more as I was having to supplement with raw to keep the weight on.

With the Setters I prefer the raw, I think there is less chance of bloat than with complete.  The only downside is when we go away, as a rule its only for the weekend and we can take enough raw in a cool box (no room in the caravan fridge ... thats always full of beer ;) ) the issue I had this year was being away for 10 days going from one agility show to another, I didnt want to put the dogs on complete and the raw I took with me only lasted 5 days before it went manky so had to buy from sainsburys either tinned fish, chicken wings or mince so that worked out a bit pricey but as its only once a year I think its worth it :)

My next concern is im taking my Kelpie to compete out in Poland in a few weeks should be interesting attempting to buy food for him over there, my Polish isnt too hot so god knows what he will end up eating !!!

Barbara raw meat often adds weight easily and I dont think even my biggest 30 kg dogs get more than 100 g per meal.

>I dont think even my biggest 30 kg dogs get more than 100 g per meal.

Crumbs! How many meals do they get? In Ye Olden Dayes we used to give dogs half an ounce of food per pound bodyweight - that works out at about a pound of meat and a pound of biscuit per day for a 25kg dal.

did goldimal mean 1kg ? although doesnt really work out. My 45kg gsd is on 1kg per day hes has abot 3 hours exercise a day and any more than that he would put on wait. or does she supplement with kibble I dont I feed pure raw
I am not sure who made the comment but my reasearch shows a dog to be carnivore not omnivore inspite of the years of evolution.

On way home from cat show using mobile hence short messages. 2 meals a day and no if they got 1kg they'd be obese! Bodies just right. They can eat 3 times as much if fed complete, its the meat that easily fattens them. You notice it when the cats get raw as well, they get full much quicker and lose weight when fed on anything else.

My 39 kg GSD gets around 2kgs of meat and bones per day plus veggies, egg and a banana.
My 25kg Weim gets around 200gms of meat and bones per day plus same.

I'm fluent in Polish LOL

I found raw cheaper as well, for 3 adult BCs it costs me around £50 per month and I dont have a friendly butcher so have to buy it all in.  Two of mine have about 300g of food each per day and the other about 250g.  Two of them compete in agility hence why they need a little bit more but raw keeps them just right.

It depends a lot on individual metabolism as well. My 26kg boy gets about 200g of raw plus a couple of chicken necks and veggies per day. More than this and he starts getting too much padding!  My older girl, 22.5kg gets 400g of raw plus two chicken wings and veg. Any less and she looks too ribby. They both get about the same amount of exercise, if anything my lad gets more as he is more inclined to race around when we're out and is very ball-focussed.

Its amazing the difference in what our dogs need to keep them healthy. I know its a mixture of metabolizam and exersize its just noticably when its written down

> I dont think even my biggest 30 kg dogs get more than 100 g per meal.

That is less than a 1/4 pound of meat a day!!!  When I fed raw they got 12oz at least, as the blocks were 400g.

Yet they get 200g or less of complete a day.

If I fed the recommended amounts of raw my dogs would look like beachballs ! Ben who's the largest at 42 K only gets 500g a day, that's not including bone which I get free, but he is mostly walked on lead so doesn't have the same running about that others dogs get.

I know Daisy's still a growing pup, but she weighs 20kg and gets a 400g block of meat daily, as well as rice and kibble, and she isn't fat. Piglet, at 24kg, gets 200g of meat and a cup of cooked rice as well as a large scoop of kibble, and he's ribby.

> that's not including bone which I get free

Ah now I count all the food including meaty bones in what I fed, and I can't get any for free anymore, that stopped after they banned meat on the bone for a while, and the traditional butchers closed down.  now the few left sell their bones and ration them as there are many people wanting them for their dogs.

Anytime I go in ans ask for enough for 6 dogs they look at me askance.

> Anytime I go in ans ask for enough for 6 dogs they look at me askance.

You need to come down here then! I went into a butchers I don't usually go in, which has recently changed hands, and discovered it was their Lamb Day. I walked out with three complete ribcages with spines attached, a few sections of ribs and a couple more spine sections all for £1. Next time I'll get him to chop it up a bit, we had fun trying to deal with the ribcages (which also looked like the face-grabbing creature in Alien!).

Wolves fish: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3350798/Wolves-prefer-fish-over-meat-study-finds.html

So the fish thing definitely isn't related to it being part of their natural diet (apart from the wolves fishing thing,which actually I can imagine due to some of their location would make sense,but still guessing that it wouldn't apply to many dogs??),and is more as it's a good source of nutrients that's accessible and easy to feed??
I also agree with whoever said that it's a bit of a fad at the mo,as it certainly does seem to be in everything.I often have to check ingredients on human foods I buy,who would have known yoghurt has tuna oil in it,or more to the point who would buy it if they did!!

I can see that fish might be good for dogs (well apparently it's good for everyone so they say,apart from me of course who would be dead at first bite lol),but personally I do wish they would restrict it's use to fish flavoured foods,rather than putting it in just about everything!!

I'm not sure about any of the raw stuff mentioned (went a bit O/T there I think lol),but am guessing fish wouldn't be overly practical to feed as part of that?? The smell alone would be enough to put even dogs off surely?!!

Actually my raw fed dogs do eat raw whole fish! As to what forms part of a natural diet for our domestic dogs, the way i look at it is that our dogs are biologically built as carnivores, capable of getting all the nutrition they need from a range of prey. I feed most parts of chicken, beef, pork, lamb, fish on a regular basis. Dogs also naturally scavenge berries, fruit, and pretty much anything else they come across which is all natural behaviour but not necessarily desirable!? They can also extract appropriate nutrition from grains and processed foods like kibble but this not as easy on their system which is why you will see more poo coming out the other end!

> ),but am guessing fish wouldn't be overly practical to feed as part of that?? The smell alone would be enough to put even dogs off surely?!!

On the contrary - it's very easy to feed :-) You throw your dog a fish and job done. Dogs like lots of smelly things - that's why I had to bath a big hairy dog the other night ......... he had liberally daubed badger poo all over his body and thought he smelled divine.... I on the other hand was not impressed.

Dogs are scavengers as well as predators and will eat raw fish quite happily.

I raw feed and my dogs get raw fish when it is cheap etc, eg herring, sprats, trout, even salmon.

Which yoghurt has tuna oil in it?

Yes one of mine has a good roll on his fish before he eats it! Monster!

> Which yoghurt has tuna oil in it?

I'd be interested to know too - it doesn't sound quite right.

With regards to fish in general, dogs for thousands of years were scavengers and were probably initially domesticated because they would readily eat what we discarded. As many human settlements in history relied on fish as a food source, I can't see why the domestic dog would not have had plenty of time to adapt to eating fish leftovers including entrails after gutting fish.

It's a good idea to forget the wolves (although yes, they also eat fish) and think about what the domestic dog has been raised on for the last 15,000+ years - our garbage, basically; including veg, bones, fish, and anything else we throw away.

> The smell alone would be enough to put even dogs off surely?!!

Methinks you are allowing your feelings about fish to colour your view :)  I rarely buy fresh fish for the dogs as I don't have a good cheap source but they certainly seem to like it raw, cooked or tinned, and salmon mousse and salmon oil goes down a treat. 

Lol probably right about me allowing my own feeling to affect my view point,I will confess the smell of fish makes me gag so guess I do assume that no person or dog even could find it attractive!!

On the yoghurt thing,no idea if they still do (in fact I don't think they do but as I haven't even picked a pack up for years don't know for sure) it was munch bunch drinky yoghurts,I used to get them for the kids lunch boxes,but noticed big sign on the pack saying 'now contains omega 3',so being the paranoid allergy person I am I checked the ingredients and there it was in small print 'tuna oil'!!

I had a right go at the manager poor sod as wasn't his fault,but I was so cross that it wasn't clearly marked in large print on the packaging,being a top ten allergen it is supposed to be made clear if a product contains fish.I even phoned the anaphylaxis campaign about it I was so mad,just kept thinking what *could* have happened had I not checked the small print and took them home.Then there is the vegetarian aspect,I suspect many veggies would assume a strawberry yoghurt was safe for them to eat.
Anyway apologies for rant,and like I said hopefully the fad for omega 3 has died down a bit now in human food,and they are no longer shoving it in everything,didn't they even put it in bread at one point?? Tuna bread,yuk!!

Well glad most people dogs like it anyway,I'm sure it is good for them (if they can stomach the smell lol),afraid my Alfie will never find out,but then am sure what he doesn't know he won't miss!!

dogs tastes are for the smellier the better, as their major sense is smell.  We like our food to look and taste nice as we are more visual.

I have been known to ask the fishmonger for scraps from filleted fish.
If mine haven't had any for a while, it wouldn't occur to me to buy fish for them, although they both love it.

Karen

That is shocking. I like fish and I like yoghurt but for some reason the idea of them together is just yuk!!

Well allegedly they used to use whale oil in lipstick, so they must have a  way of de-fishifying it.

Whales aren't fish!

> Whales aren't fish!

De-whaleifying it then? :)