mini, the milk is animal protein, and a high quality at that.
Ever heard that a body can survive on milk alone? Again not 'thrive', but enough to look ok....?

Huh? that's cuz you are boiling it and pulping it etc umm you are breaking it down first. Why am I contradicting myself?

No it will be mushy, but not swollen as it is designed specifically not to swell, and my dogs don't gobble their food and never have they are both rather sedate eaters. They like to savour their food, each to their own but as others have said if it ain't broke you don't fix it.

just cos you said they ''can't digest" {veg matter} and then you said they might get "some goodness from it''
either they can digest it, or they can't... if you see what i mean, they can't not digest it AND get goodness from it...

i also feed it grated (raw) and i don't see it out the other end.

I think there must be. I know that the dog/s linda and paul mccartney had before they split were fed totally vegetarian. I don't like it, it's like pushing your own beliefs for your own reasons regardless of if it's what's best.

Oh sorry jess forgot to say it actually states on the bag to be fed dry ( sometimes I do and sometimes I don't ) but it's certainly never soaked

Well they 'can' once it's broken down for them first and indeed you are breaking it down for them. Unlike us who can just pluck a carrot out the ground and eat and get full goodness from it...That was my reasoning for saying they are not true omnivores in the way that people are...So that I lean more towards them being more carnivorous.

Hi Jess yes I am aware that milk is an animal protein and that some can survive on it , however as three quarters of dogs are lactose intolerant those particular dogs would hardly survive on a diet made up largely of milk. One can only assume the dogs I spoke of are not lactose intolerant or they would have permanent diarrhoea ..

the problem with plant matter is that cell walls are the hardest in nature to break down... so among us there are people who believe that dogs, like carnivores, can't break down the cell wall, and rely on enzymes (which omnis and herbies have) to break into the cell and release the goodness....
so even pulverising, all that is happening is you are slicing the cells into individuals cells that we can't see, so it's much to us, but they still aren't 'broken into' .
This is where raw feeding gets complicated...

Dogs are now a domesticated species so dependant on us to provide food and if that entails cooking the vegetable matter, then that is what their diet consist of. Yes it might be 'unnatural' but then so is the dog as a species .......we created it.

If I could give another example of how domestication alters species. Domesticated cattle thrive on a diet including concentates manufactured from various cereals etc. The species that they descended from is now extinct but a semi wild form of cattle from the same origins still survives in the UK, the Chillingham Herd. These are non domesticated and do not tolerate concentates, in fact will not even eat them in times of hardship.

I won't dispute that your dogs do well on this regime, dogs are extremely diverse as a species, but I would expect most dogs to benefit from some cereal and vegetable content.