very interesting thread i would not feed raw as rossi walks away if offered even a tiny scrap of raw meat but i have started cooking diffrent minces with added grated sweet potatoe ,turnip, carrot, chopped kale,broccoli etc i add a small amount to his kibble & its all woolfed down i would love to get him on home cooked only but am not too sure about quantities & correct ingrediants this is working very well for us at the moment so for the time being we will leave well alone but may be in the future i will look into home cooked without the kibble

No I don't think otherwise! What I do think is dogs will survive on just about anything. Many a dog has had to do just that which is not quite the same thing as thriving. It appears from the many threads and posts on the subject different dog foods are preferred by owners for their dogs. So one can only generalise about dog food on the whole.

For me, reasons for not feeding raw include:

- cost = I currently feed Burns kibble and it only costs me £25 a bag that lasts me 2 months. That's fairly cheap. I would expect fresh meat and bones to cost me much more.

- no freezer space

- I don't personally believe all the hype about feeding raw, I think that as long as your dog is healthy on the food you feed, whether thats dry, wet or raw, then why change?

- don't want to handle raw meat and bones

Some dogs will survive on anything - my mum tells me that when she was small (shes 89) her mum fed her dogs on scraps & their main diet was buttermilk & cooked potato peelings! Apparently they lived long healthy lives with never a thing wrong with them

Yes it's quite laughable the fuss we make these days I'm sure we have been got at by the advertising brigade. I'm old enough to remember the days when dogs where fed anything available. An example would be bread pobbies (milk with lumps of bread in it).

But is it enough that a dog just survives on something?

I don't think raw feeding has been 'done to death' but I have to say that some raw feeders take dog snobbery to a different level and really beret those that feed kibble or anything that isn't raw feeding.
As others have said there is not one diet that suits every dog and therefore all opinions are valid. It has also been said that dogs are one of the oldest domesticated pets and have therefore evolved, if not selectively bred for, thriving on the diet we give it. Mankind only evolved as a result of eating firstly meat then cooked meat which enabled us to increase our brain capacity and size and hence our intelligence.
I personally believe that dogs are considerably removed from their wild counterparts and therefore should not be treated as such.
However, dogs will indeed survive on the vast majority of food that we feed them whether that be dry, tin and meal, raw, home cooked, scraps etc etc.
So if it suits your dog and your pocket then feed it (except Bakers obviously because that really is ****!!)
Becky (Arden Grange feeder for nearly 15 years!!)

I know this happens but I wish it wasn't used against every raw feeder. It's a bit like saying every vegan will push their lifestyle on you, they're all tree hugging extremists, etc. You get extremists in every aspect of life who end up pushing people away from the very thing they're trying too hard to "sell".
Many of us on here feed raw because it suits our dog, we recommend it because we feel it's a great way of feeding, we have heard of cases of it helping dogs with health issues and so on, but many of us still feed commercial food here and there. NatureDiet is my "go to" food when I'm leaving my brother to dogsit or as a treat to stuff their Kongs with something different, I use Fish4Dogs mousse, I have used grain-free kibble for training treats, etc. and you'll find many raw feeders aren't anti-commercial food.
Also worth considering that there are some people vehemently against raw and will push for commercial foods just as much as the raw extremists push for raw. One example I've heard a few times is that they don't like the conditions animals are raised in or the growth chemicals they are fed - yet they are happy to feed a commercial food that contains meat from these animals! So there are the extreme views on both side of the argument, but I hope these aren't considered as the normal views.

I think you'll find I said 'some' not all and I can't recall ever coming across a kibble feeder who pushes their diet as much as the Raw Feeding Dog Snobs do.
I'm not saying they don't exist but it's not something I have ever come across.
Both 'sides' are full of those who have misinformtion!!
Becky

I know you said some, I was agreeing with you there