Dogs and feeding grains

[LimitIsUp]

My dogs are actually on a high quality fresh frozen diet of meat, fish and vegetables, but they do get a small amount of rice since I mix this with chicken and vegetables in stuffed kongs. A lady on a group that I follow (for rescue dogs) told me not to use rice in kongs because it has "no nutritional value". I googled and found a wide variety of references to the contrary, shared this with her and she responded that she was qualified in dog nutrition (probably got a diploma in dog nutrition where the entry requirements are a GCSE English language - wow, hold onto your hats!)

Anyone found anything definitive on this? Preferably from an academic journal?

To add to this, I am aware that too much grain is an issue in dogs diets - hence why kibble gets a bad rap, but most of what I have found suggests that small quantities are fine and may be beneficial (especially with regard to preventing kidney disease)

I’m a bit conflicted on this.

See, I think it’s obvious that being basically wolves the closest and best natural diet would be a raw meat diet.

But then, domestic dogs have evolved near people where they presumably have had human scraps making up a high proportion of their diet.

I know that a lot of working border collie people advocate what I would consider to be a poor’ diet, that is, low protein, high grain kibble diet.
My dog came with workers wagg which I think is a very poor food and the foods designed by Ceri Rundle (very famous sheepdog handler) are again, what I would consider to be ‘poor’.

A lot of livestock guardian dogs in countries like Turkey tend to eat a similarly poor diet.
I forget the name of it now, but it’s very high carb heavy.

I’m not sure what the answer is tbh

Dogs are not wolves. They have evolved to digest starch, which indicates that they've been eating scraps from human food for a long, long time.

There has been a recent issue with dogs fed grain-free diets suffering disproportionately from heart disease. This is due to taurine deficiency, which is possibly due to the interactions of the alternative ingredients used, or because these food omit certain ingredients which are high in taurine.

But isn’t raw meat one of the richest sources of taurine..?
I thought that was why a huge proportion of cats fed vegan diets ended up with blindness and heart disease?
Because the food lacked taurine?

Interesting about taurine and heart disease

This was grain-free kibbles, I think, borders. Not raw diets high in meat.

Personally I just try to give DDog a varied but good quality diet - good quality low (not zero) grain kibble and tins, with varying flavours and brands.

On top of that he gets some scraps (including anything dropped on the kitchen floor). Last night he had cucumber - though I suppose the person who told you rice has no nutritional value would say the same about cucumber, seeing as it's 95% water.

All diets seem to have their own drawbacks, so I merely hope that a varied diet (not just one type of kibble from now until forever!) means there's no massive gaps in DDog's diet.

Watch Dr Karen Becker. She's fantastic and explains the grain topic really well. We raw feed our Boston.

sure4pets.uk/raw-vs-commercial-diet/#ingredientproblems

Also some info including studies on the link above.

Dogs are a long way removed from wolves. I have two dogs that are the closest DNA to a wolf. I don't feed raw. The raw / dry debate is one that most won't agree on. The same for grains. There is a lot of money to be made from dog food. Around the same time people jumped on the intolerance band wagon not long after the dog food one started. If your dog is intolerant you will know and tests can be done. These tests are not cheap. The breed of dogs i have apparently are not suppose to eat grains due to their metabolism being different to other dogs. One of them has an intolerance as i had to have various tests done due to constant dioreah. He is on a dog food now that causes no issues at all however it contains grains. If he was fed raw it would have made the intolerance far worse. Dont fall for all the hype. Some of these high end foods are marketing money making ploy.

There has been a recent issue with dogs fed grain-free diets suffering disproportionately from heart disease. This is due to taurine deficiency, which is possibly due to the interactions of the alternative ingredients used, or because these food omit certain ingredients which are high in taurine.

I was just about to post the same. My dog was diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia in March and the first thing the vet asked was “is he on a grain free food”