Why aren't these dogs living longer - Page 3

I don't think raw diet is a miracle or anything and I think more factors come into play, but I also just lost a 10 1/2 year old this past Christmas eve from cancer and he was diagnosed when he turned 8. He was looking very pale and weakly when he was diagnosed, and around this time I started him on raw. He gained his vigour back and he lasted way longer than the vets said he would (they said he would be dead within the year), he also appeared very healthy up until his final moments.

My brother has a 15 year old Golden Retriever who has been fed the cheapest food he could find. Bear had sezuires daily, stopped eating, and lost a lot of weight. Their Vet recommended canned food, because his teeth were in such bad shape, they didn't want to risk pulling his teeth at his age. I recommended "Satin Balls". No way would my brother do the raw diet other wise. Bear has been on the Satin Balls for about 8 months now. Not only has he gained weight, but his sezuires have gone from daily to about once a week. He is active, goes for walks now and plays with the youger dog. They also live on 8 acers and he has had free run of the property.

When one loses their beloved GSD pet and house dog, it tears one's heart apart. I don't think I have ever really gotten over the ones I've lost over the last 55 years including my first dog which was unexpectedly and suddenly killed. The grief fades in time in intensity but a residue still remains and my thoughts drift back to these marvelous, wonderful animals, what a great blessing they all have been to me. I still miss every single one of them. I just received a book that I have really enjoyed reading. It's called "Will My Pet Go To Heaven?". It's written by Steve Wohlberg who is an expert on old testament scripture. To me it is a very comforting book and one that helps lift grief and make the pain bearable from losing a beloved pets. I can highly recommend it. For anyone interested it's available for $9.95 plus postage from White Horse Media (www.whitehorsemedia.com) or by phone at 1-800-782-4253. The next time someone in my family or one of our friends or neighbors loses their beloved pet, we are going to give them a copy of this book.

Thanks everyone for such a great input and keeping it so pleasant even with different views. I truly believe a raw vaccine free dog is a healthier one and will live longer just becasue I have personally have done a lot of research on the benefits of raw enzymes both on humans and animals BUT agree that longevity certainly comes from genetics as well. I see such a pattern here which leads me to believe that stress is playing a significant role in longevity as well. I'm not saying all dogs who are living only til 9 lives with "stress" and I am sure everyone has could point out many dogs who are just pets that die young but as working dogs I am seeing them dying around 9 or 10 but GSD who are not in some stress are living longer, hence some mixed breeds in my family who lived to be OLD. Our mutt GSD mix lived to be 14 on kibbles and bits. But her stress level with vitrually none. I also believe exercise plays a huge role in longevity. The more you exercise (and yes I need to practice what I say LOL) the healthier it keeps your body as a whole. But I agree too that it will take genereations of proper exercise and raw diet to convince a lot of people that a pure diet can help. I know I have kind of gotten off the track here but I appreciate everyone's input. There used to be GSD survey, that I did indeed fill out myself, on the GSD and it was really good. It asked all sorts of questions about your dog. I filled one out on Dante and teh results were going to be posted this spring but not enough people filled it out to do any conclusions. Karmen

My first GSD died at 7 1/2 from lymphosarcoma. He also had allergies, a chronic bacterial sinus infection, neurological issues in addition to the leukemia. He received an annual rabies vac - my vet (and former boss) insisted rabies were rampant in the area. I had lost touch with the dog world at the point, so believed him. He also had the annual distemper/parvo combo and took a h-worm preventative. When we had to go out of town unexpectedly and the kennel that noramally boarded him was full, the new kennel required a kennel cough vac, so I gave him the intra nasal one. 2 to 3 weeks later he came donw with the sinusitis and in spite of 2 surgeries, multiple cultures and biopsies,and every expensive antibiotic known to man, he still sneezed mucus and blood for the remainder of his short life. He was always fed a high quality dog food, and for about a year I made him a homemade diet due to his scratching. It didn't help because he was not allergic to food, he had inhalation allergies. He was skin tested and desenitized. In spite of all of this, he only made it for 7 1/2 years. the youngest I have ever lost a dog. My Malamutes lived to be anywhere from 12 to 15, never ate premium food, had annual vacs til they were 9 or 10, no kennel cough and I can't think of one that needed vet care other than a neutering. They never ate premium food, their diet was locally milled with a high corn content. Food? Vacs? Genes? I no longer give annual vacs, every 3 years now until Blitz is 6, he just had his 6th birtday on Christman, so 2008 will be the last year he gets a distemper combination and he will never get a kennel cough vac or a lyme. When was the last time you heard of an adult dog dying from distemper, parvo, kennel cough or any of the other many diseases we are told dogs must be vaccinated against? In fact, have you ever even had a dog with any of these diseases? Lyme is treatable, I don't vaccinate against that either, have him tested annually. Either do that or educate yourself on the symptoms so early treatment can begin should your dog/s. Actually, if you vaccinate against lyme and then test, the results will not be accurate due to the vaccines. So far, and I am not bragging, Blitz has never seen the vet for an illness and his only problem is a mild inhalation allergy that is controlled with antihistamines and a very small amount of a steroid never given more often than 3 times a month. Having said all this, my conclusion is 75% in the genes and 25% a combination of all others and often just the luck of the draw. Feeding an unbalanced diet is not going to add to the dog's lifespan nor is hitting them with every vac known to man. I do not believe that dogs need all this designer dog food, I have owned and know of way too many that have led long, healthy lives without premium dog food. I am as gulity as the next guy and have been convinced that I must spend tons of money for dog food if I love my dog. I just bought a 10 lb bag of dehydrated grain free food for almost $80. He had damned well better eat it.

Well Karmen a couple of thoughts if I may. With the raw diet UNLESS you are feeding home raised meat or get it from a reliable local source that you KNOW does not use antibiotics and hormones to raise their livestock you are feeding them a diet that still has many but maybe different problems from a processed one. Certainly the antibiotics and hormones in our meat supply (and if you do your research on this you will see what I am talking about) which are used at very high levels are much more up front and personal in raw. In fact there has been some speculation that the high hormone levels play a role in the increasing early sexual development showing up in children (girls 5 or 6 getting their periods, boys shaving at 9,10,11). Ditto re the possible pesticides on whatever veggies you feed. I think a healthy diet is great but I do not think it is a panacur. It's very interesting if you look at humans who live to be 100+. Now science tells us moderation in everything and eat a healthy diet etc etc. But the people who live long lives a. tend to have the genetics b. tended to live an extreme life in that they are either total teetotalers who never saw a veggie they didn't like or they smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish and caroused their way thru life( so much for the stress theory). I myself tend to be careful with vaccinations and do think our dogs have been overvaccinated but first and foremost I strongly believe we need to pay attention to the genetics. When is the last time that you ASKED how old is sire, dam, grandsire/dam, great grandsire etc and what did they die from. There is a line of working dogs that I have been interested in but I keep seeing members of it dying at young ages(7-9) from a variety of causes including bloat. Guess which line I will NOT be going to. Paying attention is a great screening device. Paying attention pays off. We need to select for healthy old age that is the first and I believe the most important step.

This discussion is interesting for me. My gsd's did not become older also than 10 years. The first shepherd dog, which I had as a child, became 14 years old. That was into the 1955-67. Nevertheless - I have also different thoughts here. Some sounds itself in such a way, as if one would constantly look for perfect dog for the super - and calculated the shepherd dog was to meet and must all the desires: sport, family, child-friendly, animal-friendly, environmentalsuited, protection service, very old, perfectly healthy will be, which have appropriate colouring, the figure immaculately, in the character absolutely perfectly for each kind, for each individual humans, simply for everything.... without any right to be individuelly. And I think then - perhaps could help clones: one looks for the perfect dog - then this is cloned, and all desires are immediately fulfilled. It is not easily to be lost a dog, I understand it really. But I think also - we cannot affect always everything. And there is not the perfect dog - as well as it also no perfect humans gives.

Re old dogs and bad diets. We had a collie/golden retriever we got from the pound who lived to be 17+. No stress in terms of working/showing etc but started out life tough. When we got her she hadn't even been weaned yet. This was a dog that gave the lie to the whole crossbred heterosis theory. She was allergic to almost every known food for human or dog (and let me tell you we tried a bunch). She got vaccinated every year (of course back then they did not have these Supercallifragilistic 15,000 all in one vaccines). When she was about 3 she got stolen from us probably to be sold to a lab(common in those days) but my dad who was a lawyer stymied that by calling every lab in a 300 mile radius, describing the dog and telling them it they took/bought her he would sue their ass off. As a result we got her back within 24 hrs - dumped on the side of the road and beaten within an inch of her life (especially around the head). Whether from the head trauma or the LSD we came to believe she had also been given for a number of years she had flashback "trips" where generally at night she would bark incessently and try to climb the walls. Intially ace promazine had to be used and then gradually over time it diminished . In her senior years she live with four dominant GSD bitches - which brings it own stresses. She had been spayed and suffered periodic "leakage" and urinary tract infection which back in those days they treated with strong horomones so that was part of her life on an onging basis. When she was 13+ my vet at the time who was great with old dogs asked me what we fed her. I said I don't dare tell you. Finally he wheedled it out of me - a can of Alpo a day combined with corn flakes. He had the same opinion I had of the Alpo(oh god the smell when you opened that can) and in typical laconic New England fashion drawls "well I suppose the corn flakes have some small nutritional value". But you know for her the diet worked and it was the only one that did. Like I said lived to be 17+. I don't even remember what finally did her in other than extreme old age. Preston, you are so right about the losing. The best description I ever saw was a quote from an old time GSD breeder. She said when I die, I suspect that they wil find that my heart is like an old china plate with lots of cracks and fracture lines - one for each dog I owned and bred and loved and ones for all the ones that left us early or late. Badly paraphrased but I think you get the image. I too have a heart like an old china plate.

of course genes have an effect in everything. I read somewhere a while ago that about 80% of the people that lived to be 100 or older had smoked regularly at some point in there life. Obviously they were better able to adapt to that toxin than others are. That's all life is, the ability to adapt, when you no longer can you die, same with dogs. quality of life isn't measured in years though, not with me anyway. It stands to reason that most "healthy" animals will live longer as a general rule than unhealthy ones, and for the most part I think that is true. But you can't switch that generalization over to specific indidents about this one dog that was fed raw and died early and this one was fed kibble and lived to be 20. I think case by case comparisons do have validity, but most of us do NOT have enough of the picture to make to very valid in the big picture. Just like people that talk about exercise and don't like it because their neighbor ran every day 5 miles and dropped dead from a heart attack at age 40. Well they also didn't mention that he was high strung, stressed at work all day, and was running just to get away. health can't be confined to one aspect. To study things, they have to break everything down in order to have any findings with any validity. BUT being healthy is multifactorial, not a single entity. And anything short of trauma in relation to disease, is not caused by a single factor, it usually caused by a myriad of things that decrease your health, dogs included. Cancer doesn't grip healthy cells, in fact in a healthy body 100-10,000 cancer cells are produced and killed by the average human every single day of your life. just like maggots doen't eat live healthy meat, they eat sick and diseased meat. Stress will lower immune function and long term will effect health and longevity. Some can handle stress very well, will it mean they die at 16 or 7?? who knows? What is there diet like? Some dogs can handle less than ideal food sources very well, others are allergic to everything. Some dogs need mental and physical stim to stay healthy, some can sit on a couch for 20 years. To me, I do the best I can. I try to balance my life as well as my dogs. They get pressured, but not all the time. They have to deal with things they don't want to, but then they get a whole lot of things they love later. I don't do vaccines other than rabies. They don't make sense to me. A healthy animal will not succumb to these diseases. You can try and scare me, but if a multi billion dollar compaign every single year can't convince me, I doubt you will. I've looked past the numbers and stats they throw at you and the scare tactics and injecting most of that stuff into my blood or an animals makes no sense to me. Actually certain ones do make sense, but the manner in which they are delivered and with what they are mixed with do not. I feed Raw because it makes more sense to me to feed unproccessed foods. I don't need a study to convince me, if dogs or humans weren't inteded to eat raw unprocessed foods we would have developed with ovens or microwaves instead of mouths. (simplistic yes, but just being a little silly). Cooking food for humans (meat included) actually has more to do with being able to use meat much longer after it is killed and our being accustomed to the texture and taste of being cooked than anything else. Yes it makes the protien more digestable, but it also creates things that, gasp, cause cancer over time as well, especially at high heat. Dogs don't eat grains unless they're eating bagged dog food. after seeing what processing does to food in humans and how it throws off almost everything internally, because they are all interconnected, I can imagine its doing the same things in dogs. Everything from your GI system, to the endocrine system is affected by processing foods. Will it create a problem down the road for your dog?? Who knows? will the bones I f

I guess this is they way they tell you, you're talking too much I can't remember exactly what I said that got cut off, something about the bones i feed may kill my dog, but I doubt it. The only dog i've every known to have any obstruction besides cancer, was a squeaker from a toy. But then if the bones scared me, there's a chance my dog could die from the afflotoxins in the kibble or kidney disease etc. They all have their risks Either way, I chose to give what I think is best, and if that means I only get 8 years, they will be 8 full ones, and if I get 14 or more, they will be the same.