Question 6
Dear mister Lonsdale,

How do you think about serving Pork to our dogs?
People here talk about the disease of Auzjeski, is it a real danger to dogs?

*Someone added:

Dear Tom,

The subject of feeding pork has come up in previous discussions in which most of the members of this forum did not participate.
I myself do, occasionally and with some hesitation, feed pork to my dogs and cats, for variation's sake. I wonder what the nutritional value is of pork. I have heard that pork is not very valuable and that our animals could easily do without it.

Thank you very much for your attention.

*Tom Lonsdale answered, 27 Jun, 2006:

Greetings all,

Good question. Thanks.

The problem is I don't have a firm answer for every person. It's to do with risk evaluation and management and how you feel personally about that.

I don't know the current prevalence of Aujeskies in Holland/Belgium. My guess is it's very low/non existent. The Agricultural Depts should be able to advise on that.

If the disease is present (or likely to suddenly appear) in the country then the risks need to weighed.

In truth it's farm dogs eating the dead pigs thrown on the dung heap that might contract Aujeskies. The chances of the disease being transmitted through meat passed for human consumption are, I would suggest, negligible.

Personally, if I lived in Europe, I would likely feed my dogs lots of pigs' heads and maybe tails and trotters. Pigs' heads are available and make for a good meal. There's a picture of puppies eating a pigs' head at the back of Work Wonders in the English version www.rawmeatybones.com

Best wishes,

Tom Lonsdale

Hi ****** and all,

Getting going a bit late on this last day on the board. Also starting with questions in date order. (Should have done that before, sorry.)

Judging by the picture at the foot of your post you are doing very well. For sure fasting well fed dogs can go on for a long time.

Work Wonders aims to talk about reasonable approaches that will keep pets safe in the hands of inexperienced people. So pushing limits is something I tried to avoid.

A pet food vet wrote that fat dogs can be fasted for up to five weeks without ill effect. Humans suffer all sorts of metababolic and vitamin defficiency problems from extended fasting.

I think it was Mech who wrote that a wolf was disturbed after a 20 day fast and was in fine form. So providing adequate food is fed on the feeding days fasting in between is probably a good thing.

Lots of questions on this still need to be asked. But for the junk food folks they first want to sell lots of junk to make money. The resultant obese dog/cat they then want it to be fed prescription weight reducing diets. With the junk food folks controling the research they won't be funding fasting studies any time soon.

Keep up the good work,

Tom

Hello Tom,

I have a dog with kidney problems (yes, probably due to bad nutrition). How would you be feeding this dog? Would you give less organs and more bone or muscle meat? Where is the difference with a healthy dog? How do you keep f.i. the phosphor in the food as low as possible?

Thanks for your answer!

* Tom Lonsdale answered, 28 Jun, 2006:

Hello all,

Thanks for the question.

You are right about kidney disease often arising from poor nutrition. It's something the junk food industry knows about, have published about and presumably can be held legally accountable for. We need to test this proposition.

Meanwhile we need to feed pets with bad kidneys. The mythology about kidney disease dogs and cats being fed low protein diets was debunked a long time ago. But still it's common, maybe the norm for vets to advise low protein diets.

Fortunately you realise that a natural diet is still the best. As to the proportions of different organs I can only speculate for to my knowledge no firm data is available to tell one way or another. (Indepenent research needs to be done.)

Probably the best approach is, as ever, to feed whole carcasses of game animals. After that whole carcasses of domestic chickens, rabbits and fish.

Probably wise not to overload with liver, heart and red meat (and hence overload wiht phosphorous.)

Table scraps still a good idea.

Chronic kidney disease cats often drink from dirty water in preference to clean water. In practice I used to recommend providing two bowls of water. One plain water and one with teaspoon of salt and half a level teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda per litre. If the patient drank the salt water it was up to them. This runs a bit contrary to the 'restrict the salt' advice.

But animals can't retain water if they don't have requisite amount of salt.

Importantly when treating any diseased organ must not overlook the general and oral health of the patient.

Often times just fixing bad teeth makes a big difference to the overall and kidney health of a patient. Mind you it's necessary to take extra care with the anaesthetic when doing dental work on kidney patients -- and maintain good intravenous hydration during the surgery.

Best wishes,

Tom