The question of what to feed a dog continually comes up. A more basic question might be "What is a dog?". A dog is really a wolf that is living in your house. So what do wolves eat? They eat the whole prey that they catch. Now most of us are not going to toss our dogs whole rabbits or woodchucks, so how can we "reconstitute" whole animals. Obviously, we can easily feed meat and bone. Parts that are not as easy to find are internal organs, brains and intestines. Liver provides a large part of the internal organs, so adding some makes sense, and is easy to do. Brains have the highest percentages of omega-3 fatty acids, but they are essentially unavailable, so we can substitute fish oils for brains to provide the needed fatty acids. Intestinal bacteria is supposed to be kept out of our food, but that doesn't mean it is not needed. If the dog has good digestion, we can substitute plain yogurt for the intestinal bacteria. If digestion and stools are less than perfect, we can use a good probiotic. Some butchers will put together a mixture of ground up organ meat which can be added to the daily mix.
Raw or cooked? Did wolves ever learn to use fire? Cooking meat denatures it, including the autolytic enzymes that help it break down. In most cases this makes little difference, but in sensitive situations it may. It depends more on what the dog prefers, as well as what the owner prefers and can handle. When we talk about bacteria, we are refering mostly to intestinal bacteria. Dogs and wolves eat the intestines and intestinal contents of animals. In fact, one of the nasty habits some dogs have is to eat stool. I have never seen a dog get sick from eating stool, although some owners have gotten sick at the thought of it. Some research in Canada showed that even feeding Salmonella bacteria to dogs did not cause them the develop symptoms of Salmonella, and that in a short time they stopped discharging Salmonella in their own stools. So dogs are pretty resistant to intestinal bacteria they might pick up through their food.
What meat to feed the dog? Any meat, fish or poultry is okay. The only meat I would not feed raw is pork, although it is fine cooked. This is due to a disease that pigs can carry that can be fatal to dogs and cats, called Aujesky's disease. I generally recommend chicken leg quarters, as it is the cheapest meat available. Put it in trays, put as many trays in the oven as you can fit, and bake at 350F for 1 hr. Let cool overnight in the oven. Store in the refrigerator, or freeze if you have extra. Feed everything, meat, skin, cartilage, and bones, except for the long bones(leg bone, thigh bone,and fibula), and from the liquid, the aspic and fat, if wished.
Each week, give the dog a bone to gnaw on, in order to keep the teeth clean and strong, the gums and jaw healthy. Give raw a beef neck bone, a beef chuck steak bone, or the knobby end of a beef marrow bone, but not the part from the shaft of the beef marrow bone, as that bone is too dense, has little or no flavor, and has only fat in the middle. Dogs have broken teeth on these bones.
