I found this article so interesting that I would like to share it with you. Its really interesting for everybody (raw feeders and kibble feeders) to learn more about the working of the dogs stomach, but like the article says don’t try doing it yourself if you feed your dog kibble.

From the desk of Mogens Eliasen, for immediate release

This article may be reprinted without further permission

when brought in its entirety, including the bio the end.

June 8, 2003

Why your dogs needs to fill its stomach on a regular basis

(This article is also available as a simple text file version)

Most dog owners, who love their dogs, try to extend as much TLC to them as
they can. However, when they assume that what is good for them is also good for the dog, they make some terrible mistakes.. Dogs do not have monkey stomachs!

Some anatomic facts to consider.

A dog stomach is elastic, like an accordion. When empty, it folds to what
almost appears to be an intestine. When it gets filled, it can contain as much as 7-8% of the dog's body weight! (For a human weighing 120 pounds, this would correspond to eating 10 pounds in one meal - but a human stomach is a bag with almost no elasticity - it simply cannot do more than about 10% of this.)

Further, the dog's stomach is full of small glands that produce digestive
enzymes.

Those glands start to work when they get in contact with food. This will
happen for some of them immediately as the dog gets some food in the stomach, but, because of the folding nature of the stomach, most of those glands do not get to touch food, unless the stomach gets filled so that all the folds are stretched out!

An amazing consequence of this is that the dog's digestion process is more
efficient when it gets a large meal! While it still might digest a certain fraction of a small meal, that fraction will be much larger for a larger meal! Dogs that are being fed almost exclusively "full meals" (= meals that fill the stomach), generally need some 20-30% less food than dogs that are being fed many smaller meals. (This is exactly the opposite of what would be true for a human stomach...)

The ultimate carnivore experience

Dogs, like other carnivores, do not rely on having food available all the
time. In fact, when they have a full stomach or recently had one, they don't even bother looking to the side of a possible prey. Instead, they feed very irregularly – when food is available, and they have hunting success. At such times, they gorge and fill themselves - and there is no discussion possible that they thoroughly enjoy doing that!

Many people also experience that, when they have difficulty getting the dog
to eat something new, a simple way to get it to eat it is to first give it a little of what you know they like - then it will eat almost anything after that to fill the stomach! This illustrates that filling the stomach is more important to a dog than just "getting a little bite".

Yet, most domestic dogs never get to experience this. Keeping the dog constantly starving.

Few dog owners want to starve their dog or to keep it constantly hungry.

Nevertheless, this is what most people end up doing when they feed their dog multiple daily meals, assuming that this is just as good for a dog as it is for a human.

An adult dog needs an amount of food in average per day that is about 2-3%
of its body weight. Considering that it takes 6-8% to fill the stomach, there is just no way the average dog will ever get to experience the satisfying fulfillment of having a full stomach. With 2-3 small meals per day, it will remain very far from that objective!

Changing the feeding pattern

Now, you cannot just start letting a dog fill its stomach, cold turkey, if
it has never been used to this. It would be dangerous (risk of bloat because the muscle tissue is far too weak from never having been exercised). Doing it with kibble is, of course, completely out of the question too - it is far too concentrated.

Also, when you ultimately feed your dog as much as it wants in one meal, you cannot feed it more than 3-4 meals per week!

However, when you do this, you will see the "food searching" behavior
disappear, and you will see your dog gain weight if it is too skinny and lose weight if it is too fat.

You have an important hurdle to overcome before you can safely let you dog
eat full meals 3-4 times a week - in addition to your own human-based emotions:

You must train the stomach muscles to handle the greater volume of a meal.

It is like training a broken leg for skiing after getting the cast off... Do it gradually over a period of at least 3 months, preferably 6. (Please refer to my article on Conditioning if you need help with this.)

I know the concept of feeding only 3-4 times per week sounds brutal - but
seriously: it isn't. My dogs have been fed this way for more than 30 years, and I tell you: they enjoy their meals!!! But they also enjoy the time between the meals. I have never had a problem with weight - it regulates itself on an individual basis. I have helped literally hundreds of my students to do the same, and they all report the same great results.... not a single exception!

Mogens Eliasen

-------------------------------------------

Mogens Eliasen holds a Ph.D. level degree in Chemistry from Århus
University, Denmark and has 30+ years of experience working with dogs, dog owners, dog trainers, and holistic veterinarians as a coach, lecturer, and education system developer. He publishes a free newsletter "The Peeing Post" containing lots of tips and advice on dog problems of all kinds, particularly about training, behavioral problems, feeding, and health care.

For more information about Mogens Eliasen, including links to other articles he has published, please send a short e-mail to contact@k9joy.com.

Ok, now a happy story.

Tieka is such a nice girl. She loves to do things for me and is so attentive.

I often go for a walk with the dogs in a “doggy forest” near where my mother lives so it is only logical that I usually ring her up and give her no other chose than to say yes when I ask if she wants to come along too.

We dive to her front door, I open my car door and Tieka jumps out, rushes to mums front door and waits for my command to “bark”. First she usually looks at me as if you say “do I really have to do that silly trick?” and then I give the command again and she barks and starts to wag her tail (with big bottom movements) very hard at the thought that now “grandma” is going to come out. Mum opens the door and Tieka and “grandma” have a big reunion before Tieka turns around, jumps back into the car and then moves to the front seat to make getting in for my mother rather a lot more work than necessary. Mum greets each dag separately, I’m always the last she says hello to … and usually forgotten.. LOL

Another cute thing Tieka dose is when I come home late at night (usually I work evenings) she is so happy and she often grabs one of her squeaky toys and takes it with her all the way around the “dog wee place”.

Once she took a small hard hollow plastic ball with her. I didn’t see that she had this and that evening she left it on the grass. The next day I saw it lying in the grass, but in a very sorry state as the counsel lawnmower had driven over it and chopped it in two! However this didn’t bother the dogs, in fact it was a much better ball now. Much more manageable for little lagotti mouths. And now, years later we still have this mutilated ball in the dog toy box. The last litter of pups thought it was great too!!

Hmmm Here I was telling you all how well it was going with Zanna and her agility class.

But last week she was attack from the behind for no reason by a pain in the butt German shepherd. This male dog is the biggest pain in the bum I have ever met, attacking other class mates for no reason at all. A few weeks before he attacked a Tibetan Mastiff who reacted by just defending himself rather than fighting back, lucky for the GS cos he wouldn’t of survived that. A pity for Zanna….

So Zanna fell on her back and admitted immediate defeat even though she wasn’t trying anything on him. He is just a mental case being a male dog in puberty and his owners not acting like a boss should.

The rest of the lesson she was so frightened, anything that moved made her stop.

And now, a week later, Zanna is still afraid, I really cant blame her as this dog is going to try this again, if not with Zanna then with another dog. He’s not picky, he just goes for who ever is near him each week. The owners have been warned to keep him under control but the dogs are often of the leash and he just makes a dash for the closest victim at the most unexpected moments.

I nearly cried. My always so happy to be doing agility Zanna, her tail high in the air running as fast as I would allow her to so she would take each obstacle correctly. And now she was so frightened, her tail way between her legs. Gradually she started jumping the obstacles but as soon as she saw the GS, even if he was far away, she put on the brakes and wouldn’t go any further in his direction. The teachers came to me even before the lesson began to say they had put us into another group so we would not be with the GS, really nice of them, but it wasn’t far enough for Zanna.

By the end of the lesson I at least had her so far as to put her tail up for the best part of the course, but again running in the direction of the waiting dogs meant she slowed again and only jumped the jumps for me and certainly not because she wanted to.

I hope she will get her confidence back in a few weeks…..

And to make me really angry, when we had to clear away the obstacle coarse, the stupid woman owner of the GS tied her dog up next to Zanna (who was already there) and when I finally saw this Zanna was laying on a tight leash totally in the other direction as the GS who was making his usual awful barking noises which I would never let one of my dogs do! I stormed off to remove Zanna. I knew the GS would have a go at me to so I was totally ready for him when he made his lung and barked like a crazy dog. He was totally flabbergasted when I reacted with a very angry and loud “SHUT YOUR MOUTH!!!”. He was quiet…..

His owner came up to me later and said in her silly voice “gosh your yelling made an impression on him”. … What to say to this?

Some people should not own a dog.

Tieka is the sweetest cuddliest friendliest dog I know. She loves everyone, if any one looks in her direction she interprets this as an invitation to her to be patted and cuddled. Never in her 4 years of her life have I ever heard her bark at a person, except when we are inside and she hears something strange outside which I find very normal and she soon stops.

Flecha is aways on a leash when we go out until we get to the car, park or bush. But the girls are nearly always off the leash. They know that they must wait at the curb before crossing the road. They never bother people that pass by. In fact they are delighted to see people passing our house and if given the chance rush to all strangers to be patted.

But this morning Tieka did totally the unexpected… (dont worry, it was nothing dangerous just very untypical for her)

A woman with a huge blond hairdo approached to walk by our house when we walked out of the front door. Tieka went bezerk!!!! To Tieka this woman was a total alien and not to be tolerated!!! I must admit I thought she was a little strange too, but never before has Tieka reacted to a person that I found weird Haha.

She barked so much, not really aggressive but also not friendly. I had to call very, very hard to get her back to me. And all this time the woman yelled at Tieka that she was a horrible dog! Any one that meets Tieka knows that that is the very last thing that she is. I actually nearly had to forcefully push my jaw back up, I was so flabbergasted!

I wonder if Tieka knew more than I did......

The “Barfing” dogs had another excellent eating day.

Ill give you the disgusting details!

Yesterday I went to pick up my twice weekly supply of sheep bones from the Islamic butcher.

Being an addicted “Barf feeder” I always look forward to getting home and looking in the bag to see if he included some surprise. Often he includes a gullet that has some liver and/or lung attached to it. Almost always it includes a lot of slabs of fat with bits of meat that I cut off. I throw away most of the fat as it’s much too much for it to be healthy. Sometimes there is a bag of mince that is no longer saleable to us picky humans. Once it included kilos of chicken wings!! And every now and then some rams balls. Hmmm the dogs love them haha.

And that’s what they got today, Flecha had a whole ball and the girls each had half of the other. They were very big this time, it made me feel sorry for the ram while it was still alive having to lug such things around. Ok, it’s a bit of a strange thing to talk about but certainly “food for thought”.

And as dessert they got some lams bones.

This evening they got some contents of a cow’s stomach. Stinks really good, Haha, and the dogs would eat it as it is but I included some self made mince to make it extra yummy and more nourishing.

The stomach contents I got a few weeks ago along with a whole tripe. I dissected and bagged it all into one meal bags, tripe and fermented grass separate to make different type of meals, and freezed them. Fresh tripe really doesn’t stink much. Not like the tripe for dogs you can buy in the supermarket, yuck that stuff is disgusting to smell. But the fermented grass is admittedly a bit smelly and not for the beginner Barfer ;-) . Still, I can highly recommend it for your dogs. You get used to everything believe me.

Hmmm thinking about it they had rather a lam food day. Tomorrow its back to good old chicken as their main meal.

On Tuesday I’m off to the market to see if the “chicken man” could get his hands on some turkey for us. Variety is the spice of life ;-)

Computers are funny things aren’t they.....

We are back again after another computer break down and then my provider provided the next problem as we lost all contact with the outside world…

I called Wanadoo (my provider) and spent nearly an hour on the phone in “waiting mode” to finally get a helpful man on the line that told me to unplug my modem, wait one and a half minutes, plug it back in again and attempt connection. I couldn’t believe it! It worked!!!

The girls are doing really well in their agility coarse.
Zanna is a natural, she loves agility and is better than Tieka as she likes doing it for her self and goes as fast as possible. Agility is Zanna’s sport.

I think Tieka likes to do agility to be with me so her pace is much more relaxed and she tends to happily run along with me. This makes her not only slower but also makes me have to work a lot harder as she dose everything I tell her. If I make a body language mistake I make her do the wrong thing. Next season I think I will try to get her into a “fly ball” class. I know she will be a fanatic at that and is much more her sort of sport.

It amazes me that mother and daughter can be so totally different… maybe I mentioned that before.

And Flecha? Well he is getting some of his coat back which is just as well since the weather is getting colder now. But he is a happy old sole and succeeds to make me laugh everyday at his naughty arrogance and sneaky way of wrapping me around his paw. He has the nicest kissiest muzzle in the world!!