Is raw meat actually good meal for your dog?

I was confronted by one woman that has been battling with her husband for feeding their dog raw meat and fish. She told me that it will make the dog to start yearning for fresh blood and start biting people to eat their flesh. She asked me to talk to her husband who was just laughing at the complaint. The husband interjected to say that while he was younger they had a dog that they fed all manner of things including raw meat and that the dog still behaved normal and never bites people indiscriminately.

I was in the middle of two people who are pouring their minds and I didn’t know where to start to resolve the issue between them. Like the woman, I grew up with same belief but like the man I came to understand a lot that was wrong with the belief.

If you ask any Nigerian this question above, you will enter a never ending debate but we are not alone because this debate has been on for decades if not centuries all over the world. Many dog owners have the belief that commercial food manufacturers try to discourage people from feeding their dogs with raw meat. True or false I can’t tell but you cannot fool the whole world.

The fact is that dogs were domesticated from the wild by humans who ended up feeding them with house hold food. I’m sure that if the dog had a choice he will complain to be given what they cherished in the wild – raw meat.

The wild canines like wolves, foxes, hyenas etc. still hunt for fresh meat and eat them raw with blood stain around their mouth –did I hear you say: “that’s why they bite humans”- I guess them, in the wild will attack anything that threatens their survival so I won’t agree that the raw meat makes them attack people.

Let us think about it from this angle, the digestive system of the dogs are built for fresh and raw meat and that is why they are classified as canines because they possess canine teeth used for tearing flesh and an alimentary canal that supports the perfect digestion of this raw meat.

I was watching a documentary talking about this raw meat versus other food for dogs including commercial food and someone made mention that feeding her dog with raw meat made the dog poop less while other commercial food with vegetables and other ingredients makes them poop a large amount of faeces meaning that the dogs digest less from these commercial food against raw meat.

Another thing worthy of note is the fact that most wild canines like wolves only feed once in a week or even more than a week which means that their food actually sustains them longer than what most of us feed our beloved dogs at home.

I was watching an American movie where a lady assassin used the dogs she fed raw meat to kill the bad guy at the end of the movie and Game of thrones where Starks daughter killed her wicked husband (Bolton) with his dogs that he feed with human flesh.

Even with the above, I won’t agree that feeding your dog with raw meat will make the dog hunt people to eat their flesh like many of us believe both here in Africa and anywhere in the world. If a dog bites out of bad habit or bad training, that is understandable than a dog becoming a human eater because he was fed with raw meat.