Raw Diet

Hello vets. My dog on a raw diet. Could you please recommend how much and what raw fish he should have if his ideal weight is 63lbs, 8 years old, Retriever mix, healthy and fixed dog? Thanks so much.

Hello and I'm afraid that I'm going to disappoint you here, because that requires close nutritional attention and should be done by your vet or someone they refer you to, with sufficient skills and knowledge of the patient.  They would need to put the nutritional values of the fish (say, per kilo) next to the nutritional requirements of your pet.  This would usually be a paid service.

My concern would be that canines are generally omnivores not carnivores (cats, on the other hand, are lean more towards the carnivorous).  No dog in the wild eats only fish-meat;  it is more usual to digest natural fibre as well.  It is possible that certain nutrients may not be covered by a fish-only diet and that others could be covered so well that they might lead to nutrient overdose / toxicity (Vitamin A???)  However, because most dogs these days are fed dog-food, most vets do not work out such diets regularly and would have to go away and research in depth for you.  This is not within the remit of the site, although I imagine that your vet, with some research, could point you to a nutritional expert who may help you to review the safety and appropriateness of the diet without quite so much speculation.  While awaiting the results of this, we would strongly recommend feeding a diet that your vet approves for the specific patient.

Upset by the vagueness of my previous answer, I checked the VetHelpDirect blog to see what our site researchers had found most recently about Raw feeding and found it to be well explained.  https://vethelpdirect.com/vetblog/2022/03/08/why-vets-dont-recommend-raw-diets/ This seemed to me to be rather one-sided so to double-check,  I consulted the Webinar Vet on the issue.  The Webinar Vet are a primary educator of working vets (we all do 35 hours of extra training every year, with experts of the subjects, and most of us a good deal more than that).  Their job is to inform vets of the latest evidence-based changes in veterinary medicine (because we can't all be experts in all of it) and I remember them as being evidence-based (rather than opinions based) about different diets in the past.  However, it seems that the evidence is quite strong.  Expert vet nurse Georgia Woods-Lee can be found explaining how research has shown that ninety per cent and upward of Raw diets fed to dogs are nutritionally inadequate, especially when fed over a long time.  Furthermore, the pathogen risk of feeding RAW diets is very high;  apparently soap and water are not sufficient to remove the pathogens, such as bacteria, from raw dog-food (as usually fed), from dishes and plates.  Nor can I find who the 10% or less are who are feeding RAW diets in a nutritionally adequate manner, so I would simply recommend that you don't feed raw diets unless overseen by a vet with qualifications in nutrition.