"Char" wrote in message
m...
On 4/5/2010 5:26 AM, Gus Gassmann wrote:
sighthounds & siberians wrote:
On Sat, 03 Apr 2010 23:54:37 -0400, Char
wrote:

Many inaccurate and misleading things, including:
The biggest expense is vet bills
Only if you feed a commercial crap in a bag.

Please provide cites that only dogs fed commercial dog food incur vet
expenses.

I don't often (ever?) agree with anything Char says, but this is a
fallacy that should be corrected. All Char says is that if you feed
cheap food, the vet bills *may* exceed the food bills. Switch to a more
expensive food and, guess what? Vet bills will not be the most expensive
item on the budget any more. That does not need a whole lot of
justification.

But feeding raw is way cheaper than any expensive kibble.

I think it is reasonable to feed a combination of foods. Muttley does well
on a diet of inexpensive (but not the cheapest) kibble, with generous
additions of raw beef hearts and marrow bones. He is generally healthy and
he seems to enjoy his meals.

Raw beef hearts seem to be the best value at $1.39/lb and sometimes less,
with almost no fat. I tried cheek meat (about the same price) but it was
full of gristle and fat and was very difficult to cut up into smaller
chunks. Marrow bones at $0.99/lb are good because he will spend quite a
while chewing out the marrow and the edges of the bone, but there is not
much meat on them. He also gets small quantities of human food, except for
known poisons such as chocolate, grapes, and onions. I also give him
rawhide, which he chews thoroughly, and various dog biscuits, which appear
to be made from fairly good ingredients.

Muttley had a good visit to the vet's on Friday, and was determined to be
negative for heartworms, but was given a heartworm preventative because of
increasing numbers of cases in the area. He also got boosters for various
items such as Lyme disease. And the vet said his teeth looked good, but
there was some tartar on the outsides, so she showed me how I could brush
them. This routine annual visit cost about $270, which seemed a bit much,
but he's worth it. I figure the cost for his food is probably about the same
as his vet bills, and maybe a bit more.

Paul and Muttley
www.muttleydog.com