# Help me out here.  Dogs and food...



## Queen Mum (Dec 4, 2011)

I've looked it up on the internet and on the vet net.  But the subject keeps coming up at my house and my landlady is having hysterics about it right now...  

She swears that dogs will DIE if they have even an ounce of cooked pork.  EXCEPT pork bone meal and ham, and pork bone marrow and pork bones.  

I showed her where the ingredients in her dog food say PORK MEAT and she swears that that does not include muscle tissue.

SO can anyone tell me where the heck this silly rumor came from?

I can't make heads or tails of it.  

The only thing I can find that has even a sliver of truth to the rumor is that dogs should never be given raw pork because of the risk of trichinosis.   

Any authoritative articles on LGD's an the safety of pork in their diet?


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## redtailgal (Dec 4, 2011)

There is a company in Missouri that was recently sued because their pork bone treats alledgedly killed several dogs.  

Also, there is an old wives tale that dogs (and cats) will get a specific kind of burrowing worm from eating pork in any form, even cooked.  In the wives tale, it says that the worm will burrow through the stomach and into the spinal cord where it will travel up and kill the animal by leeching the nutrients from the brain.

The things people come up with!


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## Queen Mum (Dec 4, 2011)

I wonder if the people that come up with these nutty ideas have a worm called alcohol that burrowed into their brains and sucked all the nutrients out of their own brain cells.


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## redtailgal (Dec 4, 2011)




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## lilhill (Dec 4, 2011)

The only bad experience I have had with feeding my dog pork was when I gave her some BBQ pork.  Now that made her sick so I don't feed BBQ anything to the dogs.


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## Queen Mum (Dec 4, 2011)

Good point..


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## SheepGirl (Dec 4, 2011)

I took Small Animal Pre-Vet last year and we had a veterinarian come in and talk to our class...and the last thing she said was "If there's one thing you take away from me speaking to you, it should be: do not feed your cats and dogs ham." I can't remember why, I think she said it has some sort of fat that they are unable to digest or something...so maybe it has something to do with that...?


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## carolinagirl (Dec 5, 2011)

Many people who feed RAW diets include raw pork.  I'd freeze it first just to make sure there are no parasites in it but otherwise pork is fine.  Remove excess fat though because that can be hard on the digestive tract.  Pork used to be a problem because of trichinosis, but in domestically farmed pork that's not an issue anymore.  I would not feed raw wild pork though.


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## redtailgal (Dec 5, 2011)

carolinagirl said:
			
		

> Pork used to be a problem because of trichinosis, but in domestically farmed pork that's not an issue anymore.  I would not feed raw wild pork though.


Why is that?  



As for me, my dogs get a *decent* brand of dogfood that is made locally (and is 10$ for a 50lb sack cuz I get it from friends). But I do supplement.....
I have never heistated to feed anything raw to my dogs.  Cow parts, goat parts, etc..........I trained my mastiff to be my "blood dog", if someone (in the neighborhood or in my family) has a deer they need to track, we call on good ole Bella.  Her reward is usually a leg (Um yes, the whole thing, lol)
 Bella will also go to the garden and pick herself some veggies.  We hvae never had issues or illness from her raw meat treats.  (I also save the liver and heart from the deer we kill for "nom-noms".

But for us people, pork and chicken are handled like a biohazardous material until they are well cooked.


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## carolinagirl (Dec 5, 2011)

Oh, I don't have an issue with raw meat at all.  I just worry about wild hog (not domestic hog) because of the diseases that wild hogs carry.   Wild hogs are known to carry Brucellosis (which causes miscarriage in other animals), Pseudorabies, and tuberculosis.  It would probably be safe if frozen for a week or so prior to feeding, but it makes me nervous.  My Anatolians LOVE the leftovers from a freshly cleaned deer.  They have a spine and rib cage right now.  They will get the heart and liver over the next couple of days, along with some good meaty bones.


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## aggieterpkatie (Dec 5, 2011)

SheepGirl said:
			
		

> I took Small Animal Pre-Vet last year and we had a veterinarian come in and talk to our class...and the last thing she said was "If there's one thing you take away from me speaking to you, it should be: do not feed your cats and dogs ham." I can't remember why, I think she said it has some sort of fat that they are unable to digest or something...so maybe it has something to do with that...?


Yeah, I remember that from animal science classes. No ham, and I can't remember if bacon was ok or not.  I think it was how ham is processed that makes it not good.


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## Chickie2378 (Dec 5, 2011)

Queen Mum said:
			
		

> She swears that dogs will DIE if they have even an ounce of cooked pork.  EXCEPT pork bone meal and ham, and pork bone marrow and pork bones.


Some old wives tale she grew up with and won't let go.    Amazing people think like this.


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## Queen Mum (Dec 5, 2011)

I think the issue with ham as with sausage is the high levels of salt.  My mom's dog ate a couple pounds of sausage and went into kidney failure.  It was due to too much salt.  But a little bit of ham won't hurt a dog.  Of course, Mom's dog was very old and wasn't very healthy in the first place and it was raw sausage with tons of fat.


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