Do dogs get Salmonella

dogs digestive system is too acid

 
Both humans and dogs have a ph of nearly 1 on an empty stomach. Since dogs are often fed a meat heavy diet, their stomach will momentarily be more acidic (a condition due to eating animal protein) which lowers the ph. Also, the ph will be different in different areas of the stomach, depending on what is being digested.
 

Is there a truth in saying that a dogs digestive system is too acid for salmonella to survive

 
 A dog's stomach acid is the same ph as ours:  [linkageName=/faqs/default.asp]http://www.petdiets.com/default.asp?Menu=FAQs&ageName=/faqs/default.asp[/link]>http://www.petdiets.com/default.asp?Menu=FAQs&ageName=/faqs/default.asp]http://www.petdiets.com/default.asp?Menu=FAQs&ageName=/faqs/default.asp[/link]









" On an empty stomach, the pH is closer to 1 or less regardless of species. pH is a relative concentration of H ions hence total amount produced is irrelevant. The pH of a stable solution is not time or volume dependent.
The actual stomach pH taken at any point in time when food is present will vary considerably depending on where in the stomach, the type of food present and when in the digestion process the measurement is taken. This is the same in dogs as it is in people. Dogs and cats (in general) eat higher animal protein meals than most people. Meals with more animal protein generally produce a greater acid load and will have a lower gastric pH. People who eat a high protein meal will also have a lower gastric pH compared to when they eat a totally vegetable meal.
The pH is near 1 in the stomach of most species for basically two reasons: kill any living organisms and digest protein. Peptidases secreted by the gastric mucosa require a low pH for maximum activity. The final chyme pH leaving the stomach varies between 1-6 and leaves the stomach based upon final osmolarity and food particle size, which is directly dependent upon type of food, time and the presence of water. So some meals require more time than other meal types. Obviously, it is not a foolproof system against microbes, because all mammalian species get bacterial and viral enteritis. "
 
  I don't know if there are any studies to verify that dog's can't get salmonella because they have a shorter digestive tract than people.

 


 
 
 

Very good info Jessesmom!

OK, this is getting just a wee bit annoying.  Lower ph actually encourages the growth of both good and bad bacteria. This is why confinement raised livestock have to be dosed with huge amounts of antibiotics so they make it to slaughter weight before they die of bad bacterial (and other) infections.  Grass fed ruminants, by the way, have a much higher ph  in their gi, and the bad bios is not adapted to that enviroment at all. 

Salmonella (and its little friend e. coli) doesn't do well in a carnivorous gi because the other flora which is there to digest meat and other fresh tissue, is highly active and naturally competitive, and adapted to life in the short carnivorous gi tract.  It is interesting to consider whether maintaining a dog on a heaviliy grain-based diet may have the same effect in creating a gi environment which favors the bad biotics over the good ones - ie, the highly specialized probiotics might have a lower .  threshold for variation in the gi environment, which would give the more highly adaptable e. coli and salmonella an advantage.  Food for thought, pun intended.

Very good info Jessesmom!

 
 Thanks Kennel_Keeper but Ron is the first one to post this information on a thread about a month ago; I found it very interesting and read other information nutritional information at the site.

 Becca;  I've read some of your other posts and find your amount of knowledge impressive; did you study animal nutrition or another related field? Your comment about the digestive system of dogs on a grain-based diet is interesting; Jessie was on a light dog food for a while and the first ingredient was rice and there were other rice based ingredients in the formula as well; rice bran, rice flour, etc. She would frequently have soft stools and about once every two weeks she would vomit or eat a lot of grass. When we changed her to a kibble that was 40% meat meal her stools became nicely shaped and firm and she stopped having the upset stomach every few weeks.

the only reason dogs are much more resistant to food-borne pathogens than humans are is because they hold the food in their acidic stomach for up to twelve hours. The acid level is such that pretty much anything alive in the food, such as salmonella bacteria, gets destroyed. Once the food gets passed into the intestine, it moves very rapidly through the intestine, giving any organisms that survived the acid-bath little time to release toxins and grow.
Many folks believe that feeding a mixed meal of raw and grain-based kibble may short-circuit the dog's ability to resist bacteria-- by shortening the time the food stays in the stomach and prolonging the time the food stays in the intestine. I've never had any problems feeding mixed meals, but I can imagine that a dog whose digestive system is entirely adapted to eating kibble, i.e. not used to eating raw, might have such trouble.

OK, this is getting just a wee bit annoying

 
Temper. The science is not in dispute. But dogs eating kibble are not the same as cows being fed grain only and I'm not sure how your statement is suppose to refute the science about ph.
 

Good job Ron,
 
Jessesmom, I did appreciate the info you quoted. That is what we were taught in my animal nutrition classes.

Annoying is not even close to temper, lol!  No one ever sees my tempers but my poor hubby.  []

I'm not the least interested in refuting any science.  I'm pointing out additional information which gives a fuller picture of what we are discussing here.  Salmonella and other problem organisms are an across-the-board issue of animal husbandry.  The commonality is the organism's particular adaptation to various ph factors.  That varies by host, environmental factors (such as diet), and the particular mutation of the organism.  That's science too.  []

Your statement that cows aren't the same as dogs is a straw man.  I wasn't saying anything of the kind.  My concern is that people will look at statements like, on one side "Dogs can't get salmonella [or e. coli or whatever] because their stomach acid is so strong" and get wrong ideas, which I assume is a concern also for you.  I suspect that statement is a playing-telephone version of the reality that the dog gi is naturally adapted to digest "garbage" (to us) like tendons, cartilage, and bone with minimal mastication or rumination.

On the other hand, knocking that statement down without presenting the fuller picture, has just as much potential for misinformation being spread around.  "I heard raw meat will kill your dog!" 

Y'all are quickly getting into a state of "uh-HUH!"  "uh-UUUH!" very quickly, like my kids do - hence my annoyance.

Dogs can get salmonella.  So can ducks, hares, deer, fish, and wooly mammoths.  Some of these animals are more predisposed naturally to be favorable hosts (see above) - ducks and rabbits for instance.  Stomach ph is not the whole picture.  It seems that a combination of factors creates an environment in the canine gi which limits the ability of harmful organisms to compete and take up residence - it is very likely, in fact, the same factors that made the dog so nicely adapted to being a scavenger and opportunistic carnivore, since these eating habits would expose the dog to heavy burdens of harmful organisms.

Here's an interesting article outlining a study done on the eating habits of feral carnivores in North America.  Please note, this article is posted on a raw feeding site, but the information up to the section marked Discussion is primary to the source cited in the header.  [linkhttp://www.stevesrealfood.com/research/foodhabits.html%C2%A0]http://www.stevesrealfood.com/research/foodhabits.html [/link] The point of the original research was to attempt to dispel the notion that natural predatory habits threatened livestock producers in any significant way.  That's where I saw it originally, when I was researching coyotes when we first started having problems with them.

Dogs aren't cows and they aren't wolves or coys either - but they are closer to wolves than they are to cows.  But both cows AND dogs are domesticated animals that could handle harmful organisms much better, the closer they are to their natural diets.