Raw Prey Model

Sounds like Shadow's been having some fun, lol.  I dont think anything would have happened to him had he eaten the mouse or eggs, but like you, I wouldnt have wanted him to.  Lucy killed a bird in our backyard, caught it as it was flying by.  She crouches down in the grass like a lion, even though the grass is short, and stays very still and jumps at birds.  Pretty amazing to watch this... she has not eaten one though, that I know of.

The eating of raw, living mouse meat wouldn't bother me. But the possibility of fleas and small flexible bones getting stuck was the issue. As I told my wife, if he were to eat raw, it would be meat that I know about and bones that wouldn't splinter or get stuck. But, also, if worse came to worse, he can and obviously has, free-hunt. Running free, he would have greater danger from traffic than choking on a mouse. OTOH, just a mouse is not balanced. He would have to go into the grain field and chew on some grass or something for other nutrients. Or eat several mice to get the contents of their GITs. And I was awestruck by the speed and precision from which he gathered this mouse from underneath a pile of cut weeds. They had just mowed down this stretch recently and I would have thought the critters would have vacated. But there are rodent holes all over the place.
 
BTW, we recently had a mouse in the house that he couldn't be bothered with. It was most active at night, when he was sleeping. Maybe he senses that we aren't suppose to hunt in the house.


Shadow, the mighty hunter.

Ron,

I don't think you have much to worry about.  Dogs and their kin have been catching and eating  mice for thousands of years without too many problems.  Heck coyotes and some wolves survive completely on mice.  It's possible that the little bones and such could get stuck, but I don't think it's probable. 

From reading the boards here I think raw bones have more flexibility and aren't brittle like cooked bones. 

Maybe he senses that we aren't suppose to hunt in the house.

 
Ah, too funny!

Ron, mice are actually perfectly balanced (according to my PhD friend who researched this), though you wouldn't want your dog living off JUST mice for the same reason one should switch dog foods every so often.  Small mammals of every type are the perfect canid meal - everything they need in one tiny, balanced package with all the nutrients in the correct form for optimum absorbtion.  Think about it - they adapted to hunt these creatures in the wild -the ones that couldn't get what they needed kicked the bucket too early to reproduce.

The only reason my friend came up with not to feed them (you can buy them humanely euth'd and flash frozen from the pet store - or live of course) is the expense.  Wild ones carry parasites of course but so do feral cats, which poop where your dog walks (and then licks his paws).  It's a good idea, if your dog spends a lot of time outside, to worm for tapes every few months or so, anyway.

Oh, another anecdotal but expert opinion - I had another friend a long time ago who was talking about the (then) new raw feeding trend.  She had a friend who actually was an animal nutrition expert (at NC State).  This person said that the raw feeders were all very well, but they were on the wrong track (at the time).  According to her, if they really wanted to feed their dogs naturally, they needed to go catch a rabbit, throw it in a blender with a mouse or two and a bird thrown in for good measure, grind it up, throw in some grass clippings, let the whole thing sit for about a day at room temp, then feed it.  Yum, yum.  She was serious about the whole animals though - otherwise you do have to supplement things like vitamin B, GAGs, DHA, and some of the important antioxidants.

if they really wanted to feed their dogs naturally, they needed to go catch a rabbit, throw it in a blender with a mouse or two and a bird thrown in for good measure, grind it up, throw in some grass clippings, let the whole thing sit for about a day at room temp, then feed it. Yum, yum. She was serious about the whole animals though - otherwise you do have to supplement things like vitamin B, GAGs, DHA, and some

 
Exactly. A true prey model might be a kill that was buried for a day or so, given time to get a little rancid, etc. Or, in the case of yesterday, an honest-to-goodness live catch. I do keep up his de-worming because he does spend quite a bit of time during the week out in the backyard. And it's entirely possible that he's eaten a few critters that have wandered into the backyard. The mouse that got into the house had to cross a lot line at some point. He could have easily been a mid-morning snack. And the advantage of eating a mouse whole is that there is hide to wrap the bones, unless he ends up throwing that back up. But his stools look normal.

Think about it - they adapted to hunt these creatures in the wild -the ones that couldn't get what they needed kicked the bucket too early to reproduce.

 
I agree with that to a point. I've yet to see a documentary where they can follow the full life of a wolf (4 to 8 years) and find out if their death was brought on by malnutrition or, more pressingly, starvation. The only wolf death I've seen when they reintroduced gray wolves to Yellowstone was when one female that sought the alpha female position lost and and was cast out of the pack. She wandered off and got hit be a car and was found dead by a drain pipe under the road. And while the diet may not be perfect and none is, it is a good point that a creature must survive long enough to procreate.

while the diet may not be perfect and none is, it is a good point that a creature must survive long enough to procreate.

LOL.  Not to mention being healthy and sound enough to bring down wild elk and other large ruminants, in the case of wolves.  I've noticed that coys, who are admittedly not dogs but awfully darn close, can easily catch and kill sheep - which believe it or not are really hard to catch when healthy (which domestic sheep usually are).  There was a study (I referenced it before here) that studied the scat of wild canids (and other carnivores) to get what information they could find about the feeding habits of these animals.  They (in that study at least) found that they did indeed eat the whole animal, though in stages for larger kills or finds, and they tended to prefer smaller prey to larger, what we would think of as classic prey for these larger predators, like the larger ruminants.

Here's a nicely done overview of some wild canids - the first one, the African dog, is simply amazing - they sound very similiar to our domestic dogs.  This page mentions that the primary killer of these canids is exposure to diseases carried by domestic dogs, like distemper.

[linkhttp://wilddog.hypermart.net/Home/Wild_dog_page/WildDog_WebSite/index.htm]http://wilddog.hypermart.net/Home/Wild_dog_page/WildDog_WebSite/index.htm[/link]

I read a study of the Adirondack coyotes. This woman tracked them by their scat and field observation. Coyotes hunt and they also scavenge other kills from wolves and other coyotes. They will then bury the remains and let them get a bit rancid, then come back for a nice, chewy, aromatic meal. Coyotes and wolves have an ability in their stomach to hold a bone until it is wrapped in hide, to be defecated later, without puncture. Though wild canids may suffer from perforation or bone impactions, there hasn't been much study or even noted instances of it to provide a data base. Wolves have a different structure in the head than dogs do. It is called the coronoid process, which can apply to any joint mobility mechanism but specifically is the shape and size of the mandibular hinge and how it fits into the zygomatic arch and the size of the massiter muscles, all of which determine how wide the jaw can open and what the bite strength is. That is, a gray wolf has the ability to snap a bone in two in one bite. The hinge of the wolf mandible looks like a triangle and the hinge of a dog mandible is a simple posterior recurve. That being said, there is some credence, I think, to the GITs being similar.
 
Dogs are scavengers and obviously, before my very eyes, hunters. I think there is some credence to balance over time. On his own, Shadow might eat a couple of mice, chew on some grass, raid some garbage can and eat leftover vegetables that were cooked with a roast because they have that meat flavor.
 
However, he does not live in the wild, or out and about, where could get killed by traffic, another animal, a farmer, or eating something rabid. I can see, though, with a live mouse, that most of his meal would be meat with whatever veggie or bug matter might be in the gut of the mouse. He is fast enough, thanks to his Sibe heritage, to bring down a small to mid-sized ungulate. I've seen him hit every bit of 30 mph more than once in the same run. In fact, I've seen him running so fast and trying to turn so quickly that he would slide on his face while his "right front disc brake" locked up and he spun around. I wish I had a video of that so that ya'll could split your sides laughing.
 
There are rabbits that live in some of the tree stands in the corn fields. Easy pickins', if I were to release him.

Ron,
 
You don't have to worry about rabies in mice, rabbits, opposums, or squirrels. Rodents, marsupeals, and lagamorphs body temps are to low to support the rabies virus. But tapeworm, leptospirosis, and other diseases/bacterias/viruses/parasites are prevalent among wildlife!
 
 

And fleas. Lots and lots of fleas. Deer have them, too. Wonderful, when you have fruit trees, and the crazy herbivores gather in your yard to feast on half rotted fruit (I leave what falls, for them, b/c I like them... I do hate their fleas, though).

Em regularly catches and consumes birds, mice, rabbits, and moles. She even got a squirrel, once (ever seen the teeth on one of those? Wow.... It never even knew she was in the yard). She can't eat raw meals, from the supermarket. They make her *very* ill. She does just fine with her catches, and the minnows I net and put in the baby pool, for her to catch. She does need deworming, on occasion, and I have to watch for fleas (the worst case this year came from her rolling wildly in a deer bed). Otherwise, no problem.

I've seen him running so fast and trying to turn so quickly that he would slide on his face while his "right front disc brake" locked up and he spun around.

Kinda like this? []

http://www.pbase.com/pastorshill/image/51589485
http://www.pbase.com/pastorshill/image/43190293
http://www.pbase.com/pastorshill/image/43190198

Yes, zooming like a BC.

And, shame on me, this is the only running pic I have of him and the angle is off because I'm so danged tall and he's slowing down from half speed. But, yes, he will turn on a dime and try to give you 9 cents change.