Advice wanted - adding raw

I am feeding a diet of some kibble and mostly raw frozen. This is a good middle ground for anyone not wanting to feed totally RMB's. There are several companies that sell prepared raw frozen in various sizes and quantities. I have discovered a wonderful company called, A Place For Paws [linkhttp://www.aplaceforpaws.com]www.aplaceforpaws.com[/link]
They sell many different raw frozen combinations. They are terrific to deal with; the food is packaged well and shipped promptly. Check out their website and give them a try, you won't be sorry.

Feeding organs everday is fine, but you have to make sure that you are not feeding too much. Too much organ meat can cause problems. Liver can cause vitamin A toxitity, too much heart can cause overwight and copper toxitity, etc.

Heart is NOT organ meat.  Heart is a muscle meat.  Heart is an excellent source of taurine, but I'm not sure if too much can be problematic or not.

ORIGINAL: glenmar

Heart is NOT organ meat.  Heart is a muscle meat.  Heart is an excellent source of taurine, but I'm not sure if too much can be problematic or not.

The heart is an organ -- it is surrounded by muscle, and can be called a muscle, but is an organ.
 
"The chambered muscular organ in vertebrates that pumps blood received from the veins into the arteries, thereby maintaining the flow of blood through the entire circulatory system."
 
 
 

According to Monica Segal, heart is a MUSCLE meat.

A muscle is something you can move voluntarily (or can't move at all as it's used for protecting something else). The heart moves involuntarily, and therefore is an organ. It is covered in muscle that protects it, making it BOTH an organ and a muscle. Functionally, it is an organ -- nutritionally, it is an organ and a muscle.

Monica Segal is one the the most respected canine nutritionalist in this country.  SHE says that heart should not be included in the 5% average organ meat that dogs should have in their daily diet.  For purposes of balancing the dogs diet, heart is NOT counted as organ meat but rather MUSCLE.
 
How and why the heart functions (although it IS a muscle) is irrelevent to how it is classified when feeding our dogs.

I will stick with what I said before --- a diet should mainly be comprised of muscle meat. If you want to feed heart everyday because you feel it is the same as every other muscle, you will be potentially killing your dog.

I'm not sure where you saw anywhere in any of my posts that I recommend feeding heart on a daily basis.  What I SAID is do not mistake heart for organ in calculating the % of organ meat you feed daily.
 
I will NEVER understand why people feel the need to be rude when they are confronted with actual facts.  Fact:  heart is considered a muscle meat and should not be confused with ORGAN for purposes of determining the % of organ meat to be fed daily.

I was not being rude...? I was not capitlizing any of my words for accentuation, I was not adding exclamation marks or angry faces. I am not swearing or yelling or calling names. My text is legible, calm, and rational.
 
 Whether or not you shouldn't put the heart in your "percentage" of organ meat, you shouldn't compare it to any other muscle, as any other muscle is perfectly fine to feed in excessive amounts, and heart is not. Heart is not just a muscle. It is both a muscle and an organ and should be fed accordingly. Everyone knows that some organs are dangerous if fed in excessive amounts, but that muscle meat is not. That is why I feel it is dangerous to just call heart a muscle and be done with it. High amounts of copper an cause heart disease and there is evidence that it can cause other problems. A excessive amount can actually poison. All I'm saying is, whether you want to call it an organ or a muscle, heart, like liver and some other organs, is dangerous if fed excessively. If you want to feed other muscles everyday (as I do), that is fine. Mosts dogs these days are too chubby to eat much heart anyways. []
 
 

When trying to offer balance over time, I just think of the various things I offer my dogs (and cats) in terms of what they offer nutritionally.  Heart, therefore, offers yes, highly fatty muscle meat, but also is a uniquely concentrated and valuable source of taurine, lycopene, selenium, zinc, iron, niacin, and B-12. 

The muscle is involuntary, which means the "lower" unconscious centers of the brain control it, but it is still muscle - but it is unique from a nutritional standpoint because of the nervous tissue that enmeshes it - all nervous tissue contains important antioxidants and B vitamins.  The high levels of nervous tissue exist because all movement is controlled in the brain - unlike voluntary muscle which moves on a sort of pulley system where large muscle groups act together with connective tissue and skeletal joints.  Hence the high levels of selenium and B-12 (and B-12's partner folate), and lycopene (which also is present in high levels in eye tissue).

 you shouldn't compare it to any other muscle, as any other muscle is perfectly fine to feed in excessive amounts, and heart is not.
 
Nor did I ever say that it should be fed daily.  My point was that people should not confuse heart with other organs and think that they are feeding organ meat by feeding heart.
 
It is not considered rude to tell someone that by feeding their dog heart daily (which I wouldn't do if I COULD find it consistently) that they are killing their dog??  It is not rude to imply that MY dogs are too fat to eat heart on a daily basis anyway?  Apparently you and I have a different defination of rude.
 
Heart can NOT be considered an organ meat when calculating the daily % of organ in either a raw or home cooked diet.  Period.  Since we have many "lurkers", those that will read but never ever post, it is important to be clear in what we post and not be misleading in what a specific THING is.  Your classification of heart as an organ meat *could* mislead foks into feeding it daily as part of the organ meat % and could cause the exact problems that you are concerned about.

Where on earth did I imply that your dogs are fat?! [&:] I've never seen your dogs, I never said they are fat. All I said was that heart is high in fat and can cause dogs to be overweight if fed too much. I could say the same thing about many other foods that I'm sure you don't feed and still not be implying that your dogs are fat. I'm sorry if you misunderstood me when I said heart can cause overweight, you hadn't even replied to the thread at that point, so I don't know how you could think that was directed at you. I wasn't being rude by saying it, it's a fact that overweight dogs should eat a low fat diet. And yes you are right, alot of lurkers are on the forum, and while you feel it's important that these people don't feed the heart as an organ, I feel it's important that these people do not feed excessive amounts of heart. I don't understand how either of us are wrong here. I am not at all attacking what you are saying, all you are doing is educating, and that is what I am doing as well. Nowhere did you say to feed heart everyday, and nowhere did I say that heart is only an organ and nothing else. We are both right, I compromised my answer, and wish you would do the same.
 
Thanks Brook for that info. [] I had heard that heart was a good source of taurine, glad to have that confirmed. With all of the bad info I've already said about heart, it's good for people to know the good stuff. My Visa loves heart and I feed it to her (probably more often than I should hehe) because she is on the thin side.

Just wanted to say, that I feed heart every day that I have heart, and none of my dogs have died, since I started. I also feed garlic every day.  And vitamin A supplements.

Ohhh, I am a risk taker! LOL[][]