FORT MADISON — Fiona Macken laid out pieces of plastic-wrapped meat for her dog to inspect.
There was a hunk of cow femur covered in bloody flesh. A long cow trachea looked like a hollow red tube wrapped up in plastic like a nightmarish Twinkie. A little plastic bucket held ground cow spleen.
Rauri, a fuzzy, black 3-year-old miniature schnauzer, chose the trachea with a sniffing nose and wagging tail.
“That will keep him busy for the rest of the day,” Macken said. “He’ll be covered in blood and happy as a lark.”
Macken, the owner of Dawgs and Divas in Fort Madison, advocates a “raw” diet for dog owners, as opposed to typical store-bought dog foods. She’s been taking nutrition classes sponsored by Canada-based Dogs Naturally Magazine. The classes, Macken said, have opened her eyes to nutrition shortcuts evidenced in the ingredients list on bags of dog food. Rauri, she said, is a born carnivore and doesn’t need filler ingredients in common dog foods.
She isn’t alone — sales and demand for varieties of raw pet food, including freeze-dried food and dehydrated meat, are going up each year, according to market research group GFK. The raw food portion of the multi-billion dollar pet food industry looks only to be growing.
The list of organizations that have discouraged raw pet food is daunting: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the American College of Veterinary Nutritionists. Many experts warn bringing raw meat into a home to serve to dogs could spread diseases such as salmonella.
Dog food safety standard bearers at the American Association of Feed Control Officials keep their seal of approval off many raw dog food products, but they do approve some products.
“It’s not for everybody,” Macken said. “There is a risk of pathogens. I keep the meat below a certain temperature, and I sometimes serve it partially frozen.”
At Pet Supplies Plus in Burlington, shift supervisor Adam Mohler said raw diets are a rising trend in dog nutrition. He said the raw products are recommended for some dogs with food sensitivities. Most of the ones carried, he said, are approved by the AAFCO.
“It doesn’t sell near as much as traditional dog food, but it does sell,” Mohler said.
Macken orders her raw food online. To her, it’s about what seems to be the healthiest choice for her dogs. The meat she had for Rauri Wednesday specified on its label it is not approved by AAFCO, but her dog seems healthy.
Some veterinarians agree with her practices, but others don’t. She made an educated decision based upon her own research and personal experience working with animals.
Macken runs a grooming service out of her store. She said people come in with itchy dogs and other ailments, and believes them to be caused by simple food allergies. Some dog kennels like the Des Moines County Humane Society, for instance, don’t accept dog food with red dyes because of the frequency of allergic reactions. Looking at ingredients lists on dog food labels, Macken discovered most types of dog food for sale at typical grocery stores have similar ingredient lists.
There are lots of corn, peas and dyes. Most include some type of meat, but Macken warned those meats typically are waste products and are heavily processed. She opts to order meat online and supplement her dogs’ diets with regular human food.
For breakfast Wednesday morning, Rauri had scrambled eggs, coconut oil, some chicken, a little zucchini and green trite. Green trite is the stomach of a cow, turned green from grazing on grass. Macken said it’s full of nutrients.
Her dogs eat plenty of bones as well, including chicken bones. It’s commonly thought one shouldn’t give chicken bones to a dog because they can shatter, but Macken said that’s only true of cooked bones.
“He was bred to go after vermin on a farm,” she said with Rauri on her lap. “He will go after little animals like rats. Do you think these dogs stopped and thought, ‘Oh, I can’t eat the bones or those will tear my esophagus?’ ”
A few of her customers also keep their dogs on raw diets, but Macken said she can “count them on one hand.” One started doing it after remembering her grandfather always fed his dogs raw chicken.
Macken is taking at least two more nutrition classes soon. She has a certification from the class she already worked through, but wants to learn more. She plans to eventually offer pet nutrition classes in Fort Madison.
“Look at the top five ingredients,” Macken said. “Look at the guaranteed analysis. There are too many dogs still on Beneful.”
