Quote Originally Posted by MojoGrrl View Post
I don't know so much about feeding dogs, but I found tons of info about rawfeeding cats on the internet. There is a Yahoo newsgroup "Rawcats" and there is a companion one, "Rawdogs" or some name like that. It seems like a lot of people have negative experiences with vets regarding raw diets: a lot of vets disagree with them and push the commercial food, particularly the "prescription" diets. I think the pet food industry (including the medical "prescription" Science Diet) is just as bad as Big Pharma in terms of influencing the profession. I am a firm believer that animals should be fed as they are evolved to eat, and luckily my vet was supportive of putting Little Kitty on a raw diet.
Unfortunately, dogs were evolved to be dogs, with the hand of man substantially involved. I am still not convinced at all that raw feeding is appropriate for dogs, especially my elderly dog, but I need to read more on what might be best for her. I started here:

To begin with, the concept of “evolutionary nutrition” ignores the simple fact that taxonomy and phylogeny are not destiny, nor do they reliably predict the specific details of a species’ biology, including its nutritional needs. Sure, dogs are in the order Carnivora, but so are giant pandas, which are almost exclusively herbivorous. Functionally, dogs are omnivores or facultative carnivores, not obligate carnivores, and they are well-suited to an omnivorous diet regardless of their taxonomic classification or ancestry.

Domestic dogs did branch off from a wolf ancestor, and current DNA evidence suggests this occurred some 100,000-135,000 years ago.2,3 Though the data are unclear as to what morphologic or ecological changes might have occurred following this initial divergence, and while it is likely that there was much ongoing genetic exchange between dogs and wolves even after they diverged, it is still the case that dogs have not been wolves for a very long time. However, a distinct phenotypic divergence of dogs and wolves followed the development of more sedentary agricultural habits by many human groups some 10-15,000 years ago, which placed new selection pressures on our canines companions.31 Since then numerous anatomic and behavioral changes that have occurred first as a result of living with humans and sharing our food. And even more dramatic changes have been wrought on dogs in the last about 3000 years as a consequence of intensive selective breeding. Domestic dogs exhibit many features of neoteny, the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. They have smaller and less robust skulls and dentition, and numerous features of their skeleton, GI tract, and other anatomic structures are significantly different from wolves.

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http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/...make-you-barf/

Cats, I don't have a clue.