Dog's stomach, food and Salmonella

Last week, during a walk with a fellow Vizsla owner, the subject of raw foods and salmonella came up.

  I told him I feed Bailey and Chloe raw turkey wings for teeth cleaning from time to time.
http://redbirddog.blogspot.com/2011/02/vizsla-tooth-brush-raw-turkey-wing.html

 He said he'd be afraid to feed raw because of Salmonella posioning.  I told him I had heard that dogs were very rarely infected with Salmonella poisoning, but didn't know why.   He did tell me that a dog's stomach pH was much more acidic than ours.  I thought that was interesting, as I had never heard about that.

 So I looked into it.

Low pH

"Normally a dogs stomach pH is very acidic - at a pH of 1 to 2.


 Foods, like dry dog foods, that are high in carbohydrates shift the stomach pH to a more neutral environment (close to pH of 6).


 A raw diet is very low in carbohydrates (only provided by fruits and vegetables) and allows the stomach to stay within the optimal pH range (closer to a pH of 3).


 This is more easily illustrated in the figure below. Both diets were tested using a solution of hydrochloric acid at a pH equal to that of a dog's stomach and compared for the changes that occurred during digestion.

Figure 1. The pH change seen during digestion of raw and dry dog food.

Reduced Survival of Bacteria

Most bacteria, such as Salmonella and E.coli., cannot survive at a pH lower than 4 and optimally require a pH range of 5-7 to grow. Since raw food allows the stomach to stay within its naturally acidic pH range the bacteria are killed before they reach the small intestine......."


The whole article can be found at:

Mountain Dog Food education on digestive process


I am going to buy some pH strips and will make a brine out of the cooked ground turkey meat, green beans and kibble mix that we feed our Vizslas.  This will tell me the pH of the mix.

From that, I can determine if the diet will keep their digestive tract in the acidic range they need to stay healthy.

Chloe and Bailey have not had intestinal issues, but there are plenty  of Vizslas out there that do.

Diet pH level could have something to do with it.   Keep it acidic.