It takes a lot a lot of protein to fuel and recover a dog when there is not a lot of fat in his diet.

Dogs will 'learn' to use energy from the foods they are fed. It takes as many as 8-10 weeks for a dog to acclimate to a change in feed.

The 24/20 and 30/20 dog foods out there are a bit much on protein and not enough fat.

Dogs do good on these type diets but they also did good on the dog foods of the 60's and 70's when it was not much more than gravy flavored cardboard.

If the fat content of the diet is raised to a much higher percentage of say, 30%-40% of his daily meal and after 8-10 weeks of acclimation his need for protein will be greatly decreased. Instead of using protein for fuel and then trying to use the remainder for recovery will often leave the dog 'not recovered' and the next day can't be as efficient or as productive as it should/could have been,

The worstt part is the kidney issues lead to the demise of as many dogs as any thing out there. Most proteins, especially dried bag foods are hard for the kidneys to process. The extra proteins put a load on the kidneys and most dogs when they need their kidneys the most have been pulled down tight to the fine line between hydrated and dehydrated. This is not the time to doing anything that places load on the kidneys.

Proteins burn hotter and create less water per calorie burned than fat. With a high fat dies the dog will run cooler thru the work and then use said proteins for recovery. The recovery times will decrease as the amount of proteins are used the kidney function is not affected by the dry food proteins.

RAW food has been proven to be the best means feeding a performance animal but it can be done with bag food. The digestibility and assimilation is by far the biggest advantage. A dog with a high animal fat diet with actual animal meat as protein sources will work cooler and recover quicker than his dry bag counterpart, all things being equal.

As far as the RF-1 and similar products, read the ingredients. Most of what is int he bottle is fillers. You can buy all the ingredients to make your own "RF-1" for the same thing you are paying for the actual advertised product, but then make 10-15 times more from your bulk ingredients. You can save hundreds.

But with all that said, the old adage of 'if a guy is winning feeding corn flakes and cabbage' you will be hard pressed to change his mind. When it is working, it is working, but to get better there has to be room for change.

Good luck.

EWO II