I have a 5 day backpacking trip planned and will be accompanied by 2 dogs requiring about 1 bear canister worth of food (for both dogs). Does anybody have any good ideas as to how to best lug around all that kibble?? My friends and I are trying to avoid carrying an extra bear canister but understand that the kibble needs to go somewhere safe and secure. Is there anything marketed specifically for dogs for them to carry on their own???

can you tree the dogs pack?

I think that if you have two dogs around the food that a bear is going to avoid it.

If you mean you want the dogs to carry their own bear canister, I'm not sure any of the standard doggy backpacks will fit one. Perhaps the XXL sizes, but even that is doubtful, and would require a massive dog to fit anyway.

If you just mean to have them carry their own food (and "tree" it or carry the bear canister yourself in exchange for having them carry some other random small stuff), there are lots of dog backpacks out there. My 30lb Aussie carried her own food (for 5 days), and a few odds and ends for me (since I couldn't put her treats in there or she'd never leave them alone).

It might be possible to rig a regular dog backpack to accomodate a canister with some lashing, but it might mess up the dog's balance/center of gravity.

One other thought would be to use one of these:
http://www.ursack.com/ursack-catalog.htm

Seems like they could be compressed enough to fit into a dog backpack (especially the non-lined one).

I'm part of the planned 5-day trip (I'm not actually Andrew7, just freeloading on his login). We're going to the Ansel Adams Wilderness and bear canisters are required. The Ursack would likely work, but isn't approved by the Park service. Same applies to treeing their doggy backpacks containing their own food.

Some ideas we've thought of so far:

1. Smashing the dog food down to powder, and they could schlep it around themselves during the day, and at night we could pour the powder into our own bear canisters and fill in the air space around our own food, but that just sounds like too much trouble. Backpacking is a dirty-enough proposition without having dog food powder all over all my stuff. Probably easier overall to just carry an extra bear canister.

2. Fatten the dogs up for a couple of weeks before the trip to reduce the amount of food we'd have to take for them.

3. Convert them over to higher-calorie puppy food before the trip so they are conditioned to it (to avoid any GI upsets from a sudden switch at the time of the trip), which would allow us to carry a smaller volume of higher calorie puppy food, instead of regular dog food, during the trip.

4. Does anyone know of any high powered caloric supplements for dogs? I'm a veterinarian and I should point out to anyone reading this post that really high fat foods can cause a serious problem called Pancreatitis in dogs--I've seen this happen from a dog just eating one hot dog sometimes. It happened to my own small dog from eating 6 meatballs once. They get very sick, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, and usually end up hospitalized on an IV for a few days--so don't try to just pack high fat food for a dog (e.g., peanut butter, cheese, etc.). If your dog started barfing like they do with pancreatitis it would completely abort your trip. It doesn't always happen when dogs eat a bunch of fat, but it is DEFINITELY something I wouldn't risk, especially on a backpacking trip when you're miles out. Occasionally pancreatitis is fatal in dogs as it is in people. We still have to make it a relatively balanced diet.

Since I'm on the subject, for anyone interested in knowing about caloric content of food: protein and carbs each have about 4 calories/gram and fat contains about 9 calories/gram. (Actually, it should be referred to as a "kilocalorie", but for some reason the accepted term has just become "calories"--yes, the 2,000 "calories" we all need per day is actually 2,000 KILOcalories which is to say: 2,000,000 calories. Who knew.). In any case, fat has more than twice the calories of carbs, although the calories in fat aren't as quickly burned up as carb calories are, so you don't get the quick energy you do from eating fatty stuff like you do from drinking Gatorade.

Too bad we can't run our dogs on solar power and just strap one of those flexible solar panels to their backpack.

Interesting thread. Esp. as I have yet to take my dog backpacking and have started the wheels in motion to do such...

What about something dense like Natural Balance "salami" type stuff? I think those are supposed to be a complete dog food, though they probably have more water weight than kibble. Might be better for them than grain-based food for long days of walking too.

OR how about powdering / breaking up the kibble and vacuum sealing it into a brick? IT would expand again some when opened.

Pack less food for yourself If you're anything like me, you may tend to overpack food...I always end up eating more food than i want to on the trip just to lighten my load...just a thought, I don't know how comfortable you want to eat, but a typical day at elevation for me usually only requires 1-2 cliff bars and one pack of freeze-dried, but I also might just be a freak

erykmynn wrote:Interesting thread. Esp. as I have yet to take my dog backpacking and have started the wheels in motion to do such...

What about something dense like Natural Balance "salami" type stuff? I think those are supposed to be a complete dog food, though they probably have more water weight than kibble. Might be better for them than grain-based food for long days of walking too.

OR how about powdering / breaking up the kibble and vacuum sealing it into a brick? IT would expand again some when opened.

Those "salami" foods are extremely high in fat, which might be good for longer trips. But I know that atleast for my dog, I'd have to carry a ton to feed him for five days, and would outweigh the kibble 5-to-1 easily...I don't imagine the volume would be much of a saving grace either...