The Puppy Experiment

11/07 Week 1 Recap
So it’s been about a week now, and she’s eating like a pro. We slice/score the meat a little, but other than that she no longer needs our help. She still won’t use her paws, but she’s learned to use her back teeth to gnaw off pieces.

She’s surprisingly eating a lot more than we thought she would. As advised in a comment in our previous post, puppies should eat 2-3% of a “pup’s estimated ideal ADULT body weight”, which can mean “4-6%” of the puppy’s current weight. She was supposed to be about 6 lbs, but considering she’s 7 lbs already we’re pretty much letting her tell us how much she needs.

An average menu plan for her would be something like:
Breakfast: drumstick meat + bone
Dinner: 1/4 chicken breast + wing/bones or ribs

As for her poo, she only goes 1-2 times a day now versus the 3-4 times a day on Innova. It’s been alternating between tiny, solid poos and runny, gooey poos. Looks a little like undigested chicken. Once I saw a small piece of bone in the poo. Last night she just started a half solid/half gooey poo with a couple spots of blood. We’re concerned, but we’ll keep watch on her for another couple days to see if this is just from the stress of switching. If the spotting doesn’t go away, we’ll have to take her to the vet to get it checked out.

Recap of our observations:

1. poops less
2. noticeably calmer for whatever reason
3. smells less “dog-foody” and dusty like dry food…she actually smells a little sweet more than anything now
4. Her fur was already very soft, but we think it’s gotten a little softer like cashmere (but again, her fur was pretty soft and fluffy to begin with…we’re not suggesting all dogs will have cashmere-like fur, but this diet definitely helps reduce shedding and create a glossier coat in most dogs depending on age and breed)

11/16 Week 2 Recap

-The spotting of blood in her poo only lasted a day so it was probably from stress.

-Now her poo is solid and slightly dusty, which means her system has adjusted and can now efficiently digest raw meat. We have to reduce the amount of bone in meals and let her poops tell us how she’s doing.

-We gave her liver for the first time and had to encourage her to eat it. She pooped green that night.

-We plan on giving her some beef shank next week to mix it up. It’s waiting in the freezer for her. Yum, how lucky is she!

-The ideal ratio (prey model) is 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, 5% other organs. Keep in mind, a whole chicken is about 30% bone and leg quarters are about 21% bone. Ground meat also contains way more bone than needed. If your dog has itchy skin/dandruff, consider fish oil drops. No other supplements necessary. It’s good to add other meats like beef/lamb trim, rabbit, and turkey if possible.

-As for meat prices in our area, we can buy chicken thighs for 0.79 cents/lb and chicken breasts for 0.99 cents/lb. We recently visited Pennsylvania and bought chicken thighs for 0.48 cents/lb to bring back.
Score!

-We were wrong about not needing to clean her fur. She’s growing out her hair for the winter so she’s really fluffy right now. She can’t seem to reach the fur around her mouth to clean. We didn’t know this until we noticed a distinct (putrid) smell coming from her mouth area. Obviously she was not doing a good job cleaning (tsk tsk). I gave her facial hair a trim and we’re now washing her beard after meals.

-We recommend being in the area while your dog eats. Our girl had a couple choking incidents so far- she ran to her blanket with her eyes bugged out for a couple seconds. She was able to swallow whatever it was without our help, but they may need your help/intervention so stick around during meals.

-She cracks through all the bones we give her like a pro (i.e. chicken drumsticks/thights/ribs/wings).
Note: Dogs can break their teeth biting through bone so don’t give hard bones like steak bones, leg bones, cow hooves, etc.

Here she’s biting through a piece of thigh bone

**consider reading up on forums and joining groups for more information/experiences on rawfeeding (yahoo rawfeeding group)