The Puppy Experiment

So it’s been 5 months now since we started our pup on the raw meat diet. Now she’s not even a pup anymore since we just celebrated her 1 year birthday last month.

Havanese First Birthday!

We’re happy to report that she can chomp through chicken drumsticks and thighs like they’re pretzel rods, and slurp down meat faster than Kobayashi can eat hotdogs. We shot this footage while visiting my parents’ place, and she didn’t like the camera or the slippery kitchen floor so she’s acting a bit skiddish.

The Meat
So far, most of her diet is chicken. It’s just convenient for us. We can get chicken for 0.49-0.99 cents/lb and it’s an easy prep/clean up. We buy whatever packages of chicken are available (whole or drumsticks or breasts; 2-3% water; unseasoned), cut it up, put the chunks in plastic bags, and freeze for a week or two. Each bag we freeze (approx 1 lb each) will feed her for about 5 days. We defrost a bag overnight and it’s ready to eat the next morning. She eats twice a day, and each meal for her is about 2 slivers of breast meat or the meat off a drumstick. We also feed her liver once a month- just the size of a thumbnail (our dog is 9 lbs now, full-grown). As for other meats, she tried turkey during Thanksgiving. She enjoyed it, but it was a hard meat to prep. Very sinewy, thick, and has lots of cartilage-like splint things all through the meat. We’ve tried beef, which she loved (but had poo issues, see below). She also loves pork, but we’re a little wary of that other white meat. Honestly, for no logical reason. MANY raw feeders feed their dogs pork on a regular basis so don’t let this post dissuade you. We’re interested in getting our hands on goat, venison, or rabbit but we haven’t really seen it around in stores. If you have a big dog, you might consider ordering meat online in bulk. Depending on your location, you might also be successful with sites like Freecycle. We highly recommend joining Yahoo!’s Rawfeeding group for other people’s experiences, tips, and advice.

Bag of Frozen Chicken, 1 lb

The Bones
We highly recommend getting a meat cleaver- we got ours in Chinatown. It hacks through bones with little effort. Makes it easier to estimate the 10% bone she’s supposed to get since she’s a small dog. For us, 10% bone is about half a drumstick per meal. She still won’t touch anything with her paws, but she does fine picking up the bones in her mouth and chomping down.

Meat Cleaver

Veggies and Supplements?
Nope, none of the above needed. As long as their diet consists of everything from the prey model, it’s plenty full of their needed vitamins, minerals, etc. Not every single meal has to consist of the prey model though. As long as somewhere in there they get organs once in awhile and a variety of meats + bones, it’s perfectly healthy. We’ve fed our girl salmon on two occasions, which she loved. (If you have excess bones, save them in the freezer. They come in handy on fish-meal days. Without the bone, it’ll give your dog the runs.) If your dog has dry skin, you might consider feeding fish/fish oil.

Helping Her Eat Salmon Sashimi

The Cleanup
We spritz down the floor with our vinegar solution (1 part vinegar, 1 part water, couple squirts of soap). We wash the fur around her mouth with doggie soap. Sometimes we just babywipe her face if it was a clean meal. That’s it….

The Poo
It’s great! Well, as great as poo can be. She poops about twice a day, usually after each meal. It comes out in little hard pellets and stinks much less. She did have a little trouble with raw beef though. It’s fine going down but just recently it gave her Exploding Butt Syndrome for a day and half. We’re not so sure we want to go through cleaning that mess and losing any more rugs, so we’ll probably re-introduce it gradually later on, in moderation.

How Is She Doing Overall?
As for the physical effects of raw feeding, it seems to work wonders. Her coat is silky smooth and she smells great. No need for baths unless she gets a romp around the dog run and decides to roll in the dirt. Her teeth are pearly white with no signs of buildup. We don’t have to do a thing for the upkeep- no brushing, no dog breath products, etc. (Greenies warning here.) The bones in every meal work their magic just fine.

Havanese Teeth - 1 year

She’s now bounding with energy with rockhard muscles. Sometimes after a big meal she lies on her back and looks at us blissfully with smiling eyes and tongue hanging out. She’s totally uninterested in eating human food or trash, and she clearly doesn’t miss the kibble one bit. One happy dog.

Raw feeding all the way!