Rabbits

I finally found something that Gemma won't eat on her new diet. I previously tried her with Rabbit and she turned her nose up but I thought it might have been because there was still a bit of fur on the meat. But I tried a really tasty looking piece yesterday but she won't go near it. I need to get the camera out for some more photos as Gemma is looking so nice and trim. The only treats she has now are dried sprats and she doesn't hound me for treats nearly so much. I think the new diet is much more satisfying for her.

Different Menus

Gemma has been on the full raw meaty diet now for a few months and thoroughly enjoying it. I thought that we were never going to find anything that she didn't like eating. However the latest new morsel of raw rabbit wasn't too popular. In the end I had to throw it away as she refused to eat it. She picked it up and considered it then dropped it. The other meal that she didn't take to much although she did eat it was a raw white fish mix. At the moment she is having minced lamb and tripe. She seems to find it okay but the smell is vile so I might not be getting that again. On the way back from a trip to Rye we stopped off at a butchers in Hastings who kindly chopped up a huge bag of bones for her. There were lamb and beef bones and a couple of marrow bones. The butcher was really excited to hear of a dog eating raw meat and bones. When we opened the bag at home we realised that although he had chopped the bones up some of them were still far too big for her. She could eat them but in the end the meal was really too much for such a small dog. Especially one who is trying to lose weight.

We have now invested in a meat cleaver so we can control the size of her meals much easier. Generally I have found that she prefers the bones not to be too big and I think this is reasonable for a dog with such a small mouth. She is happy to put quite a lot of effort into eating her dinner but at times I can just tell she needs a break from it and would prefer an easy meal (don't we all). One of the lamb bones from the Hastings butcher took her a whole hour to eat. She loved every minute of it but she could hardly move afterwards! I have worked out that she eats the raw minced fruit and vege only if it is dressed with something meaty. She probably would prefer to go without and only eat meat and fish but I think she needs some vege. One popular new addition to her diet is raw sprats. They are about 3 inches long and she has about 5 of them for a dinner. She really likes them and they make a nice change.

Overall we both agree that she appears to be healthier and happier on this diet. She has certainly lost weight and moves around easier now. One thing that I didn't realise is that she sleeps a lot more than she used to. I am guessing that her system needs the rest to digest the raw food. The great thing about the diet is much less poo and it is hard, not very smelly and not so vile to deal with. Not such foul dog breath and no trips to the vets for anal gland squeezing, yah! She seems to be much more excited at meal times as she never knows what she is going to get. It's great to be able to offer such a variety of food instead of only being able to choose from 3 or 4 different commercial dog food flavours.