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.
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Sounds like Gemma is really taking to the raw diet! And I'm glad you're seeing all those benefits already - yup, we love them too! Especially if you can imagine the volume of poo we used to have to deal with when Honey was on kibble!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI've got a friend back in NZ who has just started her Border Terriers on the raw diet and she's been finding that they're also not that keen on rabbit & hare - too gamey, I think. But they do love their chicken necks & wings & carcasses. It's also funny what one dog will happily tackle whilst the other looks completely bewildered by! :-)
We've been having some trouble with the raw diet since moving to Australia - just re-establishing suppliers and also changing over to a new commercial raw mix...Honey was losing a LOT of weight (you might have seen my post on this a while back) and we were worried. We've since started adding a bit of grain to her diet - even though the purists believe in no grain at all - but her "commercial raw mix" back in NZ always had a bit of wholegrains in it and I think this helped to provide more calories whereas otherwise you have to feed her TONS of raw patties just to achieve the same nutritional value and it just gets too expensive with a dog the size of Honey. Anywa, so we're givig her a bit of cooked oats or brown rice with her evening meal now - I'm sure everything in moderations is fine - it's just that processed kibble is too grain-based (and probably low quality processed grain) with too little meat, whereas I think a bit of whole grain with her raw diet is good for her. Anyway, she seems to be putting on weight at last.
I have to say, you're very kind to even TRY tripe! I wouldn't even try it! :-)
Hsin-Yi
Hi again, I've only just found your comment here too. Need to sort this out! Very kind of you to comment when you are so very busy. So Terriers really love their chicken then. I read about Honey losing weight, which was a bit of a worry for a while. I'm glad you've sorted her diet out. Gemma doesn't get any grains so I will need to keep an eye on her. I have noticed her tummy is very little now and I will weigh her soon to make sure she is an alright weight. I will be in touch when we are in NZ to find out where to get raw food, a good vet etc. We will be touring around but will stock up wherever we can. I found a place behind Harvest Wholefoods in Auckland and that might be where you got Honey's food from. (The tripe absolutely stinks but she LOVES it).
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