Raw food for dogs

l'm hoping someone on TCS is also feeding their dogs a raw diet, and can ansewr a couple of questions.

l switched my 3 cats to homemade ground raw food last year, and switched the dog to an all canned diet.

On the days that l treat the dog to some of the cats' raw food, he goes crazy. He loves it.

l'm not sure if the online raw dog recipes are good, and don't want to give him an unbalanced diet (he's 9 1/2).

They all include meat, organs, bone/calcium, veggies. Makes sense.

However, some of them contain yoghurt. ls that good for dogs? ls it just okay?

l don't want to give him something passable, l want to give him a healthy alternative to canned, although l will continue with the canned once in a while, as l do with the cats.

Also, my plan is to make a batch of cat food as l did today, and take some of that for the dog, and add veggies to it.

ls it okay for the dog to have all those supplements that go into cat food? Would it be better without them?

Thx 

Andrya said:

l'm hoping someone on TCS is also feeding their dogs a raw diet, and can ansewr a couple of questions.

l switched my 3 cats to homemade ground raw food last year, and switched the dog to an all canned diet.

On the days that l treat the dog to some of the cats' raw food, he goes crazy. He loves it.

l'm not sure if the online raw dog recipes are good, and don't want to give him an unbalanced diet (he's 9 1/2).

They all include meat, organs, bone/calcium, veggies. Makes sense.

However, some of them contain yoghurt. ls that good for dogs? ls it just okay?

l don't want to give him something passable, l want to give him a healthy alternative to canned, although l will continue with the canned once in a while, as l do with the cats.

Also, my plan is to make a batch of cat food as l did today, and take some of that for the dog, and add veggies to it.

ls it okay for the dog to have all those supplements that go into cat food? Would it be better without them?

Thx 

Click to expand...

I feed 2 dachshunds and a toy poodle a raw diet.

You don't have to add the veggies for the dogs....that is a "leftover" from the old original BARF diets.  Many veggies will just give them gas.  I feed my dogs the same thing as my cats.  The nutritional requirements are pretty much the same.  I use primarily ground whole prey with Alnutrin.....talked with the lady who does the Alnutrin.  She basically said it was fine for dogs....they just didn't field test on dogs.  The dogs don't need the extra taurine that is in the supplement...but it is water soluable, so does no harm.

 I also give the dogs chicken feet as treats to give them something to chew on, as well as dehydrated trachea, lung, etc.  You can also give the dogs meaty bones if you have a place to feed them (I don't...and they would drag them up on the couch).  Most dogs love raw green tripe, and it is really good for them.  Dog diets are the basic 80% meat, 10% bone, 10% organ.  Feeding your dogs raw is very handy....when the cats get picky....the dogs will eat pretty much anything.

Many dog people feed meat/bone/organs in the ratios above, with no supplements (and no vegetables). I add the supplements because I feed ground raw for the most part.   The yogurt is probably fed as a probiotic.....dogs are lactose intolerant, just like cats. If you feed tripe, it provides probiotics and enzymes, or you can feed a probiotic on it's own.  (Mine have never seemed to need anything other than occasional tripe).

Thank you for the response. That's good to know, that they don't really NEED the veggies, and that the supplemented cat food is good for them.

l do add the extra taurine to my batches since l freeze them and use them over a few weeks. Also the glandular supplement, a little pumpkin, egg yolks, and the B, E, and krill.

And you were exactly right - it was a BARF (sounds delicious) set of recipes that l was going through. 

He (the dog) already gets the cats' leftovers, and the odd chicken wing, and is definitely a fan of raw. He is my only fat pet, so l hope this will take off a pound or so.

You can feed a dog the exact same raw diet as a cat if you want. Dogs CAN tolerate more veggies and grains than cats can, so many people add them to reduce costs. But they don't NEED them. How big is the dog? Ground food can be boring for a dog so prey-model raw is more common. Lots of bone crunching and tendon tearing . The basic rule of 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver and 5% other organ is the same for all carnivores.

Hehe, clipped doggies look so funny! I clipped my Husky mix this year. . .:lol3:

I can't imagine feeding such a tiny dog. When I give my dogs raw, they get chicken quarters that are probably bigger than he is :tongue2:. He'll need even less than the cats!

I've been raw feeding my dogs for I think seven or eight years now? I feed prey model with raw meaty bones, not ground. The only time we feed ground is occasionally if we have some extra and when the puppy and just starting raw. I don't do any of the veggies, dairy ect, nor do I supplement. All our dogs are in very good health and the vets are always commenting on their super clean teeth. Right now I'm feeding a 10 year old pug, that at one time was on science diet rx food which left him horribly over weight and with terrible allergies and a 2 year old German Shepherd. The raw diet brought the pug back down to a normal weight and he is has been going strong since. He is the reason we started raw feeding in the first place. 

That is very good to hear. l'm glad l asked, in a cat forum of all places 

You guys are a wealth of knowledge.

He's used to eating chicken wingettes and wings, but that is all. l haven't given him other bones.

l bought some quail, so they should be on the right scale for his size    if/when the cats turn their noses up at them.

Andrya said:

Clipped, and still fat!!

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If you want to feed pieces you can chop the raw meaty bones with a cleaver. I do that for the pug when it's too big. But usually I can just pick out the smaller pieces of meat for him and give the bigger ones to the German Shepherd. 

Andrya said:

That is very good to hear. l'm glad l asked, in a cat forum of all places 

You guys are a wealth of knowledge.

He's used to eating chicken wingettes and wings, but that is all. l haven't given him other bones.

l bought some quail, so they should be on the right scale for his size 

  if/when the cats turn their noses up at them.

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Wings are mostly bone and skin with little meat, I'd go with thighs and just use a cleaver to get the pieces smaller ( including the bone), make sure it's a thick meat cleaver and not a vegetable cleaver or you will ruin the blade over time. 

My little one...the poodle....is only about 4 1/2 pounds.  She can chew up a chicken foot.....but doesn't do well with anything bigger.  I would guess she might be able to chew the smaller piece of a chicken wing...but not the big part.  I'm pretty sure she couldn't handle the bone in a chicken thigh.  

I started feeding raw to my french bulldog several years ago....the diet saved his life and gave him several more years when the vets couldn't figure out to help him.  He could chew up bone-in pieces of meat....but would try to swallow big chunks.  Because of his brachycephalic face and jaw.....he would choke.  Scared me to death...so I bought a grinder and we went to ground.  I lost him 2 years ago to lymphoma....almost did me in.  I still can't talk about him without crying.  I've had animals my entire life, but have never been as completely bonded to one as I was to him.  Although Gideon may be changing that.....

Interesting though.....his issues were around lack of motility....food just didn't move through him like it should, and would just sit in his stomach.  I'm pretty sure he was grain intolerant.  He would throw up a lot.  When I read the threads recently about IBD, and the potential link to lymphoma.....it totally sounded like what happened to him.

l'm sorry for the loss of your beloved bulldog 

l'm also concerned about the bigger bones as you mentioned. Eric has a pretty strong jaw for a little guy, and he doesn't wolf them down, he's willing to grind and gnaw. He might be able to handle a thigh bone, l'll see how they look. He'll probably get the same quail bones as the cats to give them calcium with other meats.

He has an iron stomach too, l don't think he's ever puked. He's trained to a cat litter since l'm gone 13 hours on work days, and his turds are not evil on canned food    lf l ever see him gagging on a bone, that'll scare me too, and he'll be back on the ground. l'd like to give meat/organ meals only mostly, and wings/wingettes a couple of times a week. ls that fine? As long as the calcium is enough to balance out the meat over the course of a week? 

Your Gideon is gorgeous - he reminds me a little of my Tanner.

Whew, okay, so l had Eric at the vet's today. Rather than the 9lbs he was when last weighed, he's now 10.8lbs!! He's very barrel chested.

l took him for a suspected pulled muscle and stiffness, and it turns out he has bone spurs which are causing him pain. He's on a shot of Metacam, with 7 days of oral suspension to follow.

He had a geriatric blood w/T4 analysis, results on Friday.

Anyway, when they x-rayed him for the stiffness and found the bone spurs, they also found 15 stones in his bladder!! They want to do surgery because they're taking up so much room in there, but l don't want to pay the quoted $1164 if it's not necessary. He's shown no outward signs of pain/discomfort etc, and the stones were a complete surprise! lf they are found to be struvite, would a raw diet help this? Could it hinder? Should he be getting veggies in that case, or completely avoid veggies? l want to do what's right, but don't want to jump to surgery or to Hill's if it's manageable on raw.

He was a kibble dog until l switched the cats' diet last year, at which point the dog was switched to canned. My guess is the stones have been there for a very long time. lt would be very simple to switch him to all raw if the cats' current ground diet would help.

One of our dogs had struvite that blocked his urethra, but he was a puppy and it was caused by a liver shunt that failed to close at birth. He had to have surgery to unblock his urethra and close the shunt. We were told he should be on a low protein diet preferably science diet c/d for the rest of his life. I asked the vet surgeon why, when it was caused by the shunt they repaired. He just shrugged and said that is their recommendation. I fed him the CD for a few years and he gained a lot of weight and developed allergies. The ingredients in that food is horrible it's mostly grains and starches. Then I put him on raw. Remember they said he was supposed to be on a low protein diet, well he is on prey model raw for over 7-8 years now and has had no further medical problems. He will be 11 this year. Obviously your dog does not have the same condition because he is older and it shows up in puppies.

I'd run a urinalysis and culture and see if there is signs of infection which can cause stones and also hopefully they can get some crystals and find out what kind they are. Once you know that, you can move on to the next step of how to cure it and prevent reoccurance. But given that your dog has a high number of stones he is at risk of obstruction which then becomes a medical emergency that is life threatening. You don't want to mess around with that. So I'd give serious considering to putting him on the dissolution food for awhile and hope they break up and are flushed out and if not I'd have them surgically removed. But if it's infection that is causing it, that has to be treated also. So find out the cause and what kind of stones they are first. 

Thanks for the advice. When she called with the blood work results l mentioned a urinalysis and she agreed for the reasons you mentioned.

My concern is that these stones are likely struvite caused by his 9 year carb diet, and now on wet/raw his pH will not be the same, and perhaps any current crystal formation would more likely be oxalate.

Outside of his impending surgery (l've decided to have the surgery done rather than mess around waiting for dissolution) his blood tests showed decreased kidney function, slightly decreased thyroid function, slightly elevated white cell count, and his liver number was 4 times what it should be. l'm not sure of the liver component she mentioned, l was in shock, but she said a high-normal would be around 140, and his is 550. l'm to get him milk thistle until l go in and talk to her about it. l really wish there was a forum for dogs that was as thoroughly informative as this one 

On the upside, he's bouncing around like a puppy after being hunched up like a little old man for over a week.

I'm sorry his blood work didn't come out better. It's possible that the stones are related to his liver or kidney issues but I'm not a vet. It sounds like you have a good vet for him so I'm sure they will get down to the bottom of what is causing them and hopefully will be able to prevent further recurrence. Sounds like he is feeling better which is great!