Oh my God! That's so awesome!!! She's jumpin like 4 ft in the air. Amazing!

Well... I've been doing alot of research on this lately as well, and decided to get Piggy off of the "poison" (as most referred to kibble as, lol), and get her headed in the right direction to a long healthy life. I always knew kibble foods weren't the greatest for dogs, but didn't know just how bad until I started digging a little deeper... YIKES!!

So today (sun), was Piggys first day on her new RAW meaty bones diet! As recommended by everything I've read, I started out very simple: plain chicken quarters. Everyone said don't add variety just yet, just pick one meat and stick with it for a couple weeks and let the dogs body get used to eating and digesting "real" food, then start adding variety, organs, etc.

I got her a 16" pizza pan too to eat off of, so there's room for her to pick stuff apart without getting it all over the kitchen floor.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15...i/05d170e3.jpg

Small doses to start off with until I know everything is going well. I fasted her yesterday to let everything else work it's way through first

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15...i/480ded18.jpg

At first she looked a little confused, like "ummm what do I do with this??" LOL. She kept looking up at me, then back down at the chicken, then up at me again, then she just started licking it, hahah

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15...i/6dbfa87f.jpg

After a few minutes though, she was going to town on it. I watched her the whole time to make sure she didn't try and gulp it (she usually tends to eat pretty fast cuz of the other dogs always coming around her food bowl). But she did great... took her time and chewed everything, crunched all the bones, and all was good. Took her probably 15 mins to finish both pieces. She didn't leave so much as a crumb behind, hahah

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15...i/9f7675ae.jpg


She has hip dysplasia and very dry itchy skin in the winter time, and from what I've read, this should help out with both of those. She had a yeast infection in her right ear recently too, but that seemed to be just a one time thing and hasn't happened before that or since. A little maximum strength Vagisil took care of it no prob anyways, lol

So, we'll see how it goes! I'm cutting her feeding down to 1 meal per day and will watch her weight carefully. Hopefully it goes well! Never heard a single bad thing about a raw diet though

Well... day one was excellent success! No vomiting, no hershey squirts.... no abnormal effects at all!

Day 2 has also gone very well...

She always gives me the most pathetic, "but dad, it's torture!! Can't you see I'm dying here??", look you've ever seen, lol. Tail wagging at full speed the whole time, heh. But she knows that she's gotta sit there until I say "go eat", and she does very well with that!

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15...i/b1936b30.jpg

Then she had to give it the sniff test
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15...i/7071d116.jpg

And then the lick test
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15...i/9a444032.jpg

Bah! F**k it... I'm eating
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15...i/72d53e17.jpg

I gave her a little more tonight (3 quarters) since it seemed to sit well yesterday. So far so good! I'll give it a couple weeks and then start adding other stuff. I'm glad to hear so many great success stories feeding this way!

Luck man!! Really!

Sadie still has signs of being an older dog - she still drags her back feet after the walk up to the park to catch the ball. But, as you can see, she has her vertical back - the first part of the video wasn't even as bad as it got... I just couldn't video her falling down. :(

She is completely on the mend though - and the ONLY major change we did was food. She takes no suppliments and doesn't need her teeth cleaned or scaled. The funny part was - the vet didn't believe she was the same dog. :lol:

Hey Moira, what 'butcher' are you visiting? (if you don't mind giving up your sources)
Think HEB would work with me?

Oh, and can you guys recommend any forums with diet and meat suggestions?
Beef, chicken, and fish are the easy answers... but I've heard recommendations against pork and possibly turkey.

I now go to the one in the Randalls on our corner - the other one was too far away and they hired a new manager that didn't like giving things away [boo! :lol:]. We alternate between getting the thigh and the drumstick super-packs. Then, package them up when we get home to one serving and freeze what won't be used in the next two days.

I stay with chicken with her. Occassionally I will get a pack of fish and give her a fish day. But, I have noticed mixing meats doesn't settle well with her... I personally don't do turkey because it's usually hard to come by in easily packaged sets. And, pork can a bit expensive. I will get her a pack of beef soup bones though - those are like crack. I can't imagine her hunting cows though :lol:

:lol I couldn't imagine Piggy hunting cows either, or, really anything for that matter, lol. I mean she catches and PLAYS with bugs and flies, for christs sake, lol. Seriously she'll catch one, pick it up with the end of her mouth without killing it, and then toss it across the room and chase after it again, and keep doing it with the same poor bug, hahahah. So yea, definitely could not see her chasing down some prey to eat.... she'd just try and play with them, lol

Thanks :dthumb:
Chicken is definitely the easy option.
I'm also looking at those beef spare ribs. Decent amount of meat, flat bone that should be easy to crack, some nice chewy connective tissue.
As for fish, I need to find out who has fish that aren't already gutted.
Maybe Quality Seafood?

My pug does that with crickets :lol:

Keep us updated Jarod. I may consider it this summer with my dogs.