Natural/Raw Feeding FAQ

Healthy raw-fed Goldens!

I’ve been feeding species-appropriate/raw food diet to my dogs for 9 years now. They love it and do very well on it. They are very healthy, have lots of energy, clean teeth, and lovely coat.

I get a lot of questions, especially from people thinking about starting their dogs on raw as well, and am going to try to consolidate some of it here.

First- why the raw diet? The common sense answer to this is that it is healthier to feed fresh foods rather than processed foods. We know this to be true for ourselves, yet somehow when it comes to our animals we seem to easily get brainwashed into thinking that processed kibble is healthier and more “balanced”. The truth is, all the nutrition our dogs need in order to thrive is found in fresh meat, just as they still have in many parts of the world, and throughout history before kibble came on the scene after WWII.

The best way to think about proportions and balance in a raw diet is to simulate a prey model diet. What are the proportions the dog would get in the wild? This turns out to be approximately 80% meat (with lots of that being red meat), 10% bone, and 10% organs. Balance doesn’t have to be achieved with every meal, but over the course of a few meals in much the same way as we feed ourselves.

The benefits of feeding this way is that you can control your dog’s diet and you know exactly what they are eating. Their teeth stay clean, they are less prone to allergies, and one of the best benefits is that they can digest most of what they eat so their stools are small and less frequent. Once you compare the stools of a raw-fed dog to a kibble-fed dog I guarantee you can never go back to kibble because it becomes blatantly obvious how much stuff in kibble cannot be digested easily based on the quantity that comes back out.

• What I feed to my dogs (keeping in mind the proper 80-10-10 ratio, and remember all of this is raw- NOT cooked):

• Meat with bones - (whole chicken, goat pieces or rabbit when I can get it)

• Meat - (beef trim, pork trim, beef heart, ostrich heart, ostrich, ground meat, turkey hearts)

• Fish - (whole fish if the dog will eat it, otherwise canned fish)

• Bones - (chicken backs, turkey necks)

• Organs - (liver, gizzards)

• Tripe - from greentripe.com - I like their XKaliber product

• Salmon oil supplement - this is necessary if you do not feed grass-fed meat. The reason is that many ranch animals these days are fed mostly grains, from which they don’t get proper Omega-3 supplementation and that lack of Omega-3 is passed along in their meat. I feed capsules from puritan.com because it is very cost effective, but you can also buy it other places in liquid form.
• Veggies - I do feed the occasional pulped veggies, like carrots and other greens.

Great raw feeding resources:

• Raw Learning - a fantastic site with a wealth of information
• Yahoo group: Rawfeeding - a community of raw feeders where you can get questions answered and learn from the experiences of others
• Rawfed.com - lots of info as well as explores some myths about raw feeding
• Rawfeddogs.net - shows pictures of raw feeding recipes

As we have been finding out in human nutrition news, processed foods can be hazardous to your health especially in the long term. We try to keep trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, etc out of our own diets. The same is true of our dogs and processed food. Why spend a lot of time researching pedigrees and breedings for health and then compromise it by feeding processed kibble on a daily basis?

One other book that I recommend to everyone is Susan Johnson’s book Switching to Raw . It’s a great book because it has sample menus for dogs of different weights, and it is completely non-intimidating. It is less prey-model driven, though, and recommends more supplements than necessary but is a good book nevertheless. Another recommended book is Tom Lonsdale's Work Wonders: Feed Your Dog Raw Meaty Bones.