11/10/2017
healthypets.mercola.com
What to Expect When You Transition Your Pet to a Raw Diet
One of the more common myths perpetuated about raw food is that dogs and cats can’t get food poisoning. Pets can and do get food poisoning from eating rancid meat. Undoubtedly, this also occurs in the wild, but it acts as a means of population control when predators die from consuming toxic food.
There’s actually a website out there that advocates feeding spoiled meat to pets. This is absolutely terrible advice. It will only be a matter of time before this advice kills pets. There’s a huge difference between normal opportunistic bacteria loads in fresh healthy meats and spoiled meats filled with endotoxins that will kill any mammal if ingested. So, don’t feed your pets any type of spoiled food.
Commercially available raw food diets do not contain any fillers, extra fiber, and certainly no hair, which would be found on any prey animal wild dogs and cats consume. This lack of hair can also mean a lack of roughage or fiber. This means some animals aren’t supplied the additional nutrients they need. And sometimes, pets can get constipated. Oddly, instead of simply addressing the fiber issue, some veterinarians tell owners to stop feeding living foods altogether.
Raw food diets usually produce small, hard balls of p**p that are easily passed and turn white and crumble and blow away in a day or so if you forget to pick them up. This is totally normal. I’ve had some people go back to feeding kibble, because no one explained that their pet’s p**p would radically change on a raw food diet, and that multiple huge piles of stinky p**p from dry food diets would be a thing of the past. So, f***s will change – and for the better. Raw food p**p is entirely different from kibble-fed p**p.
Oftentimes, after one to three months on a fresh food diet, pets go through a detoxification process. This is totally normal and is actually something to celebrate.
Detox for your pet will happen through the bowels and skin. During a detox, your pet will act completely normal. He’ll be happy, bright, and alert. But you might find that he’s shedding a tremendous amount of hair. Pets shed out their old, dead, dull hair, and begin growing a shiny, soft coat. You might also see a lot of earwax or debris being produced from the ear. That needs to be cleaned out. And some detoxing pets will pass blobs of mucus in their stools.
These symptoms of detoxification will pass on their own. They’re nothing you need to worry about, but are something you should anticipate or it might freak you out. Pets on a fresh food diet also consume far less water than pets eating an entirely processed diet. You need to anticipate that your pet’s water intake will diminish.
Raw Feeding Mistakes to Avoid
I’ve also seen websites suggesting you introduce raw food by throwing a whole chicken to your kibble-fed dog, because she’ll naturally know what to do with it. They’re dogs -- they know exactly what to do. So, just throw them a chicken.
Whole chicken or any bony meat can be a choking hazard. And while some dogs do fine with whole chickens, some don’t. At my house, we buy chicken wings in 40-pound boxes from the butcher. I know my dogs well. I know that when I offer them a wing, they’ll chew it thoroughly. They don’t attempt to swallow wings whole, so I feel comfortable handing them a chicken wing. It’s great for their teeth. It helps remove plaque and tartar. Their breath is great.
One day my husband brought home a box of chicken wings that were in the back of his truck. He got distracted with a phone call and didn’t realize that Ada (one of our dogs) had jumped into the back of the truck and started helping herself. Ada ate about 15 pounds of chicken wings in five minutes. By the time my husband turned around, she looked like a bloated tick. Needless to say, she did not eat dinner that night. But she was fine. We fasted her. This episode would have sent many dog owners to the animal emergency clinic just to make sure everything was okay.
If I had X-rayed Ada, her films would have shown a tremendous amount of bones in her GI tract. And for a traditional veterinarian not used to looking at bone fragments on X-rays, this would have been very concerning. In fact, surgery would probably be recommended. I’ve seen several cases in my practice of animals that were rushed to surgery, and all the surgeon discovered was tiny bone fragments from the pet’s raw food diet in a totally healthy GI tract. So, it’s an important point to make.
I’ve had a few cases of dogs choking on giant pieces of raw food or getting pieces stuck in their throats when they tried to swallow the bony food whole. You have to use your head and common sense when you begin a raw food diet. If you don’t know if your dog is going to gulp versus chew, then you need to grind up the food or feed a commercially available raw diet that is pre-ground.
Safely Feeding Raw Bones to Your Pet
Recreational chew bones like knucklebones can also fracture teeth. Lots of dogs end up with terrible teeth fractures from the misconception that all dogs do well chewing raw bones. And you’ll see that on the Internet. You’ll even see that in comments on my page. “Oh, just throw your dog a knucklebone and everything will be fine.” Lots of dogs can chew raw bones with no problem. But there are dogs that chew raw bones and do substantial oral damage. My veterinary dentist says he has financed an entire wing of his hospital from removing painful broken teeth after people have followed the misguided advice to “Just throw him a soup bone, and he’ll love it.”
Most dogs do best with recreational bones (bones that are chewed for enjoyment and dental health, not nutritional health) that actually match the size of their head. Small bones like rib bones or very small femur bones tend to cause more tooth fractures for an aggressive chewer, because the dog is able to bite down vertically on the bone, which can snap teeth right off. Other dogs chew bones down to teeny, tiny pieces, then swallow the golf balled size piece that is left, which can get stuck in their GI tracts.
Taking sensible precautions, like always supervising your pet when she has a raw bone, weaning her onto raw bones, removing the bone when the pieces are broken off or it gets too small, and discontinuing raw bones if your pet has weak or fractured teeth, are all good suggestions.
Also keep in mind raw bones contain marrow. Marrow is primarily fat. When I first heard of offering raw bones to dogs, I was in college. I was one of those people that went about it without really thinking. I just threw Gemini (my dog) a raw femur bone in the morning before I went to class. I got home about eight hours later, and she had not moved. She was still by the front door. She was still chewing the bone. Her whole mouth was cut up – it was raw, inflamed, and bleeding. She was completely obsessed with her very first raw bone.
This is an example of what not to do. Gemini was wildly ecstatic about the bone, but it caused trauma to her mouth. So while there are numerous health and psychological benefits from offering raw bones to dogs, you must offer them wisely. I recommend initially offering raw bones for only a few minutes at a time, once a day, until the dog’s GI tract has adapted to the high fat content.
You also want to remove the marrow before giving a bone to a pet with pancreatitis or poor digestion, or you will likely be managing a case of severe diarrhea.
I don’t recommend offering bones communally to a dog pack, because each dog needs his own bone and his own space to chew it in. I recommend picking bones up after each session to avoid resource guarding.
Also keep in mind that a fresh, raw bone quickly becomes a gooey, sloppy mess as your dog chews on it. I recommend you not feed raw bones on your brand new white carpeting, because you will be distraught.
I hope these videos have clarified many of the misconceptions you might have about raw food for pets. And I hope that you’re able to use this information to easily and successfully transition your pet to a more natural diet.
As I always say, there’s no such thing as one best protein, brand of food, or type of food that all pets do well on. The best food you can feed your pet is the freshest, most natural food you can afford to support your pet’s overall health, well-being, and vitality.
