Day Two.

Today Mona had an 8 ounce chicken thigh.  It was pretty much the same routine as yesterday.  She spent the first 30 minutes making little progress--simply licking and nibbling at little pieces of the skin.  After that half hour mark, though, she got some good crunches in and had it finished off in 10 minutes.

Once again, she tried to bring it up onto the couch.  I set it back on her towel and she stayed there for the rest of the meal.  I think she might be getting the hang of this towel already!  I also had better luck with my camera tonight.

Notice that Mona is using the "no-hands" approach.  I'm interested to see if she becomes one of the prissy raw eaters that refuses to use her paws.  Personally, I'd love to see her get her paws dirty and grab on tight!

It has begun!

We have officially been raw feeders for one whole day!  For Mona's first meal, I started her off with a decent sized chicken drumstick, weighing right under 8 ounces.  She licked it for a while, moved it around a lot, had no idea what to do with it for quite a while.  After over half an hour, I finally started hearing some good crunching noises.  After that, she really got going, and had finished it off in about ten minutes. She's now sitting contentedly on our bench at the front window, watching passersby.

I served her meal in her old stainless steel bowl on top of an old bath towel.  She'd pulled the drumstick out of the bowl within the first minute, so I don't think I'll continue with that.  No point in dirtying up a bowl if the food won't even stay in it!  The towel, however, I'm hoping to keep.  She carried the chicken off the towel onto the carpet a couple of times (at one point, she even attempted to bring it up on the couch), but each time I picked it back up, set it back on the towel, saying "towel".  She's a smart girl, so hopefully she catches on pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, the battery on my camera doesn't want to hold a charge anymore.  I snapped one quick photo of the chicken in her bowl, after which my camera shut itself off and refused to come back on.  I'm going to attempt to charge it again tonight in hopes of getting raw eating pictures tomorrow!

The last day of kibble.

This afternoon I took the kibble container, turned it upside down, and shook the last few pieces into Mona's stainless steel bowl.  Mona munched on it throughout the evening, and finished it about an hour ago.  Maybe it's because the metal reflects light so well, but when I walk past that bowl on my way to the kitchen, I notice how empty it is.  The kibble is gone.


It sounds silly, but the big change we're making has really hit me.  No more conveniently and absentmindedly dumping kibble in a bowl.  I'll now be making a conscious choice every day as to what Mona eats.  And, of course, I'm anxious to see the results of this change we're making.


So... here's to a healthy dog!

Educate yourself.

I really don't intend to do much in the way of defending the raw diet to those who don't approve of it.  I've done my research, I really do feel it's the healthiest food for Mona, and it's the right choice for me, period.  But I do feel the need to speak up when someone has no good reason to back their disapproval.  If you're going to tell me you don't agree with something, you better have something to back it up with.

What it all comes down to is DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.  Do not let any one person make up your mind on anything, particularly when your pet's health is in question.  Even if your vet tells you what to feed, do some research.  I'm finding that very few veterinarians know much in regards to pet nutrition.  I realize there are exceptions to this, but for the most part, vets aren't required to take many--if any--courses on nutrition.  As a result, their main means of "education" comes from the pet food representatives, whose views are biased and whose information is often incomplete or incorrect.  Read the ingredients.  Learn what those ingredients mean, and what their role is in your pet's diet.  Compare labels.  Check it ALL out.  Then and only then can you decide what is truly best for your pet.

I bought my first meat!

I took the plunge and bought my first actual raw food!  We're getting down to the last bit of kibble, so the switch is imminent.  Tonight I bought a 10 pound bag of chicken leg quarters--unenhanced, 75mg sodium.  I spent about an hour working on the contents of the bag and dividing it into meal-sized portions.

Let me preface by saying that the only meat I've ever worked with prior to tonight was the kind that has already been cut up and cleaned so that it's ready to throw in a skillet.  Chicken leg quarters are nothing like the nicely packaged boneless, skinless chicken breasts I'm used to!  Not only are the much messier, but they're much bigger than I was expecting.  Most weighed in at over a pound each!

I know that in the future, once Mona is able to handle all the extra skin and fat, preparation time will be much less.  But after much reading, I've decided to start her for the first two weeks with as little skin and fat as possible to avoid digestive upset.  So I spent well over an hour hacking away at these legs, first pulling off as much of the skin and fat as possible.  I cut each leg at the joint, and broke/cut it into drumstick and thigh pieces.  The thigh pieces were almost all a perfect 8 ounce portion.  Since the drumstick pieces were usually more like 5 or 6 ounces, I grabbed a couple frozen breasts from the freezer, cut them into thirds, and used those pieces to top off the bags.  All in all, my $6 bag of chicken leg quarters (plus a couple extra chicken breasts thrown in), I ended up with 19 bags in the freezer, each with 8 ounces of chicken leg.  I also saved all the fat and skin and stuck it in a bag as well... Surely there's a use for that?

On another note, I've enlisted my mother, Queen of Bargain Shopping, to help keep an eye out for good deals on clearanced meat.  Already, she snagged me a couple packages of chicken livers and gizzards for dirt cheap.  In a couple weeks, these livers and gizzards will be perfect to start adding to her chicken legs when I introduce organs to the diet.

Meet Mona.

Mona is our mutt.  She has been a part of our family since we adopted her on August 24th.

We'd been looking for a dog for a while.  I'd visited several shelters numerous times but never found the right dog.  On a whim, I stopped by our local shelter one day before work.  I passed by a cage with a little black dog baring its teeth at me.  I looked at several others, passed by the black dog again, and doubled back.  Was she really baring her teeth at me?  Her tail beating wildly against the sides of the cage.  I'd never seen a dog growl and wag its tail at the same time.  Maybe she wasn't growling.  I asked about her, but the volunteer knew little about her as she'd just come in.  I asked to see her, and she was incredibly sweet and friendly.  I went to the shelter office to ask a little more about her, and before I knew it, I was driving home with a smiling dog in my back seat.  Three days later, we signed the official paperwork, and the little shelter dog tagged "Marley" was ours.

She smiles.  I've yet to get it on camera or train her to do it on command, but she scrunches up her little snub nose and smiles.  It makes her look so ridiculous you can't help but laugh.  She LOVES people, and smiles at everyone she meets.  Unfortunately, her smile greatly resembles a sign of aggression, so it's slightly alarming at first if you don't know her.  And since the only famous smile we could think of was Leonardo da Vinci's painting, we named her Mona.

Mona is a hodgepodge mix off who-knows-what.  She runs like a herding dog, swooping out wide, circling back in, and turning on a dime.  Our best guess is a Cavalier / Border collie mix.  I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little bit of gazelle in there too.  She's got the affectionate, outgoing, eager attitude of a Cavalier, with the smarts and stamina of a border collie.  She's mostly a quiet girl in the house, but the second you mention the park, a switch goes off and she becomes a bouncy, energetic nutcase desperate for another dog to chase her.

She's amazing.  She's nothing like what I thought I wanted (I thought I wanted a big dog; she's only 20 pounds).  But she's sweet and smart and everything I needed in a dog.  I want only the best for her.  And I think that best is raw.

Hello, all!

I'm beginning this blog with the intention of closely documenting my adventures in living a raw lifestyle.  I have decided to take the plunge and feed my dog, Mona, a completely raw diet, specifically a whole prey model diet.

I do not hate kibble, nor do I judge those who choose to feed it.  It is all I've ever known, and I actually make a living selling premium dog foods at our local pet store.  I have no complaints about the kibble I've fed.  I've spent the last couple years learning everything I possibly can about commerical dog food, and I feel incredibly confident in my ability to explain the differences between a high-quality food like Evo or Wellness and the crap you get at the grocery store like Ol' Roy.  It has become my passion to educate people about the vast differences in pet foods.  I have converted many unknowing customers from a junky grocery store food to a premium brand, and have enjoyed hearing about the great changes it has made to their pets' health and wellbeing.

I'm finding that a lot of raw feeders are incredibly anti-kibble.  I get the feeling they think all commercial pet foods are bad.  However, I'm pretty passionate about the importance of a high-quality kibble (versus something full of fillers and by-products).  It will be hard, if not impossible, for me to completely abandon my support of kibble.  Perhaps raw feeding really IS that much better, but the fact of the matter is that many people do not care to deal with the "hassles" of raw--locating reliable and affordable meat sources, learning about the proper ratios of meat/bone/organs, storing large quantities of large meat, and dealing with thawing and freezing that meat.  Let's face it, kibble is convenient!  And for those who do not wish to live a raw lifestyle, I will still be able to show them the best kibbles out there.

However, as good as I  feel the best grain-free/holistic/organic/high-meat-content kibble out there might be, I'm thoroughly convinced that raw feeding is even better.  At least for my family.  In particular, I'm anxious to experience the benefits raw feeding will have on Mona's skin, coat, teeth, and energy level.  And of course, the poop.  I've learned raw feeders love to talk about poop.  So, lucky you, you'll get to hear about poop from me too.

And, as my thoughts are typically all over the place, I'm sure some of my blog entries will be too.