Smelly smelt.

While on the hunt for marked-down, low-sodium turkeys for Mona, I found some smelt marked down to $0.81 a package.  They're tiny little sardine-like fish, and they looked like they could be great snacks for Mona, so I bought a package.

First and foremost: If you've never bought them before, THEY SMELL.  I know fish smell, but I wasn't expecting these tiny little fish to smell every bit as much as a big fish does!  Anyway, I figured the easiest way to handle them would be to freeze them individually, so I could dole them out as needed.  Um, they're gross.

I gave one to Mona to try while I finished lining them up on the cookie sheet.  Mona's reaction?

"Is this a joke?"

CLEARLY UNAMUSED.  She's used to getting little tidbits when I'm portioning out some meat for her.  I'd already packaged up some ground turkey to freeze, and she had a little nibble of that.  But the next time, I slipped her a smelt, and she would not touch it.  I went ahead and put the sheet of them all in the freezer, and I'll bag them up once they're frozen.  However, I'm afraid I might have just wasted $0.81 on fish that will do nothing but stink up my freezer.  Lovely.

Country-style ribs.

A while back I'd gotten some pork country-style ribs.  Turns out it's just pork shoulder with bone, sawed into strips.  About half the pieces ended up being boneless, the other half had sawed slices of shoulder blade in them.  I'd weighed them, bagged them, and frozen them before I learned that the cut shoulder bones in several of the pieces were dangerous to feed.  I didn't really care to thaw it all out, cut out the bones, and re-freeze it all, so for a while I just picked out the boneless pieces and fed those.  The other night I finally thawed a chunk with some bone in it and cut the bone out before I fed it.

Today, though, I decided to see how Mona would do.  I'd read that cut pieces of bone could be a choking hazard, but also read from owners of more cautious eaters that they fed country-style ribs with no problem.  So I picked out the cut with the biggest piece of bone, and cautiously handed it to Mona.  I watched her like a hawk, but she did wonderfully!  She chomped up that bone into nice swallow-able pieces and didn't rush it at all.

What does this matter?  Well, I don't intend to feed Mona sliced bones very often.  I realize that regardless of how carefully she eats, it is something to feed with caution.  Most likely I will feed these last few pieces of "ribs" to her, carefully, and then cut out any sawed bones from future meals.  But it does really get me thinking that she would enjoy some larger meals... It took her a lot more work to eat that piece of shoulder, and it seems to me there must be some extra satisfaction in that.  So, I'll be keeping my eye out for larger meals that she can work on for several days!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sadly, I have no fantastic Thanksgiving meal story to share.

Mona thew up a little bit this morning.  I'm not quite sure why.  I was in the kitchen this morning making food for our dinner later on, when I heard that unmistakable retching sound.  She ended up vomiting three times, only small amounts and nothing but foamy yellow bile.  I don't know if she was just hungry (did the smells coming from the kitchen make her hungry?), or if she was feeling a little under the weather.  Either way, she seemed just fine afterwards, and so after waiting about an hour to make sure she wouldn't throw up again, I went ahead and fed her her meal.

Today Mona had a 9 ounce piece of chicken leg quarter and some liver.  Nothing fancy.  I'd thought about getting something different for her, like a "pork picnic shoulder" I'd seen... Something to give her a really good workout.  But circumstances changed and that just didn't happen.  It'll come eventually.

Operator error.

Let me preface this by saying that I thoroughly believe 99% of pet behavior "problems" are our fault.  A dog usually misbehaves not because it is "bad", but because the owner has ignored what it has tried to tell us, misread its body language, or given the dog incorrect or conflicting information.

This is the case with Mona.  When we first brought her home, she had two accidents.  Both were because my husband and I failed to see the that she needed to go out.  By attaching bells to the back door, this is no longer an issue.  She now clearly communicates with us when she needs to go potty by nudging the bells with her nose.

Now that she is potty trained and knows some basics (watch me, touch, sit, down, stay, leave it, high five), I want to teach her to "smile".  Mona smiles constantly--any time she meets new people or gets excited, she scrunches her nose, pulls up her lips, and shows her front teeth.  It is in no way an aggressive behavior, but to people who don't know her, being greeting by a dog baring its teeth can be a little unnerving.  So being able to teach her to smile on cue would allow me to show people that she is not being mean, but simply doing a silly trick.  It would also be fun to be able to show people why she is named after the famous Mona Lisa.  :)

So, on the quest for the elusive "smile", which I have been unable to "catch" during training, a friend suggested clicker training.  It's something I've known of for a long time, and I always knew it could be a great training tool.  I just never had a reason to try it until now.  I have read quite a lot on clicker training, in particular, Karen Pryor's method of clicker traning.  I feel more than comfortable in my knowledge of clicker training.  Great, right?

Wrong.  This is where a classic case of Operator Error occured.  I had just brought the clicker home, and in my excitement to try it out, I made several mistakes.  First, I forgot that full dogs are not as treat-motivated as hungry dogs, and Mona had just eaten a very hefty 9 ounce meal only a couple hours previously.  She had little interest in the chicken gizzard pieces I was offering (Tomorrow, I will try again BEFORE she eats).  Second, I did not introduce the clicker correctly.  She had never seen or heard it before, so when I called her to me and clicked it fairly close to her, it startled her.  She became scared of the sound of the clicker and would not come near me.  So instead of getting anything useful accomplished today, I spent about 15 minutes attempting to desensitize her to the sound of the clicker.

So, is Mona un-clicker-trainable?  Of course not.  But I have set us back a few notches, and our progress on clicker training will probably be slower than I'd like.  I think this is pretty similar to raw feeding... When something goes wrong (vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, etc.) it is not because raw feeding isn't right.  It's because we have messed up somewhere--overfeeding, too much bone, too little bone, too much organs, etc. Here's hoping for less Operator Errors in the future.  :)

The power of the towel.

It's been one hell of a week, so just a quick tidbit for today.

My husband and I had to make an unexpected trip out of state, so Mona stayed with my husband's parents.  I fed her late Thursday morning, and then as soon as we came home on Friday. We ended up getting back later than expected, so I'm sure she was hungry.  I hurriedly thawed a 9 ounce chunk of boneless pork shoulder and gave it to her still semi-frozen.  Before she had gotten even one chunk of meat sheared off, we had a visitor.  I could immediately see the conflict in Mona's eyes... She very much wanted to run to the front door and greet this new person, but she was also hungry and didn't want to abandon her food.  So, knowing she was not allowed to take her meat off the towel, but also not wanting to leave her dinner, she chomped that meat MAYBE 6 or 8 times, and swallowed the entire thing whole!!!  Then, of course, she made a bee-line for the front door to greet her visitor.

It's a miracle she didn't choke.  But I was pretty impressed by her obvious understanding that she could take her food off that towel.  :)

Introducing: Pork!

Today was Mona's first non-chicken meal!  I'd read a lot of advice suggesting that pork was a good meat to add after starting with chicken.  And, as it happened, pork was also next most-affordable (and easiest) meat to get.  I  got country-style ribs for less than $1.50 per pound.  I'm hopeful to never have to pay more than $1.50 per pound for meat, but $2 will be my absolute cut off.  I'm confident that's a reasonable and completely feasible price point to stay under.

So, the pork.  Today was a boneless 8 ounce chunk of country-style ribs, which I learned is actually part of the shoulder.  Mona loved it!  She had completely devoured it in less than 5 minutes!  Actually, I think I might leave it partially frozen next time just so it takes her a little more work.  When I watch her eat, I notice that she often swallows most of the meat, then horks part of it back up to work on it some more.  I'm wondering if this a sign of a gulper, overly-eager eater.  It was my hope that I could have one of those very polite, self-regulating dogs who ate slowly and carefully and was therefor able to eat most any cut of meat.  However, after watching her eat this chunk of pork, I'm starting to think I might have a slightly more greedy eater.  Oh well, I can't complain.  For a 20 pound dog, I think it should be easy enough to find challenging meals that aren't so easy to gulp down.

And now, pictures!

Eight ounces of boneless pork... Yum!

Mona quickly developed a routine when eating... Take the larger chunk of meat and place it off to the side.  Then check the bowl for smaller bits (sometimes there are gizzards or chunks of skin/fat in there!) and lick up all the juices.  Only then will she eat the "main course"!

Almost gone...

Just kidding.  A larger piece needed some more work to make sure it went down easier.

Is she hungry?

How can you tell if your dog is hungry?  I want to be sure I know the signs, because the thought of Mona being hungry bothers me.

When we started raw two weeks ago, we fed 2.5% of her body weight, or 8 ounces.  About a week into it, I thought Mona was looking thinner, although the scales said she hadn't lost any weight.  To be on the safe side, I bumped her meals up to at least 10 ounces, sometimes more like 12.  A week later, and the scales still read 20 pounds.  So far, she doesn't appear to be losing weight.

However, her behavior is causing me to rethink how much she should be eating.  She has had several pig ears since we got her.  In these past few months, she has not paid much attention to them.  In fact, I'm not sure she'd ever chewed on a single one.  She's just not a chewer.  But last night, she ate an entire pig ear over the course of about 15 minutes.  An impressive feat, considering I've never seen her chew on any one chew toy for more than two or three minutes.  I thought it was a little unusual, but brushed it off.  Tonight, she's eating another one.  She's already eaten about half of it, and I expect the other half will be gone in a few minutes.

As a side note:  I realize that, being raw fed now, Mona probably shouldn't have these pig ears.  I suppose it's because she never chewed on them, but I just never thought about getting rid of them.  And seeing how much she's enjoying them now, it makes me wonder... Is it really that bad to let her have a pig ear every now and again?

Anyway, she's gone from hardly ever chewing anything to demolishing two pig ears in as many days.  Is this because she's desperate for something to eat?  So this entire post is mostly just to say... What are signs that your dog is not getting enough to eat?  Aside from the dog losing weight, or I suppose even hearing her stomach growl, what other signs of hunger should I look for?

Preparing pork.

One thing I wished I'd seen more of when considering the switch to raw was information about preparing the food.  Specifically, I wanted pictures.  Perhaps the reason there aren't many photos of raw food prep is because it's pretty self-explantatory.  You take some meat, you cut it up, you bag it, you stick it in the freezer.  Simple.  But I still wanted pictures.  I think mostly I wanted to see what kind of a mess I was getting myself into.  I imagined a kitchen covered in raw meat.  Raw meat juices all over the place.  I pictured a salmonella breeding ground.  I was wrong.

Preparing and portioning meals isn't nearly the mess I expected.  For example, today my mom found some great pork on sale for $0.99 per pound.  This is how simple it is to turn it into dog food:

I wipe down the counters.  I like something with bleach in it.  Nothing smells clean like bleach!  I get everything ready.  Quick tip: Get all your zip top bags out and OPEN THEM before you begin.  Otherwise, you're fumbling with greasy, slimy meat fingers and can't get them open.  And ignore the wimpy knife.  I don't know what I was thinking.  I ended up using a much bigger knife.  Which reminds me... I should learn what my knives are.  All I know are "big knives" and little knives".

Anyway, the label calls these "pork shoulder blade country style ribs".  I have no clue what part of a pig that is, but it looks good.  I expect Mona will love it.  Then again, I also expected Mona would like liver...

The package had 6 cuts of meat, each weighing 12 - 16 ounces.  I cut the ends off to make 6 hearty portions, roughly 8 or 9 ounces.  Are you looking at this, though?  No giant mess.  No blood all over the counters.  No meat on the walls.  Just some juice on the cutting board.  Totally doable, right?

Ta da!  This go round, I wrote the weight on each bag.  I find that with the leg quarters I'm currently feeding, I'm weighing them all before I serve them, just to be sure they weigh what I think they weigh.  So for this go round, I wrote the weight on each bag.  I stuck them in the freezer, put the knives and cutting board in the sink, and wiped down the counter again with cleaner.  That's it!

Honestly, I think my kitchen is cleaner since switching to raw.  :)

Introducing: Liver!

Cue the Sad Trombone.  That sums up our first experience with liver.

Today's meal consisted of a drumstick, a couple gizzards, some extra skin, and her very first chicken liver.  I served it all up in a bowl, and she went straight for the skin the second I put the bowl down.  Next came the gizzards, then the drumstick.  Then she examined the bowl, still containing the liver, very closely.  She licked all around the bowl, even licked in the bowl, but would not touch the liver.  After a couple minutes of licking around it, she left it.  Over the course of half an hour, she kept going back to the liver, but would not eat it.  At one point, the cat even snuck up to it and enjoyed a little nibble, but even that didn't entice her to eat it!  After 30 minutes I gave up and put it back in the fridge.  We rested for about 45 minutes, then went to the dog park.

Back from the dog park, round two: The liver reappears.  I set it back out, and she did the same licking/circling/revisiting routine.  After probably another 20 minutes and no progress, I picked up the liver and tried to coax her to eat it.  After much hesitation, she eventually, ever so slowly, took the liver from my hand and ate it.  Ugh.  All that for a piece of liver no more than half an ounce!

Tomorrow I think I'll try a different approach.  I'll feed the liver first, and only serve her "main course" once the liver has been eaten.  Fingers crossed!

Otherwise, Mona's been doing great!  I've bumped up her meals from 8 ounces to about 10, and have been giving 3-4 ounce "snacks" if her meals are going to be particularly far apart.  She seems to be happy, and hasn't shown me any signs of being hungry at all.  All seems well to me!

Adding to meals.

Raw feeding is going great!  Mona's been eating 8 ounce meals approximately once a day, although sometimes those meals are more like 18 hours apart instead of 24.  I'm wondering though if it just isn't quite enough.  She seems to weigh the same as when we started last week (using the good old "hold your dog and stand on a scale" method), but she feels slightly thinner to me.  Which leads me to the easy way I've found to add an ounce or two to her meals...

Remember when I mentioned that my mom had snagged me a couple packages of chicken gizzards, hearts, and livers that were marked down?  I didn't know how to use them at first, since I couldn't keep an entire package in the fridge and use it up quickly enough, but I didn't want it frozen either.  So, I spread them out on cookie sheets and froze them all individually, so now I have bags with ready-to-go individual organs!  It's super easy to pull out one or two and thaw them in some warm water in just a few minutes.  The fat and skin didn't want to lay on the cookie sheet very well, so I came up with this:

An ice cube tray!  This worked perfectly.  Once they were frozen, I popped them out and bagged them up.  It's been very convenient.  For the last couple of meals I've fed an 8 ounce meat portion, plus a gizzard or two and some skin (roughly 2 ounces worth).  I also plan to use these as "snacks" on days when her regular meals will be a little farther apart.  A couple "cubes" of skin/fat, 3 or 4 gizzards, and a liver works out to about 4 ounces, so that seems like a good in-between meal.  We'll see how this works!

Why I needed a dog.

"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face."
- Bernard Williams

I am incredibly fortunate to be able to say that I am 24 years old, and I have never experienced the loss of a close family member.  But it's possible that I might not be able to say that for much longer, and it's breaking my heart.  Yesterday was extremely rough for me, as my Papaw is not doing well.  I tried to keep my mind off things while I worked, but at one point I simply had to take a break, so I came home to let Mona out.  I sat down on the couch and, unable to hold it in any longer, burst into tears.  Mona came to sit quietly next to me, and she gently licked all the tears from my cheeks as I cried.  And I felt better.

This is something that I have never been able to fully articulate, but there is something magically therapeutic about a dog.  Bernard Williams must know what I'm talking about.  Dogs are great, and they offer something that you simply cannot get anywhere else (even from my amazing husband, whose patience and understanding I could not live without).  Personally, I'd like to see doctors prescribe pets the way they prescribe antidepressants.  Their companionship is like some kind of healing power.  And that incredible, unconditional love I get from Mona is part of what drives this raw adventure.  For all the companionship she gives me, I want to be sure I'm giving her the best I can as well.

Let's talk about poop.

Now is when you squeamish folk should stop reading and go watch The Price is Right instead.

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Face it, if you're a raw feeder, or even thinking about it, poop is an inevitable subject.  I'm learning that, as a raw feeder, you become a veritable Poop Expert.  I've always given some thought to my pets' poop, as I do feel like it can tell you a lot about their health.  Nine times out of ten, Normal Poop = Healthy Pet.

Day Three.

Day number three!  Today it was two smaller drumsticks.  Mona is definitely getting the hang of it now.  She only licked it for a couple of minutes before she really started to tuck in.  It took her about 25 minutes to finish off both of them.  She tried twice to bring it up on the couch this time, though!  I'd like to give her at least a week, if not more, to get the hang of eating on a towel, but I suppose if she continues to bring things to the couch, we can switch to feeding her in her crate.