Choking.

Tonight Mona had a semi-serious but very scary choking incident.  She'd just wolfed down a 9 ounce chunk of pork in rapid time (she was incredibly hungry), and hobbled away from her feeding towel in a very unusual posture, with her sides sucked in, her back arched, and her neck stiff.  She sounded like she was going to puke, so I interpreted her odd behavior as the reaction of her eating too quickly and guided her back to the towel (to save my carpet, of course!).  But she didn't puke, and stayed hunched over in that stiff position, quiet as can be.  I rubbed her back and noticed her throat was bulging... Feeling her throat, I could feel the giant chunk of pork lodged there, and realized what was actually happening.  And I was helpless.  I watched her strain, and thankfully she eventually horked it back up.  She shook it off and was fine.

But the guilt I feel is something I can't shake off.  I feel like a failure as a [raw feeding] pet owner.  My dog was choking, yet I couldn't identify the symptoms.  I imagined choking would involve loud horking noises, violent wretching, etc.  Maybe that's what a more serious choking incident would looks/sounds like.  But I realize now it might not always be so dramatic.  When I finally realized what was happening, I didn't know what to do.  I feel terrible about it.  I've done all this research on feeding my dog the best possible diet for her, yet I don't know basic pet safety tips.  Obviously, I'll be researching what to do when a dog chokes, to be better prepared should this happen again.

...For the record, I believe this accident was probably my fault.  I knew Mona was really hungry, and I'd forgotten to thaw her food.  In a rush, I served her pork half-frozen.  Well, my incredibly hungry dog was too hungry to take the time to work on a half-frozen piece of pork.  So she swallowed it whole.  While she has eaten half-frozen food before, the pieces have been larger, and she has not been quite so hungry.  It was a poor choice of food to give her tonight, I think.

Mona's first squirrel!

Guess what this is?

A squirrel!  My sister's boyfriend shot this critter was was gracious enough to wrap it up and save it for me!  I left in the freezer for about a month, just to kill off any possible parasites, and decided it was finally time to give Mona her first taste of squirrel.

I'd never skinned a squirrel, and only remembered vaguely about another raw feeder's explanation of skinning a feeder guinea pig, so when it came to skinning it, I just had to wing it.  Turns out, there are much easier ways than what I did, but I managed!

I left the tail on simply so I had something to pick it up by.  Plus I was curious to see what Mona would think. :)

This was our first actual whole prey meal, and I was excited to see what Mona thought of it.  It took her quite a while before she decided to really get going on it.  Once she did, though, she seemed to really like it!  She went for a head-first approach, and ate the whole head off in about 15 minutes.  At first, it appeared as if she'd eaten the ENTIRE head.  However, once I got a closer look, I found that she'd carefully spit out all 4 of the large front incisors and attached molars.  Not sure how she managed that, but I was impressed!

When she'd finished with the head, she did as she always does and buried the rest of her food:

Couldn't help but laugh at the tail sticking out.  :)

She ate on that squirrel for 4 days... The head one day, front limbs/chest the next, then the midsection, and finally the back legs.  I think in the future she'll eat it a little more quickly, now that she's figured out what she's doing.  Hopefully I'll be able to get more squirrels in the future.  I've also been making friends with a rabbit breeder who said he'd bring me a rabbit to try (already skinned, thankfully!).  I'm really looking forward to more whole prey meals!

Bok bok bok! (A Raw Update)

I think I'm overdue for a raw update.  Raw feeding has been going swimmingly, and I finally feel confident about my ability to judge portions and meat/bone/organ ratios.  This is probably in large part due to the fact that I've finally found a source of organ meat.  Since picky Mona won't each the super-cheap and widely available chicken liver, I'd been struggling to find beef liver.  I went the first couple months with only meat and bone before I found some beef liver (albeit more costly than I wanted).  I made do with this for a couple more months, but I knew I needed to fill the other half of alloted 10% organ with something that was NOT liver.  Thankfully, a friend turned me on to My Pet Carnivore.  Their prices were reasonable, and I was able to split the order with another raw feeding friend (err, my only raw feeding friend!) which made the delivery fee a non-issue.  I'm thoroughly please with my purchase, and I now have enough organ meat (spleen, kidney, pancreas, and beef liver too!) to las be SEVERAL months.  Success!

While my main reason for ordering from MPC was for the elusive organ meat, I also bought a few "extras" just for variety's--and curiosity's--sakes.  :)  I got one bag each of chicken heads, chicken feet, and turkey feet.  While I'm not completely new to such body parts (I'll have to share our squirrel experience in the next post), seeing whole chicken heads was a new experience for me.

In the bag, they were obviously chicken heads, but being stuck together made them seem more like one hunk of meat.  However...

When you take them out, the reality that they were at once a living, breathing bird becomes a little too real.  Um, ew?!  Thankfully I'm not super squeamish, but they're still kind of gross, to say the least.  But they're food for my dog, and if I'm going to feed a raw diet, I know I need to accept ALL parts of that diet.  So bring on the chicken heads!

Turns out, Mona LOVES them.  I gave her one this evening as an after-dinner treat, fully expecting her to take a while before she figured it out.  But in true carnivore style, she had that thing chomped up in a few quick crunches, and the entire head was gone in less than 3 minutes!  She absolutely loved it.  It appears chicken heads are the doggy equivalent of candy.  :)  I'm thrilled to see her trying new things so readily, and the fact that she loves them is even better.  I'm also thoroughly pleased with my organ haul, and will definitely order from MPC again.  They were very nice and made it easy to organize a delivery.  If anyone was waiting on a recommendation before ordering from them, here's mine!

I'll have to share our adventures with the chicken feet and turkey feet in the future.  Hopefully they take Mona a little longer than the chicken heads.  At the very least, I expect the turkey leg (which is almost as long as she is) to last a little while!

It's Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to all the raw feeders out there.  In celebration of the holiday, have a heart!

A raw update.

I realize the flaw in the concept of a raw feeding blog... Lack of material.  Perhaps I'm not creative enough to to see the blog-worthy moments of day to day feeding.  But I don't have much else new to write about.

Raw feeding is going great.  I've gotten a lot more free meat, and should be set for a while.  Mona had a slight upset last week and, to be on the safe side, I took her to the vet.  He ran some tests but couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.  He ran a stool sample and couldn't find any bad bacteria in it whatsoever (take that, anti-raw germophobes!!).  Most likely, she ate something she shouldn't have, probably from outside.  We now watch her much more closely when we let her outside!

I am planning to scout out some ethnic grocery stores this weekend in hopes of finding sources for organs, which is my only hang-up right now.  Mona gets liver, but I have yet to find any other organs.  I'd also love to find some beef heart, which I've yet to try.  I'll try to post pictures of whatever goodies I might find (assuming I locate my camera, which is MIA!).

In the mean time, I think I'll expand this blog to include more of my pets.  Between the rest of the critters in my house, I doubt I'll be short on material!

A lesson in the importance of bone.

I learned a valuable lesson this week in the importance of bone-in meals.  Mona's main source of bone is chicken.  Specifically, leg quarter pieces that she eats about 3 days a week.  We were low on chicken but had lots of venison and pork, and since I was pretty busy this week I kept putting off buying more chicken.  This meant she ate a lot of venison and pork, probably 4 or 5 days straight.  So, Sunday she woke up at 4am (and again at 8am) with watery stools.  Immediately realizing my mistake, I gave her a bone-in chicken thigh that afternoon.  I'm not sure how long it takes for the bone to "kick in", but the watery mess continued ALL. DAY. LONG.  She was asking to go outside constantly, and even had an accident that evening.  I like to think that, since she couldn't hold it, she at least knew to aim for the linoleum and not the carpet.  :)  Again this morning, she woke up at 3am again at 6, with no improvement.  

Mona will eat another bony chicken meal today, probably tomorrow too, and hopefully that will help get us back on track.  And I will never again slack on buying chicken if it is time for a bony meal!!

Christmas venison

Only a raw feeder would be excited about roadkill for Christmas...

A couple days, ago, I got a text from my sister's boyfriend, who had access to a deer that had just been hit by a car.  An hour and a half later, he arrived at my house with four huge deer legs and a heart for Mona!  I have no idea how much the legs weigh, but I'm guessing they must be at least 8 or 10 pounds each.  And the heart was probably a couple pounds too. All in all, a LOT of food.  Wahoo!

Then, for Christmas yesterday, my sister's boyfriend showed up with even MORE venison for me!  There are at least a dozen (probably more like two dozen) packages of deer steaks and several ziploc bags of deer burger.  And... a WHOLE squirrel!  I haven't sorted through everything yet, but with all the deer I've gotten this week, Mona has at least two months worth of food.  Needless to say, I'm THRILLED!

I took out a package of doe steak, maybe 6 ounces, and decided Christmas day would be the perfect time to introduce deer to Mona.  She loved it!  She didn't eat as much of it as I would have expected, but I think that is only because we were at my parents' house, and Mona was preoccupied with trying to play with their yorkie.  However, it looks like venison will be a hit!

(Side note:  Venison is unlike any other meat I've dealt with.  Not only does it have a completely different smell--a much stronger smell than the chicken, pork, or beef I'm used to--but it was much bloodier too.  I'm not sure if this is due to the way it was processed/packaged, or if this is typical of venison in general... Has anyone else noticed this?)

Mona's first meal away from home

This weekend my husband and I took a trip up to Michigan to visit my mother's family.  This is the first time we've had to worry about having someone else feed her.  We would be gone two full days, so my in-laws kept Mona and fed her two meals.  I should point out that I am thrilled to have someone as willing to take care of her as they are.  It's a real blessing.  They are crazy about Mona, and were more than happy to take care of her while we were gone.  However, they don't understand the raw diet at all, and I can tell they don't trust we're doing the right thing.

I decided the easiest meals would be some bone-in chicken, so I sent a thigh and a split breast half, each 10 ounces.  Around 2 o'clock on Sunday we got a call from my mother-in-law.  She was concerned that Mona was covering her food with a towel.  I explained that Mona buries her food when she isn't hungry, and that it was NOT a big deal.  I told her to just stick it back in the fridge and try again that evening.  We didn't hear back, so I assumed all went well.

When we picked her up tonight, I discovered that on Sunday night, concerned about Mona not eating, my mother-in-law took a butcher knife to the chicken thigh and hacked it into pieces!!  Thankfully, Mona ate the chopped pieces without incident... She is a gulper, and it's a miracle she didn't choke on anything.  Today's meal was eaten whole without a fuss, thank goodness.

Where I'm going with this is, when you leave your raw fed dog with people unfamiliar with raw feeding, don't be afraid to leave specific, detailed instructions.  I had let my husband to communicate with his parents about how to feed Mona her chicken, but his instructions were obviously quite vague and inadequate. To someone who knows the basics of raw, even if they don't feed raw themselves, instructions like "throw the chicken on the towel and she'll eat it" might be enough.  But when leaving your dog with someone with absolutely no understanding of raw, I'd like to make a few suggestions:

• Explain the importance of letting eat their meal whole.  I'm sure my husband explained that she could eat the chicken whole, but I doubt he explained WHY.  In the future, I will be sure to explain that cutting up the chicken would result in a dangerous choking hazard--both from sharp, cut bone edges and swallowable-sized chunks.
• Explain that it is perfectly okay if your dog doesn't eat.  My husband's family loves to eat.  Even their cat can't say no to a treat (and their cat gets FAR too many treats... she is quite overweight).  I know they simply can't imagine a dog that can turn down food.  They are probably not familiar with the idea that an animal could self-regulate with food.
• Explain that leaving meat out is perfectly fine for a raw fed dog.  My mother-in-law mentioned that she didn't want to leave the chicken out and make Mona sick.  I should have explained that the rules of raw meat humans are used to don't apply to dogs.  I have left raw meat out for over an hour, waiting for Mona to eat it.  And if she doesn't it is perfectly okay to put it back in the fridge and try again... Even several days later!
• Explain that raw fed dogs poop less!  My in-laws were also quite concerned that she didn't poop while she was over.  Of course, they are used to pets fed incredibly low-quality kibble that poop out almost as much as they consume.  I don't think they understand what a huge impact (proper) diet could have on a dog's digestive system.

Granted, everything went fine and Mona is great.  She is healthy and happy and has a full belly.  I suppose it doesn't really matter that I wasn't more thorough in explaining raw feeding.  But there were several errors that could have ended much less pleasantly, and I definitely don't plan to let those same errors happen again.  I keep thinking about how easily Mona could have choked on those cut chicken pieces!

Progress!

The other day I stopped by our small local meat shop just to see what they had.  After asking for beef liver, beef heart, chicken feet, kidneys, spleens, etc, the guy looked at me and said, "You're not really going to eat all that, are you?"  Ha!  I told him it was for my dog, who is on a special diet, and asked if there was any really cheap "junk" meat he could sell me.  About five minutes later, I'd paid $0.64 for a slice of beef liver and was walking out with a box of scrap meat he'd give me for free!

I should have taken pictures, because when people say they get scraps I always wonder what they mean.  Well, this box contained a big black trash bag full of trimmings and bones.  There was a lot of chunks of fat, a lot of connective tissue with small bits of meat attached, and a few chunks of ground meat.  I also got two meaty shoulder blade pieces that I figure I can give her as a treat... Let her work at the meat on it and then throw the bone away.  Unfortunately, the bottom of the bag was full of chili.  Of course, Mona can't eat that, so a lot of the meat on the bottom I didn't even bother going through because it was covered in chili.  I rinsed off a few pieces of fat that only had a little bit on them, and will hope that Mona handles it okay.

So, while a lot of the bag wasn't usable, I still managed to get at least a dozen meals out of it!  It will be interesting to see how she handles a meal that isn't one large chunk... These are mostly bite size chunks all thrown together to make a 10 ounce portion.  But because it was free, I'm sure not going to waste it!!

Also, remember that beef liver I mentioned?  Mona loves it!  Hooray!  It's been such a struggle to get her to eat chicken liver, and half the time the cat steals it and eats it because she ignores it.  I was really nervous that liver in general was going to be a struggle, but I fed her a piece beef liver today and it was gone in seconds.  Thank goodness!  The liver is a little more expensive than I'd wanted, $1.89 a pound, but since she needs so little of it I don't think it will really be a problem.

How do you "diagnose" separation anxiety?

This evening my husband and I pull into our apartment complex after a night out.  We'd driven separately, and I get out of my car while he's still maneuvering his car into the parking space.  I walk up the steps to our apartment door and hear a dog barking.  Surely it isn't my dog, right?  But I stop and listen, and after about a minute of silence I hear it again.  A dog--most definitely Mona--barking and carrying on like crazy for 15-20 seconds.  It sounds loud, frantic, and almost pained or scared.  Another 30 seconds or so of silence.  Then the barking, then silence.  By this point my husband walks up and listens too.  She barks again, and once she's been quiet for a bit we unlock the door and walk in.

I've been coming up with all the excuses I can think of: she got excited when she heard our cars pull in; she saw our headlights in the window; the cat had done something to antagonize her; she'd already spent a lot of time in her crate that day and had just had enough.  And maybe one of those is true.  But... I'm not so sure.  I recall one time, shortly after we adopted her, hearing her cry after I'd locked the door behind me.  It seemed to stop after a minute or two, so I left.  But what if it didn't stop?  What if she becomes so stressed while we're away that she carries on like this every time we leave her?  Has she been suffering from terrible separation anxiety this entire time and we never knew it?  The thought of it makes me feel terrible for her.  Not to mention her barking is loud, and I hate to think the neighbors have been suffering through it this whole time.

We have always crated Mona any time we are away.  We're working on leaving her out for short periods of time, but she likes to chew too much to be trusted out by herself for more than half an hour or so.  Our schedules vary daily, but I'd say she averages about 6 hours of crate time a day, five days a week (she is also crated at bedtime).  Usually, if we're going to be gone for over 6 hours, I am able to come let her out to potty at lunch. Today she was crated from about 8:30 to 4.  That's really the longest she's ever crated during the day.  I never thought it was an issue... She's never had any accidents in her crate, and she never appears stressed when I come home.  Well, I've never heard that barking before, anyway.

So, this barking has me really concerned... Are my concerns justified?  Or is it perfectly possible that this was an isolated incident, and she's usually just fine?  I suppose the best thing to do would be to stick around the apartment for a bit before I actually leave and listen in on her.  Likewise, when I come home after being gone, I should probably hang around outside the door before I unlock it and listen in then too.  And hopefully I won't hear anything.

...But if I do, what's the next step?  Ugh.

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!

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.

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.

********************

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.