[rawfeeding] Re: dog won't "rip and tear"

Cdandp2@... wrote:
>>
> BUT, he won't "touch" the food with his paws and therefore just
chews intil
> soft and kind of groud and then swallows these huge pieces almost
whole.
> Scares me to bits, but he doesn't seem to be having any
difficulty.
*****
Yeah, I have one like that. He's been rawfed for some years now and
still does not intentionally touch his paws to his food. It IS
scary, sometimes.

I feed him a. small stuff he can just vacuum up or b. big complicated
stuff he cannot stuff down his gullet, even though he does try, even
though he does gag. <sigh>

When I give him whole chicken, I score the skin to make sections that
will separate on their own since he doesn't do it. When I feed him
pork legs I figure on him taking all day to chew the skin. I have to
skin whole rabbits since he simply will not rip through the fur. Of
all my dogs, his canines are the least clean, since he just will not
bite deep and wrench or twist or tear his food.

He vomited
> one night a few pieces of 1/2 inch bone splinters (pork) but ate
them and
> went back to sleep.
*****
This too can be scary but almost always is no big deal. This usually
stops with experience, or becomes a rare event.

>I don't know how much the bones actually weigh and since
> they're embedded IN the meat, how do you know the proportions?
*****
You don't need to know proportions! The percentages we bandy about
are guidelines only. If you know there's a bone in the body part
you're considering but you can't figure out where the bone is exactly
because there's a whole lotta meat there, you've got yourself a
pretty darn good body part.

A whole chicken is a good choice. Whole critters (even if dressed)
will always be good choices.

If however you can see the bone structure, if you can see how the
meat is attached or in fact that there is little meat regardless of
how interesting the bone structure itself may look, then you should
consider a different option OR plan to feed this body part with added
meat OR plan on feeding this body body part infrequently and
anticipate white rock poops.

The pork neck bones one typically finds in supermarkets (even ethnic)
are good examples of "interesting bone but no meat" propects. So are
chicken backs, by and large. And chicken necks.

I've been buying a
> whole chicken and giving him about an eighth of that per day (about
a half
> pound total) and then some meals of bonelss pork loin or beef stew
meat once in
> awhile. He started on frozen raw mix so I give him a few cubes of
that here
> and there (just to get rid of it...don't plan on continuing that
after what
> I've read on this list). He's 25-28 lbs so I'm giving him about
1/2 lb
> (generous) daily in two meals.
*****
You can almost never feed too much meat. If you are feeding an
eighth of a chicken per day with added meat, I'm sure you are feeding
plenty of meat and a reasonable amount of bone. I think you should
feed red meat more often than "once in a while" and that you should
consider feed larger sections of chicken for the workout...but in
terms of getting appropriate amounts of bone and meat into your dog's
diet, you're doing it, yes.

I'm the
> person who believes put my previous cocker into kidney
failure/pancreatitis by
> feeding her an inadequate RMB diet (too many chicken backs...not
enough meat).
*****
I don't think so.
Many people feed chicken backs every day, many people rely profoundly
on chicken necks and wings, and turkey necks, and pork neck bones;
their dogs do not die from pancreatitis and kidney failure. Almost
certainly the pancreatitis arose from whatever caused the kidneys to
fail. And that whatever that was was NOT his diet.

Heck, if that were the case, all Billinghurst fans would have dogs
with kidney failure and pancreatitis! Not.
Chris O

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