I’m a total geek about what people feed their dogs. Curiosity abounds, you know? So consider this my long-winded and geeky contribution, not raw-food evangelism. Although I’m happy to evangelize, too, if you’d like.
Silas has food allergies. Most relevantly here, he got increasingly less interested in eating his kibble as his allergies got worse, then once I figured out the problem I couldn’t find one that met both my nutritional criteria and his allergy-diet needs. So we switched him to Primal’s Turkey and Sardine Formula frozen raw food. Allergy symptoms: gone. Picky eating: gone.
(Nothing’s more delicious than a stick.)
The only problem was that he was starving. For the first time, he had a real appetite, and it was insatiable. For good reason, too–at the same time that his stomach was better than ever, his weight dropped two or three pounds. Hesitant to feed him even more of a food that was already costing $50 a week, I started giving him some raw turkey parts. His first turkey was wings, and he did well enough to send me out on a quest for some turkey necks. Turkey neck=doggie bliss, apparently.
We stuck with just the supplemental raw turkey necks for a while, but after looking around and considering the cost we eventually abandoned the Primal food. These days Silas eats a pretty good variety for a dog who can only eat one thing. (It’s really time to start branching out of his allergy diet, but his skin is still too bad from the obedience class treat incident.) Necks, wings, hearts, gizzards, liver, and tails are the staple rotation, and every now and then he gets a turkey back or some ground turkey thigh. If you’re wondering where on earth I find this stuff, I must confess that I am considerably blessed in local resources, including a raw-food specialty store. I could feed him pretty easily out of our regular grocer if he could eat chicken or beef, but turkey organs are hard to find.
He has beautiful teeth, soft fur, fresh breath, and excellent digestion. The cost of this is about $60 a month and me having to–blech–chop up raw turkey parts. I quit eating meat my own self because I didn’t like handling it, and now I do it for the dog.
My Imperfect Dog 