If you are feeding him 4 times - then yes. I feed one meal a day on raw. Otherwise Delilah won't finish everything and she will lose weight. It helps the poop situation a lot.

Maggie,
I wish you luck, many people transition that way, I just haven't decided if I want to go all raw.

Thanks everyone! I feel much better about this now haha. I think i'll start with 1 meal a day of a quarter chicken (or something like that...) and see how he does.

My boy 9 years old and having prostate issues, is this a convenient diet to start him in? I am now feeding him boiled chicken breast. 2 pounds of breast chicken. I mix it with some basic from blue kibble, grain free. I am just worried that I might hurt him more.

He is straining and yelps in pain when trying to poop.

I just want him to get better.

Maria, I'm no medical expert, however, many dogs benefit great with raw diets. It doesn't have to be difficult nor expensive. with raw you need to feed kibble at a separate time than raw. To start you can give chicken, but because of his troubles try feeding kibble in the morning, then a burger (hamburger, turkey burger) for an evening meal. Most of us feed bones as well, however, I think that may cause more problems. There are many great premade raw foods out there as well, they do cost more, but bone is ground into the meal. Lastly would can pure pumpkin be available to you? Not the pie filling type, but pure. The reason I ask is that it help regulate bowels, i.e. loose stool it will harden, hard stool it will soften. It may make it easier for him to go. Good luck

Renee

Thank you Renee for replying to my post.!!!

Ok, so I should give him his kibbles during the morning and his chicken breast as his dinner. Yes, its available here, and should I give him the pumpkin with the kibbles or with the chicken? Should I still continue to boil the chicken breast or should I thaw the chicken breast and give it to him just like that. Its boneless and skinless (the chicken breast).

Thanks again.

Marie

Marie,
Nutrient wise it's better to give raw, however, you are giving kibble and his age, it really is up to you on how you do it. If you go raw transition slowly to raw, perhaps 2-4 ounces raw mid day. You can break up his meals, so several small meals a day, what ever order works best for you, you just don't want to mix raw and kibble, cooked and kibble is fine. Pumpkin can be given at any time, I find my girl likes it as a treat, a couple table spoons, once a day, every other day. With the chicken, unless vet says other wise, try and give boneless, but fat and skin may help with his bowels as well, raw or cooked.

Renee

Marie,

I did some research for you, later I will add some supplement ideas, but I'm in the process of making dinner. I felt so bad for you and Buddy. Stick with birds, chicken, turkey. Red meats tend to not help as well. How much kibble and meat do you give a day? 2 pounds seems awful large amount unless you are trying to add weight. How many cups of kibble? I can give you some suggestions that are low cost, since supplement to reduce swelling may cost you some money.

My mother had german shepherds and was pro meat based meals. My base knowledge comes from her, and my constant search on the net has helped me tweak my girls diet. I'll get back to you on a supplement and diet you can try for him.

Renee

Marie,

Found a lot of useful info typing in Natural Dog Health Remedies, do you have a holistic vet nearby? That may be a better solution for you. What I do understand is that a diet made up of fowl is better as well as adding some veggies, green beans, pumpkin, natural fiber. They did mention to stay away from beef, pork and lamb. Most of us feed bone, for calcium, etc. However it dries the system a little, I feel that whole bones would bind him up even more. Until his prostate swelling goes away, I would continue with kibble, chicken/turkey and add some cooked vegies. With the pumpkin out of a can you don't necessarily have to cook. Also the other benefit of feeding raw is he will get more liquid than cooked. Feed human grade meat, you can give frozen, semi frozen or thawed.

The problem is his swelling, which should have been greatly reduced after 2-3 weeks after surgery. Your vet or a holistic vet
would be able to help with that.

Several small meal a day I think would benefit him. Is he typical husky weight? It would help me break down amounts to feed.

Renee

Thank you so MUCH Renee for all this information!!!
Regarding his weight he is 44.20. So i need him to put on some weight. His dr is holistics believes. He was on zantac metradazole and predisone and that was given on August 27th. I then took him back on the 30th and he added zequilin until next tuesday for his check up . PLEASE Pray for him.
I will do everything possible to not let him suffer. I will really take all the info and put it to use immediatly. I was feeding him 2 cups of kibble and 1.5 pound of cooked Chicken breaste. I will try to incorporaré liver and other órgans into his diet. I was boíl ing his Chicken to avoid bacterias and upset his stomach because he is taking strong meds.
Thank you for your help.

Oh he use to do most of his discharges back yarda and now he is doing his business on my back garage. That change!!! But when we walk he does 3 or 4 times. Not crying out since thursday thank GOD.
thank you again for all the info!! Any moré advice is really appreciated,

I think that's a good amount of food, since you want to increase his weight a little. I still say break this up into 3-4 meals if possible. Liver and organ meats are excellent for him.Stick with kibble in the am and meat in the pm. Since he is on meds stick with the boil, to make it a little cheaper and get him some benefit to some grease and fat, get the bone in, boil, remove all bones then give a little skin and all meat with the broth, mix with pumpkin or cooked green beans.Stick with about 2 tablespoons pumpkin and maybe a cup green beans. You can rotate the veggies. You can also do chicken leg quarters and do the same, boil, remove bone, give him the rest. A boiled egg, or a scrambled egg can be rotated as well. Once he's off meds I would start giving about 2 table spoons of greek plain(or vanilla) yogurt, since your vet is holistic ask if you can include the yogurt now. For some variety you can also cook up some turkey burger, and many people swear to the benefits of coconut oil, so you could use some while cooking.

I am happy to hear that he is doing somewhat better. Keep us posted. Do you have any pics you can put up? We love pics here, love to see your boy. Take care and you are both in my thoughts,

Renee

Holla Renee. I was trying to upload a picture of my furbaby and no luck. I will try from home. He is doing better. I fed him his kibble in the morning and his raw meal at supper. And for treats I gave him a bit of liver and pancreas. He LOVED IT!!

He was not crying out while doing his business and I didn't see him with pain or strain. We have an appointment this Wednesday so please keep us in your thoughts.

Regards,

Buddy and me.

Holla Marie, Como esta mi amiga, that is the extent of my spanish writing, lol. Had a dear friend from PR, miss her.
I'm glad he is doing better, thinking the swelling is finally going down for your guy. I will keep you two in my thoughts. Let me know how his appointment goes.

Renee

Hello husky parents! We finally took the plunge and switched Gus to raw about 3 weeks ago. For a dog who was suffering from many food allergies (we've switched his kibble 5 times), and constantly having inconsistent bowel movements of soft stool, the switch was amazing. He almost immediately started passing normal raw poops! No diarrhea. No vomiting.

Right now, we are only doing chicken (80/10/10). Like i said, it's been almost 3 weeks, and here is what i have noticed:

Good:
- he feels softer
- he is gaining weight!! (he was super lean before)

Bad:
- he still seems itchy
- in the past week, i have noticed the rim of his eyes and mouth are a little red

So my question is whether anyone else has noticed this before? Gus is notorious for having bad bowel movements if he has a food allergy. But in this case, his bowel movements have been stellar! So i was hoping to see people's opinions on whether they think this is a food allergy, or if anyone knows anything that i can try?

His eyes don't seem to bother him at all. But he scratches at his chin/mouth sometimes and can sometimes scratch to the point of bleeding (not a lot). He did this before we switched to raw too though. I was doing some research... could it be a light case of mange? I have no experience with this

Thanks for all your help!

Hi Maggie, I'm going to guess that Gus may have an allergy to chicken vs mange. What was the protein source of his kibble, if it was predominately chicken based and you are currently feeding chicken, that may be the problem. Try using a different protein source for a month or so and see if there is a change, try turkey, it is different enough of a protein but you can still feed similar to how you feed with chicken. I hope that will help Gus.

Renee

Hi renee! We are almost certain that Gus was allergic to chicken in kibble. So we weren't expecting good bowel movements with raw chicken at all! The first two weeks we did raw chicken, he was perfectly fine. I just remembered on my way home that we started giving him dehydrated bison liver treats. I'm going to stop those for couple days and see if anything changes. Perhaps the small amounts were enough to make him itchy, but not enough to give him diarrhea...

I hope it's not the chicken the place we are buying our raw from is a local store that grinds it for us. They also carry beef and lamb, but do not have it in the 80/10/10 ratio as they're unable to find the bone. I guess that is an easy fix though and probably good for him to chew on some actual bone once in awhile.

Thanks for your feedback! If he isn't allergic to the chicken, we still plan on including beef, lamb and fish in regularly.

Maggie, from what I understand from reading a ton is that there are subtle differences from food allergies and food intolerance....with intolerance upset tummies are the norm i.e. diarrhea. With allergies it often appears as itchiness. I must look like an idiot when I'm in the dog treat section, because I read everything, Miya has a grain or more specifically corn intolerance. If the bison treats are just that bison, I'm guessing that is not the cause, although I'm with you, you have to eliminate things to figure out what works best. Any changes made, I would give a base time of 2 weeks. would turkey be an item they could do 80/10/10 since it is a different protein, yet typically comes with the bone and organs (as an alternative to chicken if indeed it's a chicken allergy)? I do personally think that raw bones are ideal at cleaning teeth and keeping teeth healthy, the ground bone does give benefits, obvious stool being firm and the calcium and other minerals, however the other benefits are good for Gus too, I give Miya RMB'S several times a week for that purpose, but also I don't feed too many treats, so to her it's a treat. Most stores no longer butcher meat in house, it comes butchered, so I understand the dilemma your in. My local meat department will save me bones when T-Bones are on sale(many people do not want bone in T-bones, go figure), so when they are on sale they save them. So you may want to ask if they can save bones back that way for you, just a thought. At any rate, I did want to add to my previous post, to give you a better understanding of what may be going on with Gus, and also to give you some ideas on alternate proteins to use. Again Good luck with Gus!!

TheBadGuppy wrote:

Bad:
- he still seems itchy
- in the past week, i have noticed the rim of his eyes and mouth are a little red

Have you considered the possibility of a beginning zinc responsive dermatosis?  Diets high in calcium and phytates can bind plasma zinc...

Thanks for the info Renee! I do want to give Gus more meaty bones to gnaw on for his teeth. Slowly building my way up to there haha. It took me a long time to switch him to raw just because of my own fears and lack of understanding. But i'm really encouraged now that it seems to be working (mainly on helping him gain weight). His hip bones are finally starting to cover up with some meat! I started an old post about him awhile ago where i have pictures of how skinny he used to be. Poor guy had to go through a couple rounds of meds for giardia too which didn't help with his sensitive stomach. https://www.itsahuskything.com/t11273-feeding-and-weight-gain-pics
I should update that thread with some new pictures I swear he looks 100 times better now!

The place that we get our raw is actually a dog supply store. They specialize in large breed supplies (like harnesses, crates, etc.) and raw. They are super helpful so I'm sure they would have lots of advice if Gus did turn out to be intolerant to the chicken.

Amy, i did not think of that ZRD yet. Actually hadn't even heard of it before you mentioned it just now! I tried to read up on it, but i can't seem to find one website where it detail everything. The ZRD thread on this forum is pretty small too. But it looks like i would have to get a biopsy from the vet to know if this is it for sure. Right now, he doesn't have lesions, and no scaley patches. The redness around his eyes looks like it COULD be though. His top eyelid sometimes looks reddish and swollen. Almost like he has a stye, but it will eventually go away after a day or two. I'll definitely keep an eye (pun intended ) on this. Thanks for suggesting it!

Maggie, I read that thread, poor Gus he was so skinny! I did find this for you, Amy brought up a good point, indeed the vet would have to do scrapings....since you couldn't find much I got this for you, it was quite interesting and may be something you and your vet may need to investigate............

http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/canine-zinc-responsive-dermatosis

I stink at linking sites, so you may just have to type it out, but it was quite informative.
It took me many months to put weight on Miya, so I do understand how difficult it can be, we only want the best for our companions. At 2 years of age, I no longer see her ribs, feel them yes, but they don't stick out anymore. We love pics, so seeing a happier, healthier Gus would be awesome.

ETA: Woot, I actually did the link right!!

Hello! Me again

So we did 2 weeks of beef, and there wasn't much change in terms of his red eyes, and itchiness. It's weird, but it doesn't appear to coincide with when he's fed! Poops are still great, and he is still steadily gaining weight! (I swear i'll post some pics soon )

I wanted to ask if anyone feeds raw salmon? I read about salmon poisoning in dogs, and that it's not a good idea. But the place where we buy our raw from (they are basically butchers for dogs, and only sell raw food for dogs) says that their salmon is safe, and they have never had problems with it. So i wanted to get an idea of whether i'm just reading too much on the internet, or if it really is that unsafe.

Also, do you guys feed raw beef ribs? We bought a couple, but Gus just cannot get through them. Instead of beef rib, we give him beef brisket for the bone portion of his meal, and he has no problem chewing that up.

As for the allergy, or whatever it is, I booked an appointment with a holistic vet that supports raw feeding for Monday, so hopefully, they will be able to give us some advice on this.

Maggie, as far as the salmon is concern I would ask your butcher where the salmon is sourced, and then look up that area for mercury content, I believe it's mercury that is the issue. USDA may have a list of approved safe salmon sources.

I find it odd that he has a hard time with ribs, there are various areas of rib bones so perhaps they are too hard. Miya can eat bone and all a short rib in about 5-10 minutes, she can eat the majority of the t-bone, and the majority of the rib eye straight bone(since most of her bones come from those cuts and I give her portions of it and cook the rest for us). When we get our butchered bones, they come from primarily the T-bone section, some of the bones are quite long and look like a rounded skirt bottom(can't think of a better way to describe, lol) and can be separated into smaller sections, although she doesn't like those types much.

Keep us posted on the holistic vet visit. Btw, a friend of ours said Miya finally doesn't look anorexic, she turned 2 at the beginning of November.

It's not the mercury in salmon - there is a parasite in raw, I believe its Pacific, salmon.

I forgot about that Amy, lol, yes raw fish and salmon in general may have the parasite, however, FDA says Wild Alaskan Salmon is far safer than Atlantic Salmon(mercury content and PCB"s), unfortunately in Canada, most Salmon is the Atlantic Variety. So Maggie ask a lot of questions.

Actually, it's both mercury levels and parasites.