So, Ginger has been on THK Zeal (fish) with a little Orijen 6 Fish for a couple of weeks now, and she's been doing awesome!

I was thinking of trying raw chicken for her over the weekend...maybe start off with just a wing (no wing tip and no drummette).

Anything I should keep in mind, be aware of, notice or observe while she's eating her chicken wing?

If she's not nasty with food you may want to hold it initially so she never gets the chance to swallow the entire thing whole. That's never a fun thing to have to make them understand lol

For breakfast this morning, I pulled out a chicken wing and let her sniff it. She licked it and took it her mouth and tried to bite it while I was holding it, so I thought she'd take to it right away. So I put it in her bowl with THK and she ate around it, and then licked it some more. And then laid down next to her food bowl.

I took the wing out and held it for her while she licked more and the took it and put on the floor. I ripped off some of the meat and she ate that, but she wouldn't take the wing and gnaw on the bone, so I left it at that for our first time at raw.

She probably ate half of the meat on the wing which isn't very much, but I guess just even eating some of it a good start right off the bat.

I think I'll make a plain steak for dinner tomorrow night, and save the pan juices and pour it over a wing for our next try over the weekend.

Siku is weird sometimes about eating raw. She'll just stare at it for a while, then move it around in her crate, and finally eat it after about 5 to 10 minutes. But other times she'll try to swallow it all at once. I don't get it! lol. Oh and she likes saltwater fish better than freshwater. Some dogs are just picky I guess.

I thought of doing raw fish, but wondered if Ginger would get the benefit from the chicken bones cleaning her teeth?

cmanding wrote:

I think I'll make a plain steak for dinner tomorrow night, and save the pan juices and pour it over a wing for our next try over the weekend.

This is exactly how I got Nikolai to be interested in raw chicken. He thought it was like, the.best.thing.ever and now I don't have to season it. I occasionally will sear it (really quickly, mostly to take the chill off), or smear a little peanut butter on it if he's not diggin' it, that usually does the trick.

Yep, hold it at first if you think she might swallow the bone without chewing. You definitely want her to chew. I started out with raw chicken wings too and our boy has always been crazy for raw food. But then again I have been slipping him boneless raw meat over the years on a regular basis so he was used to raw meat, just not the bone part. I never had a problem with him not chewing the bone, thankfully.

Faith was terribly hard to get to eat raw chicken wings. She would eat around the raw chicken wing and only eat THK...little brat. lol The next day I seared the chicken wing just a little (for maybe 15-20 seconds), enough to make it smell delightful but without cooking the bone and then I gave it to her sprinkled with Parmesan cheese all over. She licked all the cheese off but wouldn't eat it. Finally by the third day she was hungry enough to eat it, but I had withheld all other food too so she wouldn't go picky on me.

I would try seering the chicken wing for Ginger and maybe sprinkling/spreading something over it that she likes. Parmesan cheese (or any cheese), peanut butter, THK are all good suggestions IF they agree with Ginger...I know she can't have much so it's hard to know what will work. Or even just seering it and serving it like that may get her more interested as it will smell much more enticing. When I seered Faith's chicken wing it smelled good enough that it made me hungry.

Then if the seering doesn't work you can try the steak juices tomorrow. I know that stuff makes my dogs go ga-ga too.

Thanks Val!
I'll try searing it for 15 seconds on medium high heat.
I'll see how she does with that.

She can tolerate peanut butter, yogurt and cheddar cheese pretty good, but she gets those in small amounts every so often so I want to try just the chicken in case she goes soft on me, I'll know exactly what caused it.

I'll keep ya'all posted in my next attempt!

(on a side note, hubby was really scared this morning about raw chicken...I have to keep telling him raw is OK and that his friends back in college gave cooked chicken with bone which is why their dogs chocked! I also have to remind him that he has done zero research on raw feeding...)

Good luck and tell that hubby of yours to stop worrying so much. He only has to worry if she doesn't chew the bone and just gulps the whole thing, even then it may not cause choking. Remind him of how many people feed raw every day and never have a problem!

Speaking of sensitivities as a side note, I know my boy doesn't tolerate fish based ANYTHING but like an idiot this morning I gave him a tiny piece of dehydrated whitefish no bigger than the size of a quarter just to see how he'd do. Big mistake, he's got loose stool covered in mucous and vomiting. My poor baby. Bad mommy! lol I can't believe how such a tiny amount can make such a big consequence! See Claudia? We still go through it even after all these years and KNOWING he didn't do well on fish. Bah, we can do stupid things sometimes. Luckily Dakota seems to be doing a little better this afternoon....we'll see what happens next time I take him out.

Can't wait to hear how Ginger's next attempt goes. Fingers crossed she tries it!

Huskyluv wrote:

Speaking of sensitivities as a side note, I know my boy doesn't tolerate fish based ANYTHING but like an idiot this morning I gave him a tiny piece of dehydrated whitefish no bigger than the size of a quarter just to see how he'd do. Big mistake, he's got loose stool covered in mucous and vomiting. My poor baby. Bad mommy! lol I can't believe how such a tiny amount can make such a big consequence! See Claudia? We still go through it even after all these years and KNOWING he didn't do well on fish. Bah, we can do stupid things sometimes. Luckily Dakota seems to be doing a little better this afternoon....we'll see what happens next time I take him out.

That small amount? WOW!
I guess I'm really lucky because Ginger's intolerance is mild compared to Dakota's and Faith's!

She ate the small pieces of raw chicken this morning and she gave me a regular BM a few minutes ago. That may or may not be enough time to digest the raw chicken, but so far so good...I at least feel somewhat confident that if she ate the whole chicken wing, she might be OK as far as her BM.

That's a good sign. Typically if something absolutely doesn't agree with them you will know it within a very short period of time. Like Dakota with the whitefish this morning, just a few hours later and he was not doing well.

One of my favorite things about feeding raw is the BM's. On kibble Dakota had 2 BM's a day on average that were "small". On THK he had 2-3 BM's per day that were huge! On raw he has 1 BM a day and it's teeny, tiny! Our 55 lb husky's BM's on raw are smaller than my 6 lb chihuahuas' BM's on THK or kibble! Plus they are firmer than any other BM's I've ever seen and they are white and just literally crumble into dust when you pick them up. Love raw poops! There I go talking about poop again.

Huskyluv wrote:

Plus they are firmer than any other BM's I've ever seen and they are white and just literally crumble into dust when you pick them up. Love raw poops! There I go talking about poop again.

*lol* Nikolai's raw turds look like cat droppings. They're itty-bitty... kinda funny, really.

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Huskyluv wrote:
One of my favorite things about feeding raw is the BM's. On kibble Dakota had 2 BM's a day on average that were "small". On THK he had 2-3 BM's per day that were huge! On raw he has 1 BM a day and it's teeny, tiny! Our 55 lb husky's BM's on raw are smaller than my 6 lb chihuahuas' BM's on THK or kibble! Plus they are firmer than any other BM's I've ever seen and they are white and just literally crumble into dust when you pick them up. Love raw poops! There I go talking about poop again.


TOO FUNNY!!

Ginger sometimes have tiny turds too! LOL! And that's on Orijen and THK...but then...sometimes, she has more than a hand full! HA!

...and Sully on the other hand...BOY, oh BOY! 2-hand-pick-up job! BA HA HA!!! Keep in mind, his diet is way different and he's 73 lbs.!

Gotta love the poop-talk!

Totally reminds me of a joke I saw on Facebook yesterday:

"Funniest joke ever in the 4 year old demographic (try it and see for yourself)

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Poop!
...
(that's all there is)"

LOL Love the "two-hand-pick up" classification! Gotta love Sully regardless of his back door presents.

Oh! On a side note, I found more Dog Nips that are sweet potato and cod, or salmon or pollack. They come rolled so they look like sushi rolls and on the package it says they're 'sushi'...too funny, but I thought it was cute.

Anyway, they are dried, raw fish and fish skins that are either rolled around sweet potato or the fish itself to look like sushi, or the skins are rolled or twisted to make 'sticks'. 2 ingredients! (Gotta love the 2-ingredient treats). And Ginger LOVES them! She'll also DROOL big time for these as soon as I open the package.

Ginger: my fish eating girl!...I cannot believe how well she does on fish!!

I'd give her raw fish, but I would think she wouldn't get the teeth cleaning as she would with the chicken bones...?

Huskyluv wrote:

LOL Love the "two-hand-pick up" classification! Gotta love Sully regardless of his back door presents.

LOL!
I do miss the sweet, big boy! But I want to give him time to settle in with his new family before I take him for half day playdates at my place with Ginger. I want to make sure he doesn't get confused as to who his new family is.

Aww, that's understandable with regard to letting Sully settle in at his new home.

I would think chicken bones would be more beneficial for teeth cleaning purposes than fish too, mainly because most fish bones are a lot smaller and they probably wouldn't spend as much time and effort chewing them. But I'm no expert, I don't feed fish.

Oh and my poor Dakota has had diarrhea for the rest of the day. All because of that one tiny little piece of fish this morning! Fingers crossed we get through the night without having to rush him outside or accidents.

Yeah, I doubt fish does much to clean their teeth. I just use it as another meat source and my dad fishes A LOT! So he always has fish that's been in the freezer for too long. I think he's happy that I feed it to my dogs, cause now he can clean out his freezer better. lol. I haven't fed mine a whole fish yet, just the fillets with skin on one side and some tiny rib bones, cause my dad always cleans the fish before freezing it. I might ask him not to one of these days.

We need an update, Claudia!

Well, we ate a late lunch today, and I forgot to pull a wing out of the freezer this morning, so it'll be tomorrow that we try a chicken wing (with pan juices from a plain seared steak to intice her)...

Stay tuned for tomorrow's update

Fingers crossed, although those steak juices should be irresistible.

Well, I seared some steaks and used the pan juices to pour over her chicken wing and gave that to her first (before her food). She licked up the steak juices and took the wing out of her bowl and went to her 'spot'. I thought she was going for it because with her dental bones, she'll do a little play dance before she grabs it and eats it, which she did with the wing, but then only licked it. She made a very feeble attempt to gnaw at it then moved away to lay on the hardwood floors. I picked up the wing and put it in her regular food, and she ate around it, then licked it to get the HK off and was done.

Aww, that stinks. Faith was like that too. I had to practice a little tough love with Faith to get her to eat her first chicken wing. No treats and no other food were offered. She was offered her raw chicken wing 3 times a day for 20 minutes each time. If she didn't eat it then it went back in the fridge until her next feeding time where she'd again be offer the wing and nothing else. She was a stubborn little thing and did not give in until day 3 but she was finally hungry enough that she chowed down on it with gusto. After she ate her raw chicken wing she was rewarded with her Honest Kitchen.

If you really want Ginger to eat it then you might have to go the tough love route. But if it's not something that you really care about one way or the other then you might try a few more times with other variations maybe.

I didn't start my husky off on raw bone-in meat, but rather I started him on boneless raw meat that I hand fed him. Over the years I would hand feed him a variety of boneless raw meat from whatever I was cooking for dinner, so he got accustomed to it that way. I've also fed him the prepared frozen raw meat patties too so he got plenty of exposure to raw meat before I stuck a raw chicken wing in his bowl for the first time. I know Ginger ate the small raw pieces that you hand fed her, but will she eat raw (boneless) meat that you give her? Like if you were cooking and you just set aside a small piece of the raw meat before you cook the rest for yourself, would she eat that?

She might eat what I hand her as she's learned that when I'm in the kitchen, I'm getting ready to eat something...and she's learned (which is my fault) that if she sits there long enough with a sweet smile and drool, I'll give her something. So hand feeding her small bits of raw meet whenever I prep a meal might be what I have to do to start Ginger off....just like how you started off your boy. I think that way, hubby will also be more open and at ease about feeding raw.

After our attempt at raw today, hubby said, 'Cook up them wings! There's a game on!'

I'm saving them since they're vacuumed packed and they'll last in the freezer for a while