Thank you so much for all the replies!! Great to get others opinion and experience. I still go back and forth on feeding raw but have seen so many improvements with all three of my dogs in doing so. I’m receptive to veterinary ‘science’, but I also understand that there is a lot of influence and funding coming from these commercial foods as well. Also, most vets have very minimal training in nutrition. My vet is actually an advocate for raw, just wants it to be from a well known and trusted raw dog food company, but even he said that he’s no nutritionist. Sounds like maybe I just need to bite the bullet and pay for quality raw to be safe.
acroyali- thank you for taking such time to write such a detailed response. I was ordering from hare-today but after their shipping prices increased for the summer, I stopped buying from them. I started ordering from raising-rabbits.com instead. Have you or anyone else heard about them or their quality?
Like I said earlier, I’ve seen huge benefits to feeding raw. In my lab mix with Addison’s, before raw, he was drinking a ton of water and I mean a ton! He had horrible breath and he had a lot of tartar on his teeth. My shiba mix would eat about 2 meals worth of kibble and then quit eating eating it either because he was bored or just didn’t like the taste, no matter the brand, protein, etc- we tried it all. My shiba seems to be less anxious too. Our 5 month old puppy was the first dog that we started on raw from 8 weeks raw, she’s done great on raw. No bouts of diarrhea, never gotten sick, and has been a dream to house train.
My vet said that I could mix kibble with the raw to help with the costs. I’ve read a lot of conflicting information on this, any thoughts? I’m certainly open to switching back to kibble but would be hard pressed to go all the way back since my dogs are clearly doing so much better on raw. There isn’t a whole lot of scientific proof on raw feeding but who’s funding these other ones saying that raw is harmful for dogs? Just to be safe though, I think I will stop feeding them grocery store meat and stick with the ones I can buy at a pet store. I’ll check out mypetcarnivore as well. How much veggies do you all like to add?
Sorry this ended up being so long but again, I greatly appreciate your time and responses.
