Hi Bill!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!! I was afraid the bones might be a problem but every time I tried to get a straight answer, they would start talking about calcium and phosphorus and what % to what % of meat and then adjust that to the dog’s weight plus adding a certain % of green veggies and fruits, and my eyes would roll back in my head! Just teasing but as you read in my posts, I am an old lady and unfortunately I also have macular degeneration so trying to get a scale with numbers large enough for me to read but still capable of weighing things less than 10 lbs is near impossible. Also one of the posts I read on this site stated her dog was doing fine on a raw diet until she gave it a beef heart and now the dog is critically ill! I’m already as skittish as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs about feeding her the raw diet so I certainly do not want to add something that could be dangerous to her! Could I just substitute deboned chicken thighs instead of the legs and thighs with bones? Would just one chicken wing with bones and two deboned chicken thigh with a couple of gizzards/hearts and a quarter cup of beef or chicken liver every day be okay for the once a day raw feeding while she is still eating 14 oz of wet food and approximately 1-2 cups of kibble where she will still get some of the minerals etc she needs to flourish? Was the guy who said feeding liver everyday incorrect and not dangerous after all as long as I do not feed her too much liver every day? I am simply incapable of weighing her raw food every day and adding more measured items at the right % of each. I have always been very independent so I hate to keep harping on my age and the limits on my abilities but I order my groceries from Walmart and once a week my son will come over and drive me to the pick up dept to pick up my ordered groceries before he has to be at his work. He often works 6 days a week. There are not many butcher shops in the small town where I live. He does not have time to drive me around to meat markets to buy the things that Walmart does not stock. They do not carry beef hearts but they do carry beef liver! I have shied away from buying roasts or large cuts of meat due to having to cut them up and weigh them to get the right proportions. I could easily cut up the beef liver and feed her a quarter cup or half cup, whatever would not be dangerous for her. Using a measuring cup is no problem since I have individual measuring cups and can tell which is which. Measuring by weight is another matter altogether. I really do appreciate your post and it has confirmed my gut feeling that perhaps I was including too much bone. But, lordy me, does that dog love to crunch up those bones! She is okay with the thighs and drumsticks but does not relish them as much as she does those chicken wings! Surely one wing with bones is not too much bone in her every day diet? She weighs about 65-70 lbs. If I cut out the kibble and wet dog food, she would not get enough food to satisfy her hunger and I simply cannot measure all those items in the proper percents to put her on a completely raw diet. She was pretty close to giving up until I added the (to me) small amount of raw food to her regular diet. Before adding the raw diet, she sometimes would not really eat much for several days at a time. Now she is eating almost all the wet food and almost all the kibble and every bite of the raw chicken every day! I truly apologize for being such a pain but I honestly appreciate what you have suggested. I forgot to mention that she is also on thyroid medication which she gets twice a day. Sincerely, Linda
