I recently started to gradually move my dog into raw food. He's a 4 month old shepherd, and the first meat I gave him was an elk knuckle, and he ate it very happily. The next time I gave him a hoof, and he was very happy with that too. Today, I tried giving him a chicken wing (100% Natural) that I bought from albertsons, and he started flipping out. I've never seen him act like this. He was circling the wing as if it was going to attack him. Every once in a while he kept nipping at it to see what it tastes like and he would immediately let it go and run around again. I thought he might not like the skin, so I removed the skin and he still continued the same thing. He tried a couple of time to grab it and run away with it, but I didn't let him run around the house with it, so he just dropped it where it was. I tried cutting a piece of it to see if he would eat it, but he wouldn't even come near it, he just kept running around it. So finally I threw it away, but now I'm really confused as to what was going on. Does anyone have any idea as what that was about? And if there is anything I can do to get him to eat it? Or is he not going to eat chicken? I'm a bit confused. Thanks in advance for any help.

- Ali

Since I'm new to this as well I can't offer any advice other than to say my pup was fairly surprised to find chicken parts in his bowl the first time out. He wasn't afraid of it but it took a bit of sniffing and licking before he realized he could eat it.

He was even more hesitant last night when he was offered pork for the first time...so hesitant he refused it outright. So maybe they need a little time to get used to each new meat offered??? It IS odd.

I'm very interested to see what others say. Thanks for posting this, Ali

Hehe, that's too cute Ali!!!

Have you tried soaking/rinsing the chicken off before feeding it? I read that chicken is sometimes soaked in a brine (?) solution and that this taste might bother some dogs.

I never had a problem with chicken (or pork) but my pup reacted the same way as yours did when I gave him his first whole unskinned rabbit.

In my case, I just let him growl and bark at it, throw it around and drag it all across the floor
Yes, I was cringing and wincing the whole time thinking of all the salmonella he was spreading over the floor, but I just went and disinfected everything once he was done.

It took him about an hour of just playing with the rabbit and dragging the guts over the floor before he finally started eating. And even then, it was only a nibble at a time.

The good news is that he eventually ate it all up, and the next time he got a rabbit, he didn't hesitate at all and scarfed it all down!

I usually just feed my dogs outside so that they can drag their food around all they want without me having to clean up and disinfect afterwards.

I'd recommend making sure he's really hungry and well-exercised first (fast him for half a day or even a whole day if you have to) and then give him the chicken piece. Let him play with it if he wants to. Just keep encouraging him to try it.

If he's hungry enough he'll eventually eat it up. The next time you feed chicken, he'll most likely remember and won't have trouble with it anymore.

Some dogs just don't like certain foods (no matter how many times they're introduced to it) and in that case I'd just skip what they don't like and find something else. But puppies usually just need to learn that something new is food )

Another way to speed up this process is to take the chicken wing and put it in a hot pan for maybe 10 seconds or so.
Just enough to get the outside browned and to get the nice cooked fat scent to entice him to eat (but not so much that you'd start cooking the bones, obviously!).

That way the scent will entice him to eat and he'll realize that the raw chicken is indeed food.

Good luck!

Sarah, you could try the same thing to get your pup excited about eating pork )

Just letting him play with it for a while at first while you encourage him to chomp down (and make sure that he's really hungry beforehand!)

You can also resort to the quick-browning method - I don't recommend that as a permanent solution (because it's a pain in the a$$ to have to cook for your dog at every meal!!!!) but it's a useful way to introduce something new and weird to a pup )

Finally, dogs have their likes and dislikes like us, so if your pup/dog habitually refuses a certain meat, I would just respect their tastes and move on to something else over the long-term.

It'd be a shame not to at least try to convince a pup to try a new meat though; sometimes the novelty turns them off and all it takes is one meal to change their minds (like whole rabbits for my dogs - they go insane for that now and it's their favourite food ever! They both refused the first time around, though... took a lot of playing with the food before they tried it).

Good luck Sarah, True sounds like an adorable munchkin

Well, I tried again tonight and just let him mess with the wing for a bit, and he ended up eating it and liking it a lot. He tried to leave the room that I had preset for him (all tiles-easier to clean) but I didn't let him, and eventually gave up and just ate there. So it was all well, thanks for the help Yuko!

Fantastic!

Nicely done Ali, I'm happy to hear of your pup's progress with his feeding

2 days later and I'm finally seeing this!

As always, thank you for your generous advice, Yuko. I'll give your tips a try and see what happens. This is, after all, a Lab, and they generally eat everything!

BTW, I love Taro's picture...Those ears are too much

 Quote: Alex Madsen

I recently started to gradually move my dog into raw food. He's a 4 month old shepherd, and the first meat I gave him was an elk knuckle, and he ate it very happily. The next time I gave him a hoof, and he was very happy with that too. Today, I tried giving him a chicken wing (100% Natural) that I bought from albertsons, and he started flipping out. I've never seen him act like this. He was circling the wing as if it was going to attack him. Every once in a while he kept nipping at it to see what it tastes like and he would immediately let it go and run around again. I thought he might not like the skin, so I removed the skin and he still continued the same thing. He tried a couple of time to grab it and run away with it, but I didn't let him run around the house with it, so he just dropped it where it was. I tried cutting a piece of it to see if he would eat it, but he wouldn't even come near it, he just kept running around it. So finally I threw it away, but now I'm really confused as to what was going on. Does anyone have any idea as what that was about? And if there is anything I can do to get him to eat it? Or is he not going to eat chicken? I'm a bit confused. Thanks in advance for any help.

- Ali

Alex, the behavior you described with your puppy and the chicken wing sounds to me like the quintessential behavior of a puppy's (or wolf pup's) primal instincts when introduced to a fresh kill for the first time. I would have loved to have seen that! Next best thing was I got to hear about it Thanks for posting it! Absolutely precious!

He is doing WAAAAY better now. He's eating any raw food that I give him, he just had his first taste of ground beef last night, and he loves it. I gave him a half a pound of ground beef last night, he seemed like he was hungry, but I didn't want to give him too much.

So glad to hear things are going well for you. Just be careful with too much meat and not enough bones. You said you gave him 8 oz. of hamburger last night. I would cut it down to about 4 oz. and add 1 or 2 chicken wings, just to balance out his intake – that last thing you want is the poopers from too much meat. The opposite applies to too many RMBs at one time – a lot of straining and dust for poop!

This is just some advice for down the road. I think you are doing a great job getting your little guy on raw – both of you will be so happy you did!