If you live near a large city there SHOULD be a Holistic Vet. Check out: http://www.ahvma.org/ There is a referral page.

I don't feed raw, but I don't have a problem with it - however I would never feed a raw diet especially with bones to puppies. I would start them when they were young adult. If you must feed raw to puppies, then feed the bones pulverized, or take the bones out. I've known of many cases of puppies with punctured gut, and more often impactions due to bone/raw feeding - they simply can't chew, or digest as well as adults can. I recommend feeding a good-quality kibble food, at least until he is young adult, then switch to raw if you want to feed it.

molly

 Quote: Molly Graf

I don't feed raw, but I don't have a problem with it - however I would never feed a raw diet especially with bones to puppies. I would start them when they were young adult. If you must feed raw to puppies, then feed the bones pulverized, or take the bones out. I've known of many cases of puppies with punctured gut, and more often impactions due to bone/raw feeding - they simply can't chew, or digest as well as adults can. I recommend feeding a good-quality kibble food, at least until he is young adult, then switch to raw if you want to feed it.

molly

IMO (and it really is just an opinion) the best time for a dog to learn how to negotiate bones in raw food is as a pup, when they are too small to gulp. Dogs that don't have exposure to bones as pups sometimes can cause problems for themselves as adults with their first introductions to raw bones by not chewing them properly.

Whole bones have NUMEROUS benefits for puppies, including as teeth cleaning and stress relieving agents (better than any chew toy on the market) and I would hesitate to deny them this. Grinding bones at all takes away from most of the fundamental benefits of a raw diet at any life stage. Again, JMO.

Just curious Molly, but how much experience have you had raising dogs on kibble vs raw?

Ed and Cindy wean their pups onto raw and raise all their dogs on raw... they have a lot of experience so I've always followed their advice. Are you saying that they're wrong (about raw-fed pups)? If so, how much experience do you have to support your position? After all, if you've had more experience than them raising puppies, I'd love to know so I can consider switching my pup off of raw and onto kibble.

So far both my dogs (old one and baby to young adult) have done amazingly well on raw - my older dog never looked better.

Do Ed and Cindy switch puppies to raw ground or raw with bones? I know a lot of breeders feed the ground chubs, as did the breeder that I bought from but should I feed necks and wings to 10 wk old pup or ground burger/turkey, whatever?

http://leerburg.com/feedpups.htm

Puppies have teeth, they can chew.
Granted their jaws are still weak, but something soft like chicken backs can be crunched up even by a young puppy.
Even if the puppy can't chew up and eat all the bones in something bigger, it will pull the meat off and will work its jaw muscles on it.

I have fed raw for over 15 years. I have heard it all from vets, freinds, other breeders, yada, yada. NEVER have I had to treat any of my adult dogs, old dogs, pups, weaning pups, litters etc for salmonella or ecoli. I don't beleive this is just luck. My current vet isn't pro raw but also doens't question me on it (for the most part). When I took one of my females in for a check up prior to her whelping he asked what I would wean them on. I just looked at him and said raw. He then went on about salmonella/ecoli etc. He thought adult dogs could handle it but was concerned about the young pups. I looked at him and said, I have been doing this for over 15 years, weaned litters on it, fed pups it and never had a case. He looked at me and didn't know what to say....so didn't say anything and has never mentioend it again. He loves my dogs, feels they are the 'best' gsd's he has seen and recommends me to others.

If you do the research you will see that your dog is more likley to get sick from these things on KIBBLE. Look at how many recalls there has been over the past few years. How many dogs have died from contaminated kibble etc.

I generally to tend to feed all my chicken bones ground, so don't have a lot of experience there with problems but...I will say that IF your dog is healthy, and thier body is doing what it is suppose to and they are actually 'chewing' thier bones, there should not be problems. When the body digests bones it sucks the calcium/phosphorus out them and all it leaves is a powder. That is why most stools of dogs who eat a lot of bones is white and if you give it a few days and then step on it, it dissinigrates. From my expierence the longer the dog (generations of pup/dog) have been on raw the less problems you have with digesting bones. If you have a fist generation pup/dog and you are finding them pooping out some bone fragments or throwing them up from time to time you may want to consider ground and/or adding some good digestive enzymes to the food to help the pup/dog break it down better.

Totally agree w/everything Shelley said, and wanted to second the statement about getting sick from kibble. I just read an article where it was determined that there is just as much chance of getting salmonella or e coli from kibble as raw. A study was done in a large kennel, half fed raw and half kibble. The few rare cases of salmonella were investigated, and they were found in kibble-fed dogs. Salmonella is everywhere; vets are naiive and short-sighted to think that raw food is even the main contributor to this.

I'm with you on that.
I've seen your 10 years old girl, and she looks better than most of the old dogs that are younger 7 & 9 we have in our club (they eat kibbles)
You have beautiful dogs with beautiful coats

Thank you Angelique! So do you, of course

What's most remarkable about my 10-year-old is that she was on cheap kibble for 10 years ( ) and improved dramatically once I switched her to raw early this summer. I switched her completely cold-turkey (no enzymes added, no detox whatsoever), she's been on raw almost 8 months now, and I can't even count how many aspects of her health have improved as a result.

1. Stools: this was the most noticeable and immediate effect. She had loose stools for no apparent reason her whole life, and this stopped at the very first raw meal she had. The problem never came back. My family and I (and the vets!!) were astounded at the change. We were always told that this was just a problem she was born with and would have to live with - this was a "common" german shepherd issue.
Well, not anymore - her stools are tiny, dry and compact, and no matter how much I change her food around, even when I fed a bunch of very rich wild game meats, organs or fish, she's never experienced a single bout of digestive upset since the switch.

2. Teeth and gums: almost as dramatic; her teeth are still a little yellow and stained from 10 years of kibble feeding, but have gotten dramatically cleaner. Her gums used to be in awful shape and she would refuse to hold anything in her mouth (sticks, balls etc.) as she got older because her diseased gums would bleed so easily and would be so sensitive. Again, the vets' advice was brush her teeth, this is a normal part of aging - we did brush on average once a week, but it didn't help.
After a couple of months on raw, she'll bring sticks over to me to play vigorous tug of war
The vets warned me that she would get her insides punctured by the bones and would die a horrible death, and now they just scratch their heads when they see how healthy her mouth is.

3. Coat: this one took a little longer (maybe 4-5 months) but Moka's coat had thinned and dried out considerably as she got older and she lost a lot of colour. She also scratched a lot more and got dandruffy. The vets? Normal part of aging, try adding more fat to her kibble. As for her pigment, she's lost it and that's that. Adding fat didn't help her coat, although it did make her diarrhea worse.
After being on raw for a few months, she shed out her fur and it has now grown back lush, shiny and with a much nicer colour! The smell is gone from it and it's much fuller than it's been in years!

4. Allergies: since the age of 3-4 years, poor Moka has had terrible allergies during the summer/fall and it was diagnosed as a ragweed allergy. We carefully avoided any ragweed-growing place for her walks but no effect. These allergies got worse over the years, BTW! She'd bite and scratch at her legs so much that the fur would be gone and her legs would be raw and red. She'd yelp if you accidentally touched her leg during "allergy" season.
After the switch to raw, no more allergies. She bit her legs a little this past fall, but didn't lose any fur on them. First time in over 7 years that she hasn't gotten bad allergies (we didn't bother avoiding ragweed this summer)... a coincidence? Vet thinks so... I don't

5. Joints; poor Moka was diagnosed with mild hip dysplasia at 3 years old. It didn't affect her much, but the progressing arthritis in her hips slowed her down considerably in the past 3 years. We've been giving her glucosamine since about age 7, which helped, but she could only go for 45 minute walks at most and would never run anymore. (Poor dog, no running, no carrying sticks, raw painful legs... vets, though sympathetic, were of no help; I was certainly open to the "crazy" suggestions of feeding whole prey and raw meat to her if it could help).
And what do you know, the raw feeders were right about this too; after about 2 months on raw, Moka was back to walking 2 hours a day with no soreness afterwards. She's also back to running short burts every now and again. She has far more energy and you can tell she wants to run. She can't keep up the running for long and still "bunnyhops" noticeably, but she does gallop every single day now.
Mostly chasing my crazy puppy But hey, 40 seconds of full-out running a day is certainly better than no running, ever!

6. And finally, ears: Moka had "gunky" ears her whole life. I cleaned out her ears almost every week and a few months before the switch to raw, she developed her first ear infection. It was not pretty and she practically dragged her head on the ground, looking miserable.
After the switch to raw, what do you know; her ears magically cleared up! They look like my puppy's ears now!
I asked the vet, why did she suddenly get cured? The answer? Something about the weather this summer, most likely just a coincidence...

As for my puppy, he was weaned on raw and was eating chicken backs since 3-4 weeks of age (I think, I can ask his breeder for the exact date she introduced bones).

As for my 10-year-old, her dramatically improved health and vitality after switching to 100% raw... is it all a strange coincidence?

Decide for yourself

(Many dog owners that I've known for years around here have certainly noticed the difference in Moka and I've convinced several of them to switch to raw. I gave them the number & address of the meat wholesale I buy from and suggested menu plans to them. Their dogs are starting to look better too... but hey, all just coincidences right? lol)