Day four having a bit of a problem at both ends is not bad at all after the overfeeding thing.

Keep going slowly and gradually and it will all work well. Do you have some nice soft bones to start, such as backs?

Connie, I have no backs at all. I have searched the entire town and the only way you can buy backs and necks is to buy the entire chicken. I can do that occasionally and eat the rest, but I can't do that on a regular basis.

I am going to thaw out the chicken wings and remove the skin.

I also got her some pork neck bones that are real meaty, but I don't know if she can chew them yet. I thought I would try one later this week.

Is there something else I can give her with the wings to make it more nutritional?

 Quote: Nora Ferrell

... I am going to thaw out the chicken wings and remove the skin. ... Is there something else I can give her with the wings to make it more nutritional?

You can remove the skin and any visible blobs of fat and give the wing (or part of it) with some of the ground poultry.

Your goal is to replicate the whole bird in the bone-meat ratio. If this is a regular wing with the tip and the little meaty part both still attached, then you probably want to add about 1/3 the weight of the wing in muscle meat to make the wing closer to the whole bird's meat-bone content. (I don't mean to feed the whole wing plus 1/3 again in ground meat at one sitting. Stick to the ounces you worked out.)

I'd make pork one of the later menu items because of the fact that some dogs react to it with a little diarrhea. (You can freeze it, no problem.)

Here's a handy tip for figuring out how to eyeball the bone-meat ratio when you have a tiny dog and parts of the prey food. Get a whole one and take it apart, and take a mental picture of how much bone there is to meat (in all). Use that as your goal when you are putting together pieces of ribs, ground poultry, etc.

Also, you will find that too much bone will produce a hard dry poop and too little will produce a runny one. I don't count on this 100%, because some dogs I have had always produce the same thing, no matter what goes in the front end. But in general....

Oh -- and when you buy chicken breasts for yourself, you can get whole ones, bone in, and slice off a good-size chunk of meat for you.

Commercial chicken breasts are very meat-heavy, so the ribs with half of the original meat attached is closer to the whole-bird ratio than an intact breast.

 Quote: Nora Ferrell

She REALLY seems to love this raw food.

I am soooo glad that I have changed her to raw.

Oh, yes, it does not take long for the dog to realize that this is the real thing.... the food that canids are designed to eat.

Day 5.

She got her first wing this am. At first she seemed a little confused. Dragged it out of the bowl and proceeded to eat it from the large end to the tip. She didn't leave a smidgen. Loved it.

No problem whatsoever.

Tonight, she started at the tip end and worked her way up. Didn't leave a smidgen. I think this is the best thing I have ever done for a dog. I hope I'm not humanizing here, but she just seems so much more satisfied than when she ate the dog food. Actually she had never finished her bowl at one feeding.

The only very slight problem is while she was eating tonight, I would occasionally reach down and pet her, just so she would be used to me being close and hopefully prevent any agression problems. At first she was OK. Then a little later, she growled. She has not done this before. Before raw, when she was eating everything out of her bowl, I would occasionally reach down and pet her or drop something into her dish. No growl then, growl now. Is this normal?

 Quote: Nora Ferrell

The only very slight problem is while she was eating tonight, I would occasionally reach down and pet her, just so she would be used to me being close and hopefully prevent any agression problems. At first she was OK. Then a little later, she growled. She has not done this before. Before raw, when she was eating everything out of her bowl, I would occasionally reach down and pet her or drop something into her dish. No growl then, growl now. Is this normal?

It's normal for the dog to consider the fresh food as high-value.

JMO about the dog who is eating: Leave the dog alone. Give the food and then let the dog eat the food with no concerns about what was given to her being taken away, without interrupting, etc.

You can work on this in other ways aside from mealtimes, IMO. I have to leave right now, but I think that others will add to the thread. If not, I'll come back later with more suggestions.

For now, I would let the dog become very confident that what you give is hers to keep.

JMO.

 Quote: Nora Ferrell

Tonight, she started at the tip end and worked her way up. Didn't leave a smidgen. I think this is the best thing I have ever done for a dog. I hope I'm not humanizing here, but she just seems so much more satisfied than when she ate the dog food.

You are not humanizing. You are giving the dog the opportunity to do what she is hard-wired to do: chew and tear at meat and bones, and not a bowl of cereal.

I have never taken anything away from her. I would just drop something in her bowl or pet her once or twice. (I read Ed's ebook on this before.)

Tonight, I did the same, just a light pet. When she growled, I tapped her on the head and told her no.

I've had newly adopted dogs who thought highly of their new raw food and warned me away from them when they were busy with it and I got too close for comfort.

This is what has happened with each one. They figured out quickly that no one would ever touch food once it had been given to them, and that I was not approaching to mess with the food or them while they ate. They learned that no other dog would be allowed to threaten their food. Meanwhile, they learned about pack structure in all aspects of their lives.

With no confrontation or special food-aggression work, the growling over the food has always stopped, almost before it started.

I'm telling you this now because you are in that same "one tiny experimental growl over new high-value food" stage with an otherwise non-aggressive dog.

That is *specifically* the situation I'm talking about; this advice doesn't carry over into all food-aggression situations. But in this situation, I have had good success the way I describe.