Fantastic news! Glad to hear all is well, and also that they are respectful of your feeding raw, even though they aren't recommending it.

 Quote: joyce salazar

Fantastic news! Glad to hear all is well, and also that they are respectful of your feeding raw, even though they aren't recommending it.

Not only that, but they came up with exactly what we would! Forget the weight-bearing bones or grind them, and look for a chicken-backs source.

After all these years, I've read about or experienced maybe a dozen dogs who didn't do well on weight-bearing bones. One was my own, so I early on sought out sources for grinding that end of the bird. http://leerburg.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=134&Number=324551&Searchpage=1&Main=29457&Words=grind&topic=0&Search=true#Post324551

I'm so sorry it came to a hospital stay for your Harley. Generally, I think it's made apparent with the poop before anything like this happens.

And I'm SO glad your vet is miles (FURLONGS, whatever they are!) ahead of the vet who will wag his finger at you and say "See what raw does?"

I'm very glad to hear that Harley is back home and out of danger. That whole ordeal must have been terrifying for you.

One Forum member reports bashing the bones with a cleaver before feeding. Perhaps that would work for your dog.

I know I probably come across as anti-grind sometimes. I don't mean to.

But........

This is one of those times where I don't see grinding as a great solution.

The food that consistently caused Turbo the most strain when trying to poop was a ground mix. Ground or not, the wrong ratio of meat to bone, for a given dog, will cause problems.

Now, I'm not saying grinding is the problem. But if you take a ground, bone heavy diet, you will cause impaction just the same as a whole, bone heavy diet.

It is the ratio of meat to bone, not the physical form of the food that causes most problems.

Too much bone is too much bone. Ground or whole.

I would check the diet first. Exact menus, amounts of meals, number of meals, water intake, etc.

After that, I would also want to rule out anything physically wrong with the dog that could lead to sub-par digestion of bones.

I don't grind it all. I see what you are saying, absolutely. But with the dogs I have ground the weight-bearing bones for, it was/is because of what I think were the femur ends basically intact in the poop.

I'm fortunate to have just that part ground and the rest left intact.

But yes, good catch. To the O.P.: Were you feeding mainly leg quarters, mainly wings, or what? (Sorry if that was already answered.)

"I would check the diet first. Exact menus, amounts of meals, number of meals, water intake, etc."

In fact, that might be a good thing to post.

since I only had a bone in his poop when he just started the raw, diet, I think that I would go for the water intake.

We had a temperature increase (about 10oC in 12hr) and the dogs were nuts, running and rolling in the snow and panting (did not happen a lot during winter).
I know that it is a factor in horses. That was the day before (wednesday). On the morning that he got sick (thursday) he had to be put away in his crate has the were people working at the farm and one guy was very scared of dogs. So he had a lot less activity or acess to water that morning, by luch time he was sick.

I also had to use turkey wings instead of chicken quarter, but gave more mm. I still use a scale as he seem to like very even meals.

He was also pooping and peeing normaly until after he started to vomit and was acting normaly that morning.

He was the one that had digestion issue when I got him.

For now, he will eat that crap food that they gave me, unless he had pudding poop. Then I am going back to quarter legs and chicken neck.

I can have turket neck but chicken back are impossible to get at the moment. He is not too happy to eat raw fish, but will do caned sardines.

His normal meal is 600g+/- 15g x 2day
leg about 300g
liver 60g
other mm 150g
rest is neck 90g
salmon oil and vit E
2 raw egg (over the normal meal) week and 2 caned sardine ((+/-100g)instead of neck) week

plus he get 1 kong filled with peanut butter mix with banana and yogurt and treat during training.

He now weigh just over 70#

 Quote: Connie Sutherland

I don't grind it all. I see what you are saying, absolutely. But with the dogs I have ground the weight-bearing bones for, it was/is because of what I think were the femur ends basically intact in the poop.

Right. To me grinding is fine. I've got no problem with it anymore. My high horse broke it's leg and I had to put him down.

I guess I'm talking of a less varied diet.

I just didn't want anyone to get the impression that grinding will cure impaction issues.

If you feed several meals in a row of ground pork neck bones, I will bet the house that most dog's will end up impacted.

Same with any bone heavy meal. I don't care if the bone is ground into a fine powder. If there is too much of it, it will cause problems.

I think the heat could have been a problem, just like colic in a horse. I dont
have luck feeding wings, turkey or chicken, especially the distal wing tip, I have found them whole in both the Pinker and my IGs feces.
Turkey is a bit much for my dogs, but my biggest dog is about 27lbs. Since I raise turkeys I was hoping turkey would be great, but it hasn't worked well for me.
The legs are just too much for my dogs. I find splinters of bone that make me nervous.