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You have decided to either start your pup on raw food or switch your dog off a processed diet and onto a fresh, natural raw dog food diet. Great choice! But together, let’s make sure you don’t make the common mistakes that could leave your dog’s diet missing some key nutrients and hindering their development.
We’re diving into the most common mistakes first-time raw feeders make! Plus, how to avoid them and remedy any slip-ups along the way.
How should you transition your dog onto a raw diet? This is all dog dependent, and there are two ways of doing this.
If your dog seems to have a cast iron stomach and doesn’t have issues drinking from murky puddles and eating things they shouldn’t in the park, then a drastic adjustment to their diet shouldn’t bother them at all. If this is the case for your dog, then a cold turkey, direct swap from ultra-processed to fresh raw food, should be absolutely fine.
However, if your dog is slightly more sensitive, which is very, very common, then a gradual transition is more appropriate. After all, if you have been eating canned spaghetti your entire life, a fresh plate of steak and vegetables would likely put your stomach into a spin. It’s the same for our dogs!
Therefore, on the first day of transition, you should replace one-quarter of their diet with raw food. You would then increase this by quarter increments, and over a period of four days, your dog will be eating a 100% fresh raw food diet!
This can be extended over a longer period with smaller fractions if you deem it necessary.
When feeding a raw food diet, you must ensure that your dog is receiving all of the minerals and nutrients they need. Many beginners don’t do the research and just feed their dogs muscle meat. This, of course, misses a vast amount of key nutrients that your dog needs. For example, calcium. Without raw bone in the diet, your dog will not have a natural form of calcium to consume. But we will touch on that a bit more later.
With a diet made up exclusively of muscle meat, you will be sure to see very loose stools, and you will not see the vast majority of health benefits that come with a balanced raw diet.
You can keep it very simple with the 80-10-10 ratio. 80% muscle meat, 10% bone and 10% organ meat (with half of that offal being liver). This can be supplemented further to include a small amount of vegetation, mimicking the vegetation they would have consumed from the innards of the prey they would have killed back when they were wild!
You can, of course, remove the guesswork and leave it to the professionals. Then you can rest assured that your furry friend is receiving a complete and balanced raw food diet!
This is a very interesting mistake, and probably affects dogs that are fed a substandard hyper-processed diet more so than it does raw-fed dogs. It is much harder to overfeed a dog with raw food than it is with kibble, for example.
Simply put, if you overfeed your dog a food packed with carbohydrates, when your dog eats it, they will break down the carbohydrates into sugars, which will essentially lead to a fat, unhealthy dog.
When you feed your dog raw food, you will notice that your dog “finds their weight” more easily. A lot of people report back no necessary weight change but a massive body composition change. Their dog will look slimmer and more athletic but not necessarily lighter. This is because we are fuelling them with an appropriate diet made up of the appropriate food, encouraging their bodies to develop properly!
If your dog has an endless appetite, then you can, of course, still overfeed.
So to keep it simple, as a rule of thumb, you should feed between 2-3% of their total body weight a day. You can split this over two meals or just feed once a day. The main problem with overfeeding raw food is that it’s just unnecessary waste. Feed your dog what they need! No more, no less.
Bone is an extremely important ingredient in your dog’s food. It is the way your dog consumes the vital mineral, calcium.
Calcium is of paramount importance for strong bones, skeletal development, muscle function, nervous system support, blood clotting, and heart function.
You should never feed your dog cooked bones! The cooking process makes bones brittle and prone to splintering. This can create choking, internal injuries, and even blockages in the digestive tract.
Raw bones, on the other hand, are softer and more malleable. They are broken down perfectly through your dog’s digestive system, leading to the absorption of that amazing mineral, calcium, that we’ve spoken about, and also leading to healthy firmer stools.
These stools just so happen to be far more pleasant to pick up in the park!
The bones can be consumed either minced into their food or you can give them a raw meaty bone to chew on. This also is a great mental stimulus for them and helps to clean their teeth!
If your dog’s food is currently cooked to any level, then it will not include a natural form of calcium. A calcium additive such as calcium carbonate, phosphate, or citrate will likely be used.
Calcium from raw bones is generally more bioavailable and easier to absorb than that of these synthetic additives.
So remember, raw bones are good for your dog!
Raw feeding is the best thing you could do for your dog. But with everything new, there are learning curves. Don’t worry if you have been doing it slightly wrong, or even if you’ve been feeding a hyper-processed diet for the majority of their life. We have all been there!
You just need to remember that it’s never too late to introduce a healthier and happier way of life.
That can be done by either curating a complete meal at home, or with just a few clicks of a button.
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