Cheese is an amazing thing. It can be kind of tough on the tum until they get used to it. But I know any number of dogs who would step over their own mothers for cheese, so use your new knowledge wisely, my son!
Check out the "Recipes" forum for lots of raw food threads. Talk to Mordy to learn more about diet. And there's an excellent book called
Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats that has a TON of info about feeding raw. I'm not a doggy nutritionist, but I've been feeding raw meat for years and I do notice a definite change not only in dogs' health, but in their behavior as well. Chronically high-strung dogs tend to really cool down. This makes sense to me; if I ate something that was nutritionally deficient every day for years, I might go a little nuts, too. Here's a copy of an e-mail I exchanged with another user. Just my experience:
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Hey hon!
The deal with veggies is that dogs can't produce cellulase, which is the enzyme that breaks down plant matter in the digestive system. If you feed them veggies, you have to mush them up in a food processor to break up the plant's cell walls or the animals will get no nutrition whatsoever from them. Go easy on the veggies, though. They aren't a large part of a natural diet. 2-3 servings a week of veggies is plenty. Don't cook anything, including the vegetables. Cooking just leaches out all the good stuff. Sweet potatoes are great for cleaning teeth and keeping breath nice, and most dogs tend to enjoy them. I grind up whole carrots with the green tops, too. You can also give parsley, alfalfa sprouts, zucchini, broccoli, and peas. There are some veggies that can make dogs very sick, though, so be careful.
Grains are very bad for a dog's digestive system. As a person who loves bread, I have trouble imagining life without grains. But because of the way their bodies work, grain slows down the whole digestive process and causes a food traffic jam in their intestines. (Case in point: my dogs, who never get grains, don't fart! And they don't have that doggy smell either.)
As for the meat, don't forget about pork and buffalo in addition to poultry and some fish. And don't just feed muscle, either. Feed organs and connective tissue when you can find them. Give liver, hearts, tripe, and any really yucky thing you can find that's "clean" like eyes and other organ tissue. Variety is the key to keeping your dogs healthy, so try to give something different as often as you can. Don't worry about mushing up meat or bones. They're perfect just the way they are. As for cleaning teeth, from what I understand only non-load-bearing structural bones (like ribs, tail vertebrae, wings, etc.) have the density to clean teeth to any real effect. But they have different mineral contents than bones like femurs, so some of each is good.
For supplements, again variety is important. I give organic bone meal, vitamin C & E, torula yeast powder, kelp, vegetable oil, eggs (whole with shell), and the occasional bit of cheese
as needed. (Dairy is bad for them, but most dogs would step over their own mothers for cheese.) I give yogurt once or twice a month, too.
I give my cats bits of game hen or little chunks of pork, bones and all. They love it. They eat it just as fast as the dogs do. I don't give them any vegetables at all, but they get a lot of the same supplements plus lecitin.
Everyone also fasts one day a week, with only water and veggie mush.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions!
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