Bunny was having some belly problems again so I have been doing a little trial and error that included changing her food one more time. I had been taking bones out of her chicken at every meal in case they were irritating her old lady tummy, but it got to be so time consuming that I would procrastinate feedings (or sometimes I would plan to do it all at once, and recently procrastinated that until the chicken started to rot in the fridge and had to be tossed) and started to feel like I wasn't really preparing her food properly. Since I am not in the right income bracket to be buying $2/lb low maintenance boneless skinless for the dog right now, I figured it was better to change :)
I got some sensitive stomach salmon- pretty much the same stuff Cosmo used to eat. All is well so far, except that she is not nearly as enthusiastic about meal time now (she was becoming quite the little raw meat savage)... and she FARTS! She farts all the time, and I have never smelled such a horrible thing! She's very energetic and she hasn't had an accident in the house since switching, though, so I am assuming the farting doesn't indicate a problem. Well, no problem other than the smell wafting out of the kitchen as I type.
I feel bad for taking her off raw since she loved it and was clearly looking terrific, and I am still a huge fan of raw, but hopefully she'll do well on this for now. Life is just getting too complicated.
5 comments:
Tom found some chubs of cheap ground chicken which we use for Alice - or I just give her back pieces with less bone. I wonder if you could find them down there somewhere?
Bone doesn't really digest (see bone meal poop) so I'm not sure that's the issue. What were you doing along with the chicken?
C- I was kind of up a creek because Fiesta Mart stopped selling the chicken backs, and they were the only store around here who did sell them. So all I could find were the whole legs, and they have very large bones in them. So I was taking the bones out of hers, and letting the other dogs eat the bones because they didn't seem to be having trouble. I was kind of getting concerned about the bone size (for everyone, not just Bunny), and I also know the backs have more nutritional value because the organs are in there.
I don't recall seeing any ground chicken chubs as I've shopped, but I will keep my eyes open because that would be a great option if I could find them. I haven't had much luck at the store lately since the only ethnic market decided to go all upscale on us.
M- Another problem I had was consistently getting the right things besides chicken into the meal. I was mainly alternating between veggies and cottage cheese. I never did get the missing link, though, and I know that's an important component. Overall I am just finding the food thing really difficult with 5 dogs. Preparation with pulling the bones out, and expense of getting them the balanced diet they need, plus supplementing Lily with some dry dog food as well because I can't seem to feed her enough chicken to keep the weight on her. It's frustrating because I'm really sold on raw for how well they do on it.
It sounds horrible because I love all my dogs and they're all family at this point, but I really wish we were a 2 dog household instead of a 5 dog household. It would be a lot more workable. As it is everyone has different weird dietary issues: Bunny has a picky tummy, Cosmo has allergies, Lily can't keep weight on. It's really difficult to find something affordable that they can all do well on, that doesn't take me just as much time to prepare as a human meal.
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