Do you feed your raw fed dog prepared/store bought treats? home cooked food? other add-ins?

[Jennifer Goaring]

So I don't dare ask this on the rawfeeding yahoogroup as I know what the answers will be... :)

But I do like to have treats that I can use in training that I am cool with holding in my pocket -- I use a chicken liver type treat lately -- it looks like oyster crackers.  Great for training as they don't crumble in my pocket, have a scent the dog notices and he can eat quickly and we can move on.

I also give bully sticks (which I actually think hard core raw feeders are OK with usually) as a chew toy because he just loves them and it keeps him from chewing MY things.  I also use chicken jerky because he really likes it and we tend to use treats to get him in his crate when we need to leave (funny how he readily goes in at night but always dodges it during the day...)

We also give him the crusts from my kids' toast (yes grains! yikes and bad grains at that) and I will let him take care of leftovers we don't want.  So I suppose I mix it up a lot.  His stools are pretty standard raw fed stools... small, firm, compact -- sometimes chalky.  He hardly drinks from the water dish at all (which I really like because when he was on kibble he drank ALL the time and dribbled water all over the place because of his doodle beard).  His teeth look great.  His coat has always been great so I can't really say raw did that... he just has a nice coat I think.

I have a system that works OK -- I think it will work better when we get another freezer / fridge for the garage -- something we are working on (and would have done even without getting a new dog that eats people food because I have 4 boys -- but we probably could have waited a couple more years and now it is going to happen sooner).

I will set up another discussion about what to feed, how to, daily meals, etc.

Oh... so I guess my post was just to ask what other non-raw stuff do you give your raw fed dog?

[Laura, Ruby & Sam]

I do store bought treats and use people food also.

In Australia they have lots of liver crisp treats which are basically just dried liver (I think)-- but definitely not like a cookie type treat, there are no grains in it. You snap it into small pieces for treats.

Other things I give Ruby for treats: dried banana chips (she loves them!!), tiny cubes of cheddar cheese, diced apple or pear, peanut butter in a kong-- or vegemite if you're in Australia,

I was giving her pizza crusts when we had pizza, but I started noticing that after she ate pizza crust she was itchy-- like really really itchy for a couple days afterwards. I've since tested my theory and every time she had anything with bread or grains the itching began.

[Jennifer Goaring]

Sammy does get itchy at times, but I haven't tracked it well enough to notice if it is connected to what he eats. He likes stuff like pizza crusts too. I figure overall, he is pretty grain free -- but those table scrap snacks do get snuck in at times.

I feel like overall he is less itchy then he was on kibble though -- but it could be an age thing or something else... who knows. When I got him at 4 months he had an ear infection in both ears and had an raised rash on his belly that may or may not have been related to recently being spayed (whatever surgery prep they used maybe? or the stitches themselves? who knows...) We took him to the vet of course to get the once over and got things to treat those issues and got his last vaccines caught up and then had a follow up visit a few weeks later. So now I have to decide if we should keep up with this vet or not... possibly opt out of some vaccines in the future, etc. Lots of that is discussed on the rawchat group on yahoo -- a sub group or related group to the rawfeeding one. It intrigues me a bit. With my kids and adjusted their vaccine schedule to fit what I felt was better for them -- I didn't like the idea of them getting 5 shots at a time so I didn't follow the recommended schedule. And re-vaccinating dogs for the same things year after year seems really weird... do these vaccines just not work at all or what?

Anyway... kinda of got off topic. My point being, we have had no ear infections, no rash, no real tummy upsets (except an episode related to eating turkey necks) and I am not sure I want to pay outrageous vet fees for things that may not be necessary or may be harmful -- and I also have no idea if my vet agrees with raw feeding or not, but I would hedge a guess that most vets around here are not fans of it.

[Robert Johnson & Joan Milligan]

Store bought kong treats for training sessions, but Angus likes mini carrots about as well...

[Kaytlin and Cooper]

I give Cooper bully sticks, pork hide sticks (digestible, not like rawhide), and smoked bones to chew on. For treats, I give her doggy pork pepperoni, 90% meat Thinkers (salmon, chicken or duck sticks) and dehydrated raw meat sticks as high reward training treats. Grain free cookies the rest of the time. Occasionally she will get some treats with grain in, but the better, more digestible kind (oatmeal, rice, quinoa etc)