I'm doing it....

Have fun! Let us know how Murph does with it!

Woot!!! This is awesome! Let us know how it goes, remember to be patient!

Woohoo!
Way to go!

meggels said:

Gonna beat the poo outta them with the poultry hammer I bought LOL.

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excuse my ignorance, but what is the benefit of pounding the poultry with a hammer??

tia

Awesome! :biggrin: Harleigh's been on full raw for about 2 weeks and is doing great... Hope its the same for you :smile:

How exciting! Hope everything goes well, my dogs all went nuts for their first raw meal a few weeks ago.

m&mluvpugs said:

excuse my ignorance, but what is the benefit of pounding the poultry with a hammer??

tia

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To make nervous owners like me feel a little less nervous lol.


He's "eating" a chicken wing right now. At least, he's attempting to figure out how to eat it haha.He seems to be making progress as the minutes go on. And I'm sitting here nervously incase I need to perform doggie CPR.

Whacking a bone in piece of chicken with a kitchen mallet will help break up the bone for the dog who may need some help in the beginning. Whacking should be tapered as much as possible as time goes on.

Meg, its great that he is eating it first time, my girls took three whole days to figure it out LOL

Using a hammer is how I got my girl Copper to learn to chew the bone. I only had to whack two drumbsticks, and she had figured it out. I was proud of myself and her!:biggrin:

meggels said:

To make nervous owners like me feel a little less nervous lol.


He's "eating" a chicken wing right now. At least, he's attempting to figure out how to eat it haha.He seems to be making progress as the minutes go on. And I'm sitting here nervously incase I need to perform doggie CPR.

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it takes a bit for them...there's a learning curve for you and the dog....

he needs to learn how to eat raw and you need to learn that he actually already knows how....'cause it's innate...once you figure that out....you'll be able to relax so he can figure things out.

congratulations.....you've opened the door to a wonderful life for you and your dog.

Ugh. He threw up WHILE eating it. I gave him one chicken wing and he nibbled on it, and crunched it a bit, and had almost the ENTIRE thing down his throat.

how do i teach the dogs to use their paws to hold down the meat so they can eat more efficiently?
right now they are chewing with drumstick hanging out of their mouths, and haven't figured out to use the ground to their advantage.

and then more often than not, end up swallowing most of it. (makes me nervous)
if they swallow too much, they regurge a bit, but still haven't figured out how to rip the meat from the bone.

should i try giving them something other than drumsticks?

meggels said:

Ugh. He threw up WHILE eating it. I gave him one chicken wing and he nibbled on it, and crunched it a bit, and had almost the ENTIRE thing down his throat.

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Did he re-eat it? I wouldn't worry too much about it, especially if you whacked the crap out of it. Our Dane puppy Akasha has swallowed so many whole RMBs without chewing them fully. A lot of dogs do this. Just means that you should give him something bigger to eat next time. Try not to panic :wink:

m&mluvpugs said:

how do i teach the dogs to use their paws to hold down the meat so they can eat more efficiently?
right now they are chewing with drumstick hanging out of their mouths, and haven't figured out to use the ground to their advantage.

and then more often than not, end up swallowing most of it. (makes me nervous)
if they swallow too much, they regurge a bit, but still haven't figured out how to rip the meat from the bone.

should i try giving them something other than drumsticks?

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Give them something a bit bigger to eat, so they can learn to hold it down. Our dogs eat with their food dangling from their mouths all the time, but I figure if they were having too hard of a time eating they would learn to eat another way. It just might be that this is the way that your dogs eat. I have found that ripping the meat off the bone is only really done by our two dogs that were raised on raw, like its something that is innate with puppies but is lost in adulthood. Our other two dogs that were switched as adults will sometimes rip the meat from the bone, but it did take a long time for them to figure that out.

m&mluvpugs said:

how do i teach the dogs to use their paws to hold down the meat so they can eat more efficiently?

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You don't. They will either figure it out or not. None of my dogs have ever held anything down with their feet. It always dangles out the side of their mouth.

and then more often than not, end up swallowing most of it. (makes me nervous)

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They will get better in time. If not, feed something larger like leg quarters.

if they swallow too much, they regurge a bit, but still haven't figured out how to rip the meat from the bone.

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Regurging is exactly how it's supposed to work. That will happen less and less frequently. None of my dogs has ever ripped meat from the bone. I think that is a human thing. The dogs just crunch and swallow.

should i try giving them something other than drumsticks?

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Thats up to you. I don't see you have a big problem right now.

my pug broke his own record for horking up his food..he's a gulper, although recently, he's not horking as much as he used to...but man..in the beginning, this boo boo boy would try to swallow whole drumsticks....all eighteen pounds of him became one with the food..

he would hork and then happily re eat...hork again...

he was a mess, required a bath after each meal because he'd get it all over himself...

he couldn't figure out what to do with his feet so food would be stuck inbetween his toes....

four months later, he manages to eat without horking at least one meal a day and sometimes both....and when he does hork....it's usually only once...

so let your dog learn....promise...they all do...it's a challenge for them....a good challenge.....and then you can be quite proud when they do a good job and figure it out.

My bull terriers still don't use their paws to help with eating, they grab their drumstick with their teeth and chew, move it from side to side with it almost falling completely out of their mouth and then they chew some more then swallow.

They don't use their paws for help with eating beef ribs either, they do use the floor as leverage though.

my pug uses his feet, his body, whatever part he needs to hold down his food..

my corgi mix just lays down and methodically has at it....

she's a lady. he's a little piglet.

RawFedDogs said:

None of my dogs has ever ripped meat from the bone. I think that is a human thing. The dogs just crunch and swallow.

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Its definitely not a "human" thing. It's an innate instinct for eating. All of our dogs eat like this every time they get a big RMB or beef rib.

THANK YOU to everyone for your support and suggestions.
i will try giving them something larger and see how it goes