Quote:
Originally Posted by CLV
I'm pretty upset right now. It doesn't look like my older pup is tolerating the Primal nuggets. I have been giving him 1 a day for a week now. He has been getting diarrhea every time he gets one of the nuggets. I stopped the grain (rice) and was just mixing some cooked chicken and mashed potato. I did one meal with the raw added in and the next without, he always gets sick after the raw meal. I tried to up it to 1.5 nuggets for one meal and he got even more diarrhea.
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You are still mixing raw with other things... Mashed potato is a carb, I guess it's a tuber rather than a grain, but it's still a carb. Hence, it may give your dog problems just like mixing raw with kibble or anything else that digests differently than raw meat and bone.
I am not familiar with Primal nuggets, but I would recommend just going all-out raw, grocery store raw as opposed to commercially made raw. Just put a chicken quarter in front of them and see what happens. That's what I did and my pup was only 8 weeks old at the time (well, obviously it wasn't a chicken quarter, it was a chicken leg) and he's been chomping down raw food since then like a champ.
You also said you are worried about your other dog swallowing pieces that are larger than he should be swallowing. It's natural to worry about that but it seems dogs are pretty good at swallowing things... Just make sure you give them a piece that is larger than their head and that it's a bone with meat on it, not just a bare bone. They should do just fine, even if it is a bit scary to begin with. But really, they were made to eat this way.
The only time I have had an incident with swallowing was when I fed boneless chicken! I gave Fedor two BIG chunks of boneless chicken thigh. I turned away for a moment and when I turned back, they were gone! I was a little surprised but he looked OK so I turned away again for a while, putting some dishes away, and when I turned back, the two chunks of chicken were back there on his eating towel! Just ever so slightly foamy at the surface
So he had silently regurgitated them. And these were some seriously big chunks, maybe 2.5" x 2", and he was like 10 weeks old at the time. It was funny but also taught me a lesson... If I give him boneless meat, I should cut it up with scissors.. Which, by the way, I did with those two chunks he
"spat out" after swallowing them once
Now at 16 weeks of age, Fedor regularly swallows the "knobby" bits at the end of chicken thigh bones as well as the "palm" of a chicken foot. Sometimes I take them away from him when I notice he is down to a large piece of bone with not much meat left (although the palm of the chicken foot is nicely cushioned by softer tissue) but usually if I don't interfere, he just eats the whole thing.
Good luck with your dogs and transitioning to raw. Hope their digestive issues get sorted out soon.. Give raw chicken a try and forget about the rice and mashed potato for a couple of days. Also bear in mind that there can be a "detox" phase when switching to raw.. You can probably google that for more info on what it refers to. Keep us posted!