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Old January 17th, 2013, 01:17 PM
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cassblonde cassblonde is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Durham Region, Ontario
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sherman'sMom View Post
He has recreation bones, knuckles, and hoofs should that be enough chewing for his teeth? He is always chewing them, and anything else he can grab and chew before we take it from him. Which is why I find it weird that he don't want to chew his food. The only explanation I have is he's a weirdo!
Food wise though should I give just him his bone ground with his meat for his meals or should I continue trying to give bigger pieces? maybe a couple bigger pieces amongst the ground?
General Comment:

I'm not sure how big a dog your dog will end up being but as an experienced raw feeder I'm not sure I would bother with small chunks of anything for anything other than a small dog(Shih Tzu or smaller).

Short Answer:

Why doesn't your dog chew his food? That's actually a pretty easy question to answer; because he doesn't need to. With a raw fed dog you see why they have the teeth they do in action. Dogs only need to break down what they're eating until it's small enough to swallow. If they fail to do that or eat to fast they hack it up and try again.

If you look at a dog's teeth you'll see all they have are cutting teeth so all they are really capable of is chopping up the mean and bone until it's small enough to swallow down. Extended chewing is for flat surfaced teeth.

In My Experience:

I'm currently raw feeding two dogs; a 5 year old lab/shep/husky mix who weighs about 60 lbs and a 4 year old Shih Tzu mix that weight about 20 lbs(he's about 5 lbs heavier than I would like him to be). My Shih Tzu gets chicken necks and as far as I can tell he chews on them to soften them up and then pretty much swallows them whole. He also gets chicken thigh on which I ribbon the meat and manages to break down the bone just fine. I'm transitioning him to larger food from eating the ground mix I used to feed my almost toothless 14 year old cat who has since passed. There is no need to feed most dogs ground food.

When I switched Susie(my lab mix) to raw at 4 months I did a lot of reading and she transitioned fine is is a happy healthy 5 year old today. I feed prey model raw which means I try to make sure she gets muscle meat, bone and organs over time rather than trying to feed a balanced meat every single day. So I'll feed her pork meat for a couple of days, then a chicken quarter another day and then a ground organ/tripe mix I buy from a local raw dog food supplier. Sometimes if there is a good sale(anything under $2 lb is a good deal, under $1 lb is better) on something big like turkeys then I give her the whole turkey until she finishes it off and then she would get a feeding of the organ mix. Balance over time.

Summary:

I hope I helped. You'll find over time you'll be able to relax a bit and you won't worry so much. I was super careful and worried a lot when I started out as well and remember how careful I wanted to be. Do your research and be confident you are making the right choice for your dog.
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