Postings by Guest ID 1104434

Home Prepared Food & Recipes > Cooked prey model raw, can you give input? Are my dogs safe?

Member Since 04/06/2012     Barked: Thu Nov 15, '12 4:02am PST  well i 1st want to say extremely sorry everyone, i am working on getting back to people in timely manner, being respectful i want to say before i start, after reading through your replies and thinking about it myself i now understand that raw bone is different than cooked so by giving them 10% bone meal I am actually most likely, most definitely, overdosing them with calcium. this has stopped now. hoyt: hey! that was my mistake. we DO cook boar thoroughly! i should have made that clarification! in addition we buy our meats in large quantities and meats are usually always frozen first! boar is always frozen first. i can't say it will always be exactly 2 months or longer, however as we see this is not an issue as boar is being cooked thoroughly! ok yes, respectfully i am aware raw and cooked are different. ok organ info is understood! yes it's interesting i HAVE tried giving them raw chicken wings and such. they DID enjoy this and did sufficiently chew it all up! the problem is this whole "issue" also includes pieces of MY opinions and some days I just don't want a wolf for a dog if any of you would connect with me on that; I don't always like feeding raw food to dogs because my whole philosophy is about trying to steer the dogs away from that whole "wolf carnivore" idea and embracing who they are in THIS generation; that doesn't mean i want to feed them harmful foods. but i will stay away from focusing my post on these types of personal beliefs and such.. just sitting here thinking about this makes me realize this could actually be the way we go about this; some days do the bonemeal and others do the raw bones! On days we are doing raw bones I would wait the sufficient amount of time before giving them their cooked meal. awesome, this is definitely a way to go about this! well thanks for your help, i'd like you to know i avoided going into your last paragraph because really we all have our opinions and beliefs. it's extremely hard to convey to you my whole life philosophy about this issue in words through a computer, but i wanted to leave you with this: just remember life is more than just feeding a creature what they were "designed" to eat when said creature created its whole life, its memories, its literal physical being was created eating the way it was before! like i said really this is more my philosophy on things so it's hard to convey, i believe that foods affect us physically and I have had first-hand experience with this (raw milk anyone?). food creates everything we are (including how we look). we eat and then we go make memories crafted with the nutrition of said food! i don't always feel grains and veggies should be absent from a dog's diet unless of course dog doesn't want to eat! I would like to mention the quote about the baby and bathwater, i really believe it's not so much the grains (unless gmo) that should be removed, more-so the inhumane factory farmed crap that goes into kibble, the artificial colors, dies, meat and bone meal from inhumane literally gross sources! hoyt i'd like to ask that I get back to you on this, because i'd actually like to go into my opinions and feelings on this, but i'd like to save this for another time because i can't get it all out yet! thank you for your help obviously the way you are feeding WORKS for your dogs, and that is all that matters about this, what WORKS for YOUR dogs with their situation! i have to throw in too really quick your quote about "their teeth aren't designed", sometimes life isn't always about having the proper teeth to digest something with! it's OK to eat/subsist/possibly adapt to something that you weren't evolved to eat. ok maybe we can chat about this more in depth and learn from each other, see ya! bam-bam: hey! as trivial as this is i understand what you are saying. this isn't anything to do with "prey" or "raw" . . i will have to refer to it as a cooked diet absent of vegetables or grains, but including cooked bone! There will be some raw bone used for calcium as well! thanks maxwell: wow i want to first say i am extremely sorry! you have been very kind in responding to my previous posts! i am sorry i let those topics go, that is not right to ignore all of you like that. basically she ended up dying and for reasons i would not like to go into right now it made me feel worse to go back and look-up those topics and try and respond! sorry.. Yea I would suggest trying the method, pretty interesting. Only problem is we don't know HOW much to give of said bone! We'd have to get the bones analyzed for calcium content which is making me think maybe I should just stick with raw chicken wings and such for calcium portion of diet! Yes the liquid has calcium in it too, what happens is if you run out of the cooked bone and don't have anymore, the liquid can be poured over meat and the liquid contains the calcium! Pretty cool. Again, with all of this, as I am typing this am realizing because I would probably never be able to get bone analyzed I would never know how much calcium I am feeding my dogs. I could speak with a vet.. What I might find out from either research, speaking with vet, or possibly actually going to get bone analyzed, is that there doesn't need to be a PERFECT tsp amount of bone meal, you can vary it for example per pound of meat 1/2 - 3/4 tsp and as long as I stay in this range I will be fine. Again, I will have to research this issue further . . Ok organs more important variety of meat less important got it! Yes I sense you on the issue of doing something like 3/4 meat 1/4 veggies. It's actually interesting like I've been saying I would like my dogs to eat more types of carbs and such, it was shocking when I did the experiment of placing each type of food in it's own space/bowl and let the dogs choose what they wanted to eat! When I first started out doing this for them I was doing the dogaware cooked diet so I was including a small amount of veggies and grains, and they WERE eating it then. What happened was I tested out serving them veggies, grains, by themselves and I found they never bothered with stuff like that! I will start putting out offerings of carbs everyday here and there and see if this sparks their interest, otherwise we will stick with just meat and bones, table scraps of course! Ok so you would do veggies for stool bulk, I can do that too. Of course bones are what firms up the stool as well, I'm sure you're aware of that. I will look into your resources right away, thank you immensely for linking me all of those! Ok well loose stool might be occurring. One dog had his anal glands emptied and of course it probably came to be this way because of how I was feeding him. Now that he is getting proper bone and such I will keep an eye on their stools! Yes I will keep making it better, that's what we do here well very nice to speak with you thank you again! i will post again when I can you guys are awesome I have been a member of various forums throughout these years and this one is truly a *gem* See ya guys Thank you my posts [notify]

Member Since 04/06/2012     Barked: Fri Nov 2, '12 2:37am PST  Good evening! I would greatly appreciate some help with h ow I am feeding my dogs! Sorry for short style of typing,  keyboard is semi-broken!  To sum up, I do not believe  in raw, we are doing a cooked version of prey model raw!  Basically my "crew" gets cooked meat daily as their main  meals! Meat is cooked rare! We do not support inhumane fa ctory farms! Dogs are getting all kinds of meat: Usually g round beef, pork, we do chicken, lots of truly feral/wild  boar meat! Throughout week dogs are getting various "cuts"  of these meats, for example one day ground beef, one day  maybe a roast, a whole chicken boiled, pork steaks! Point  is we try to mix up!  Now for organ part of diet: every  few days we cook up a portion of organs to go with mea t, and I follow this guide for that : "sample daily cooke d diet" from dogaware! http://dogaware.com/diet/homemade.html#co oked basically it's an ounce of organ for every 8oz meat! From my own research I have formed the opinion that we  don't need to give organ meat every day (following the co ncept that over course of longer time dog will get nutrien ts needed, as opposed to all in one day), and I am comfo rtable with this opinion for now , of course I welcome an y opinions or advice of your own and want to hear them!  Bone part is tricky they don't always like taste:  wha t we do since we avoid raw bones is we cook bones, usual ly chicken, we cook until bones can be crushed between fin gers, make into paste-like and put about 10% by weight int o food, for example if dogs get 20 oz of meat each they  get about 2 oz bones ground up! Honestly I admittedly hav e been lax with bone part of their diet, I don't include  it everyday and only give them about once a week! I am  fixing this very fast and will start including 10% bone ev ery few days or daily if need be as opposed to previous  once a week or longer! Basically I just want to make  sure dogs are healthy and are getting enough of everything  they need! Obviously bone needs to get included more often  but other than that is anything else problematic here? I  have offered vegetables and grains to no avail! I really  believe I am feeding them wonderfully yet welcome your crit icism  Thank you! my posts [notify]

Home Prepared Food & Recipes > Homemade version of Hills Prescription k/d for kidney/heart failure?

Member Since 04/06/2012     Barked: Tue May 8, '12 1:19am PST  Hey guys just wanted to say thanks again for the help! Sorry I haven't been around, we actually lost our other older dog while we were dealing with this one! I hate to even say it, but our Beautiful is much much better now (from what I can see, seems to me) but unfortunately our other dog went downhill literally in 1 day. . Again I feel so frustrated because I wish I could have the same "back-up" as this company does veterinarian and doctor wise, as in I wish I could have veterinarians working for me to develop a special diet!! It's so frustrating to know that your dog could be doing much better if this company would only open up and at least give me a basic requirement to live by such as "so and so of protein" or "so and so of fat" . . I feel helpless because k/d has been studied in a lab and dogs have been tested on it to see how they do and I can't just juggle around my dog's life with calculating her diet online! She is too important.. I feel helpless because I literally have all the ingredients to make my dog better but I don't know in which amounts to give these to her! I have basically been following the dogaware diet, however I want to make a homemade version of the k/d because I really want that " back-up" of the science behind it! I also don't agree with dogaware that we should always be feeding muscle meats. I think with the egg white in k/d it's a little less "harsh" on the tummy then say beef or pork so again I feel frustrated because I want to give my dog what's best for her and I would be more comfortable going with a k/d style diet.. Basically like I said I am following dogaware diet, I use 1 oz of pork guanciale for the fat part, and I customize this daily based on her bowel movements, reducing down to almost .5 oz of fat if she has the runs! She tends to like beef so I have been giving her ground beef but like I said I don't want the ground beef to "wear out" her system, would love to try out just giving her egg whites as her protein for a few days but don't know how much to give her!!! I then do a mix of heart, liver, and kidney for the 1 oz of organs! Sometimes I will leave this out since I am generally feeding two of these meals a day for her and sometimes it's too much organs! Again, this is why I get concerned because when I leave that 1 oz of organs out it throws off all of the nutritional things and this irks me because I don't want to play with fire like this, wish Hills could just help me out and give me some kind of basic basic formula.. I did check out the Sedona thread thank you so so much that is an amazing amazing thread, TONS of work however it would be worth it! Do you think I could use this to help me customize this diet for my dog and get one almost spot-on to the k/d formula?? Thank you guys so much I don't know what to do as I said I don't think k/d is god-like but I would be nicer going to sleep at night going with a good that has been studied in school by veterinarians and researched and such vs something I just threw together based on online webpages . . Ok, thanks let me know if you have any advice my posts [notify]

Dog Health > Disagree w/Vets analysis. Dog was convulsing and vomiting, heart failure or fertilizer?

Member Since 04/06/2012     Barked: Fri Apr 20, '12 4:22pm PST  Sorry I am ranting because I'm upset. To make it simple, I just want to ask, do dogs with kidney or heart failure have these episodes where they start out vomiting and then they just collapse and their legs go stiff and they have to be held or they will roll around flailing choking on their vomit. . I just want to know if this is indicative of kidney/heart failure, because I just want to know if the fertilizer poisoning could be an option as well . Thanks my posts [notify]

Dog Health > Disagree w/Vets analysis. Dog was convulsing and vomiting, heart failure or fertilizer?

Member Since 04/06/2012     Barked: Fri Apr 20, '12 4:10pm PST  Hey all well my dog has heart and kidney failure but she had been doing really well these past 2 weeks. The minute I found out I started home-cooking for her and instantly her bloated tummy went away, which I assumed was the fluids going away, but maybe it was just bloat, don't know if they are connected.. Point is she was doing great this week. Today, I was outside with her and she started walking in a straight line and kind-of heaving, so I thought ok she is just throwing up. Then it was like she was having a seizure, convulsing all over the place. She fell over and started throwing up and I had to literally physically restrain her because she was going haywire.. She did the thing with her head where her head jerks up, and we had a dog die earlier this week who did the same thing before he died, the head goes up however he wasn't throwing up so I don't know if it's related to what happened to him. So I sat with her and rested and got thru it and the end result was her coughing alot and hacking. It subsided and I called vet. The vet who knows our dog was busy so I wanted to wait and speak with her before I brought her in, because I didn't know how bad it was, so as I was waiting for her call my dog got up like something was happening again. So I put her out and she had another episode, she started to throw up and fell into the wall and was flailing all over the place... The issue I have is I didn't like the way the vet handled it. I think a vet should be really thorough and ask EVERYTHING that happened and it just wasn't working for me the way she handled the situation. She just said she might make it she might not so they have taken her for now... I am angry because 1) we have had this guy coming to fertilize for the past few months. when he comes, which is about once a week, we are not to let dogs out for 24 hours, after that time the sprinklers go on and then its safe for dogs to go out. But I really truly don't think the sprinklers can always wash off all the residue, I guess I get so anal because as humans we don't always know everything and maybe there is a slight residue left on there.. Anyway so she is a major grazer, I'd say more -so than any of our dogs. I just think maybe there is some way over all of this time it built up in her system and something happened. I guess I'm confused because the vet said right away no that not's indicative of fertilizer but then I come home and right there on the internet it says a dog can vomit and have seizures from fertilizer! The vet says this is whats happening because her heart's failing but it just didn't click with me the way the vet came in and just didn't even really ask what had happened. I know my dog is dying from heart failure but I don't think this was indicative of that, this was more like something she ingested... Am I crazy here or what?!?!? my posts [notify]

Member Since 04/06/2012     Barked: Fri Apr 6, '12 5:16pm PST  hey thank you you guys, awesome to see responses already chopper: well even the issue of protein is confusing. when we first found out, the research i did DID say low protein was recommended, but then I saw research saying they had gone back on what they said, that low protein could actually be the opposite. i, personally, have really strong beliefs about food both for myself and for my dog, so much dogs diet isn't really changing too much. i always believe in high quality meats, organ meats for dogs of course, dairy and dairy fat, veggies, of course some grains, i believe feeding my dogs what's leftover from my own dishes is beneficial. you know what we love orijen too! we love the regional red. my plan is to actually mix it up. some nights do the home-cooked. however whenever i feed orijen i HAVE to mix in some other carbs because my whole belief is that orijen is unbalanced with so much protein. if i fed Beautiful orijen i would also cook up some whole corn for example, or some other nutrient-rich carb to go along with it! i too don' think it's good to reduce the protein, however i don't too much like what is in orijen is good either. i think you need a balance between meat, fat, and carbs! i actually think ingredients are pretty good. i mean the pork liver alone is awesome! the chicken fat great. non-gmo cornstarch would come from corn. i would probably just use whole kernel corn unless the reasoning for the starch is because of the phosphorus content, like i said still researching myself. i do not believe in raw at all, for myself or for my dog. my dog is not a wolf and i actually believe cooking is what's best for our bodies. it allows us to break down foods we otherwise couldn't get nutrients from, and let's us absorb the maximum amount of nutrients from foods. maxwell: thank you so so so much i will check it out! i did in fact read mary straus's information, in fact i am following her kidney diet right now, until i receive my pork liver and such in the mail and know how to balance this diet correctly! what caught my attention is when you said "broth removed" .. i actually cook Beautiful's rice in a mixture of pork and beef stock. I feel stocks are great for dogs and myself in included. is this not good for them? please direct me to some research if you please.. yes we are doing the subcutaneous fluids as well. the thing i am confused about is she has been recommended to take 2 medications, enalapril and furosemide, (might be spelled wrong) one helps release fluid from the heart and one is a diuretic.. however i am very very scared to start these as the doctor blatantly said they can actually contribute to kidney failure, but it's like a lesser of two evils thing because supposedly if she doesn't go on the medication her heart will fail.. i don't know, i just can't believe that yet that she HAS to go on them to save her heart. i really want to believe that her diet will heal her and i guess i am so confused right now as to what to do! we go back in 2 weeks to start draining fluids from her thru ultrasound, and i don't know what to do with this medication problem. i know it can be good for the heart and i HAVE read people doing great on the enalapril/furosemide combo, but i just can't have her kidney doing worse! my plan is to wait a few days, do some intensive research, and go from there. thank you guys so much i will await more replies to help with my recipe and then i will check out those links you sent me to just do it myself! wish me luck guys love you all my posts [notify]

Home Prepared Food & Recipes > Homemade version of Hills Prescription k/d for kidney/heart failure?

Member Since 04/06/2012     Barked: Fri Apr 6, '12 4:53am PST  Hey guys good evening, glad to be a new member. Basically, to keep things simple, my dog had first been diagnosed with failing kidneys about 4 days ago, however after having some x-rays and ultrasound, it's now not only her kidneys but her heart is failing, it's enlarged, and this is probably what caused the kidneys to go. We were recommended to try the k/d canned food, and while I do usually have problems with commercially produced dog foods, this one actually looks to have great ingredients. The problem is I am very into organic/humanely sourced meat and dairy, and so I want to cook this home-made myself. I emailed Hills to see if they could help me out with how many cups of this, how many tablespoons of that, for example, yet they claimed they couldn't help me because that would be giving away their "formula" . . Yep, that is what the world has come to. Caring more about a business and worrying someone will use your ingredients and actually heal a dog; I of course told them there is no way I could copy their formula that would be illegal and I would be sued however I don't think they will help me.. I know this is very do-able because the ingredients are basically water, egg whites, cornstarch, pork liver, chicken fat, sucrose (i assume this is sugar, no?), flaxseed, dried whey, chicken liver flavor, and then the synthetic vitamins and minerals, with an interesting ingredient added in as well, "caramel color", which I would want to abstain from using in my home-made version. I guess I am so so frustrated because this is something I can literally cook up in my kitchen while staying true to my beliefs which would mean using humanely raised pork liver, chicken fat, egg whites, and whey and using non-gmo and organic cornstarch, yet I don't know HOW MUCH OF EACH TO USE IN RELATION TO OTHER, so I can't go thru with this because I don't want to make my dog worse by giving her too much of this or too little of that.. I was hoping someone here could help me with a home-made version of this while not leaving out any of these ingredients or substituting for something else, except the caramel color which I do not need and the chicken liver flavor which I guess I can make myself using humanely sourced chicken livers (which I can research myself how to make, the flavor that is) . . Is there someway in heaven someone can help me out here? My dog and I would literally appreciate it like nothing else, it would mean so so so much to us! I don't know what else to say, this is so so important to me . . I know it's possible. Please let me know if you can help, this is something that would mean the world to me . . Ok have a nice day, thank you Here is the ingredient list to get a feel for how to re-create this in a home-made version : Water, Egg White, Corn Starch, Pork Liver, Chicken Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols, and citric acid), Sucrose, Flaxseed, Dried Whey, Chicken Liver Flavor, Calcium Carbonate, Calcium Sulfate, Caramel Color, Choline Chloride, Vitamin E Supplement, Potassium Chloride, Magnesium Oxide, Iodized Salt, Taurine, Ferrous Sulfate, Ascorbic Acid (source of vitamin C), Zinc Oxide, Thiamine Mononitrate, Beta-Carotene, Niacin, Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Manganous Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Biotin, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Riboflavin, Calcium Iodate, Folic Acid, Sodium Selenite. Thank you again Happy Easter my posts [notify]

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the rapid nature of forum postings, it's quite possible our calculation of the number of ensuing forum posts may be off by one or two or more at any given moment.