Dog Food - To Feed or Not to Feed?

I've been reading about this BARF diet. Ok, this sounds good - dogs are canines and are supposed to eat raw meat.

I joined a wonderful group and started reading the posts. The one thing I can't do is feed my dog chicken bones - he's like a vacuum and inhales everything that is big enough to fit in his mouth! He gets raw beef, beef heart, pork, whatever I can find on sale. I mix it with his kibble two to three, sometimes four times a week. The rest of the days he gets canned mixed with kibble.

In comes 50 million recalls - or so it seems. I'm not a patient person, so I don't have the patience to look in all the store to figure out which brand has been recalled - or worse - which brand is going to be recalled tomorrow!

I see chicken thighs on sale for $0.89 / pound. Hmmm... I get to thinking. I buy them and cook 5 pounds of them. I break out my grandmother's old fashioned meat grinder - you know - the one where your arm falls off by the time you're done grinding?

I grind up all the cooked chicken - bones and all. I add a can of jack mackeral, 5 raw eggs and about two tablespoons of garlic power - mix it all up. I feed this "glop" to Rambo (not all at once, this lasted me for a week). He LOVES it.

I have been feeding Rambo a combination of cooked dinners and raw for two weeks. His coat has never looked better. His teeth had been starting to get some yellow on them, even though I fed raw meat and bones a few times a week. His cooked and raw still gets mixed with some kibble - but his teeth are now white, his coat is soft. You wouldn't believe how soft.

He's a much happier dog - and I'm a much happier mom - a side effect that I was told about, but did not believe - he poops less! He poops less because his body uses more of the food I give him, since it's not all preservatives and fillers and other junk his gut just does not process.