Update!

Well, I forgot to add olive oil to the chicken the other night, but Emmett's still doing great. He didn't eat all of the chicken--I think he just doesn't like poultry, but variety is supposed to be important in this type of diet. Here's what I find is interesting though--Danni is quite happy to go ahead and eat chicken and turkey whenever I give it to her, but Emmett hates it and loves pork. Golden Retrievers are field dogs and Great Danes were actually originally bred to hunt wild boar. Maybe it's just coincidence though.

I fed Emmett pork yesterday morning and he ate it right up! I still have to cut it into chunks because he's not comfortable taking bites off of a chunk of meat. I also got more shoulder/butt meat and pork ribs from Costco yesterday and separated it into 1.5-2 lb bags. Each bag has approximately one rib and the rest is meat. One of those bags is one meal for Emmett or one day's food for Danni.

I started Danni on turkey this morning-- I fed her the turkey neck and organs. Later today I'll cut a piece off of a quarter of the turkey and give it to her.

Pork...it's what's for lunch

Wooo! Fantastic news: Emmett ate the pork shoulder! First I offered it to him for breakfast, with tripe on top and on bottom; he picked it up and chewed it quite a bit. He didn't get any meat off of it...he was just chewing on it. So after a while I had to leave and Emmett looked like he was done messing with it, so I picked it up and put it away.

Later at lunch time I had been doing some research and got the idea to cut it up for him. I cut it up with scissors, left the meat in his bowl with the bone, and mixed in some tripe. I left him to it and went inside for like a minute or so, and when I came back out everything was gone from his bowl. It kind of alarmed me because the bone wasn't that small and I'm afraid that he swallowed it whole. I'm keeping my eye on him, but after a little more research, I think he'll be fine.

I got some more pork meat (shoulder/butt) from TaLin Market today just for tomorrow morning because now I know that Emmett'll eat it and I have to leave early tomorrow. I'm going to try to give him cut-up chicken with tripe & olive oil (to help the bone pass) for dinner tonight. Wish us luck!

:]

Out of patties...now to the tripe.

So Danni 'stole' Emmett's turkey leg that I was planning on offering him until he ate it...he dropped it on the ground and went inside, so I guess Danni thought it was up for grabs. She also ate quite a bit of chicken, so she may only get one meal tomorrow.

Then at Emmett's dinner I was somewhat at a standstill...I took a couple chicken quarters out of the freezer and put them in the fridge to thaw, but that was a bad idea because by the time Emmett needed to eat, they were still frozen.

So, I went to the freezer to check out my options. At first I was just going to use the microwave to defrost the chicken, but I really didn't want to take the chance of cooking the bone (cooked bones splinter and are NOT good for dogs).

Fortunately, I remembered that I had the boneless stew pork that I bought at Smith's for cheap. So I took that out and defrosted it in the microwave. Unfortunately I cooked it a little too much to the point where some of it was no longer raw, but once I dropped it in his bowl, Emmett started eating it without any enticement. He was kind of just picking it up, chewing a little, then spitting it out, but he was eating! So I got the tripe and mixed a little around with the pork, and it was gone in no time at all!

It made me wonder what tripe is, and I found this website:

http://greentripe.com/

And this explanation from that website:

Tripe is the stomach of ruminating animals. These animals (i.e. cattle, buffalo,
sheep, deer, goats, antelope, etc.) are classified as being four-footed, hooved,
cud chewing mamals with a stomach that consists of four chambers. The four
chambers of such a stomach are known as the rumen, reticulum, omasum and the
abomasum. The food the animal eats (i.e. grass, hay) is swallowed unchewed and
passes into the rumen and reticulum where it is then regurgitated, chewed and
mixed with saliva. It is again swallowed and then passed through the reticulum
and omasum into the abomasum, where it is then further broken down by the
gastric juices, amino acids and other digestive enzymes. Yummy!

So how can something so disgusting, be so good? These same gastric juices and
enzymes not only aid the animal in digestion, but also aid the dog in digesting
and efficiently utilizing his food. The amino acids are necessary for muscular
development and, the other gastric juices, I believe, are the best cleaner for
their teeth!

I took the pork shoulder out of the freezer to thaw it for tomorrow morning...we'll see if he'll eat that. :)

Pleasant sounds.

I cut the turkey into pieces last night....that was not easy at all! Took quite a bit of muscle.

I tried to give the turkey leg to Emmett last night, but no go. So this morning I tried putting it in his bowl with the lamb patties and I stuffed some of the patties into the meat of the turkey leg (sorry if this is getting gross). At least at that point he'll put raw turkey into his mouth.

Then this evening, I tried again with the turkey leg because I only had one more lamb patty left and I smushed lamb all over it and left it in Em's bowl to go watch Danni eat. Danni's got this down! She finishes really quick.

So I continued to sit there under the pretense of paying attention to Danni, but I was really waiting to put the turkey leg away when Emmett almost invariably didn't eat it....so while I was sitting there, I heard a CRUNCH!

Emmett was chewing on the TURKEY!!!! That is a really good sign for me. :) He only crunched it a couple times, but that is progress.

I gave Danni quite a bit less today because I think I've been feeding her a little too much. I also groomed her and her fur is SO shiney. It's awesome...I should take picture.

Bought more meaty meat.

hellooo. ok, so this morning i woke up at 6:00 and decided to go to Smith's to see if they had any deals on meat. They had an expired pork shoulder and pork for stew on clearance (like half off), as well as whole turkeys on sale and hot dogs for treats.

So I bought them and checked on different forums to see if those cuts were appropriate on the raw diet. Looks like they are! I have to let the turkey thaw before I cut it up, but I also have to put the pork feet in separate bags/containers and put the other stuff in the freezer.

Emmett ate his lamb patties again this morning (gave him 3 with no tripe), and of course Danni is still eating the chicken with no problems. This morning I found a little bit of up-chuck, although I am pretty much 100% sure it was Danni because it only consisted of tree bark from outside...which is what she eats her chicken on sometimes.

I'm going to give her a good grooming session today since she's looking a little mangy :)

lataaazz. B)

Houston, we have take-off.

Well, minor success. I tried feeding Emmett the seared/seasoned chicken twice more today--once for "lunch" and once for his evening meal...still no go. :(

So I posted on the Yahoo group asking what I should do and got a very helpful response--I should try different types of meat. Ok, so I took the advice and headed to a local pet nutrition store "Long Leash on Life" with Emmett to see what their most popular items were.

The owners were extremely helpful and showed me what they had...most of it was BARF based (raw diet for dogs including meat & veggies), but I needed to get Emmett to eat. I know for a fact that Emmett likes lamb, so I bought patties made out of lamb & veggies (ground bone in it). I also bought beef tripe, which Emmett tried to eat out of the freezer.

When I got home, I gave him 2 patties and a bit of tripe...he ate ALL OF IT!!!! WOOooooWOO!!

And then I decided to push my luck and put the seared/seasoned chicken in his bowl and he picked it up almost as if he was going to eat it. He ended up just putting it on the ground, but that was more than he had ever been willing to do before.

I'm thawing 3 patties tonight and hopefully this good streak will continue! :D

Still no go

Emmett still hasn't eaten :( Last night he skipped, and this morning I even seared it for him and put garlic on it. Well, he was a little more interested in it at that point, but didn't eat anything still.

I'm re-washing his bowl to make sure there's no chicken "juice" left in it, then I'll try searing it a little more tonight and feeding it to him.

Danni's doing great, no issues at all with her! :)