Albie - Raw Food Update

OK, so there are lots of different things to tell you all about and I couldn't think of a title so if the stars of Britains Got Talent and X-Factor etc can do a mash up why can't we?!

Albie is without doubt loving his RAW diet, if you want to see how much, watch the video further down! He is now on 100% RAW with no rice being mixed in. We spoke with the fabulous team over at Honey's Real Dog Food to ask them about the undigested food we were seeing and the conclusion is that it's pieces of carrot. You can see the brighter colour pieces in the photo to the right and this is what he isn't digesting.

This isn't a problem though as the carrot is in the food to provide insoluble fibre and I must thank the Honey's team for their superbly quick and helpful response. Albie has even been lucky enough to receive a personal email from the founder of Honey's, I think he is so chuffed he want's me to frame it for him and hang it above his bed!

We have seen some more mucus so we have a meeting scheduled with Dr.Sarah to review his treatment and see if we can modify anything. However, since the switch to RAW we haven't experienced any loose stools from Albie at all which is wonderful. There are a few other little symptoms he has going on but I will go into more detail of those in a later blog once we have spoken with Dr.Sarah. One other thing we have noticed is that he Albie is drinking much less water, he doesn't dive straight to his water bowl like he used to when eating kibble, in fact he often used to take a break half way through a kibble meal to have some water.

He remains full of life and bubbles, he is one big happy puppy! We haven't seen him have so much energy and enthusiasm to play in a long time, a combination of the RAW diet and remedy he has been prescribed by Dr.Sarah seems to have had a definite positive impact on his personality. He is still finding certain environments stressful and did react to a dog the other day but we can't change his genetics so we will carry on as we are and support him, trying to give him the confidence that he is safe. Left to his own devices and his own space he is the happiest dog in the world though.

So to answer one of the questions we posed;

How do you avoid the mess when opening the sausages?...

After some fab advice on twitter the answer it seems is to take the wrapping off when they are still frozen. We tried this which them prompted another question.... How to take the wrapping off without getting frostbite? Wow those sausages are super cold to hold onto but the aid of a tea-towel or some gloves seems to fix the problem.

Of course if we leave the meat to defrost then the liquid will all settle to the bottom and so to avoid that becoming a mess we spent some time on google looking for tupperware. We already had a Lock & Lock container with a freshness tray but it is only really big enough for one sausage. We were amazed at how difficult it is to find a tupperware with a tray in the bottom though! After 45 minutes of serious googling we found something which arrived this morning. 

The containers are pretty big though, the pros of that are we will be able to defrost a few at the same time but the cons? now not only is half our freezer missing and dedicated to the dogs but half a shelf in the fridge is too! I think the only solution is to move house and get a giant kitchen with room for a separate fridge/freezer dedicated to the dogs! (at a quick inspection I think we will fit 4 sausages in each box, so one box would last Albie just over 2 days, great for us if we ever forget to defrost some!)

Here are Albie & Kizzie inspecting the new arrivals... 

You can see the drip tray in the bottom, it is slightly raised off the base so the liquid will sit beneath the sausages. The tray is completely removable should we ever want to.

Finally....

This is video evidence of how much Albie likes his food, he never barks for food unless he considers it incredibly high value, to the point where I never wanted to train him to be quiet for food as I could use it as a good indicator for his appetite level if ever he was ill. But look at him, he is even jumping up to try and get at the bowl! Kizzie gets a little bit too and she clearly sniffs out the RAW before her kibble so it looks like we will be swapping her over too soon enough.