At Tollwest Kennels, we feed and recommend a raw food diet. Our dogs have been eating a raw diet for over 12 years, and we would never go back to commercial kibbles again!

What is a raw food diet?

 This means feeding a dog raw meats, bones and organs, not processed commercial dog foods . Initially most people are shocked at the concept of actually feeding our dogs REAL food. But it is in fact the most natural diet for our doggy (and kitty) companions.

The benefits of natural raw foods are noticeable almost immediately. Healthier, cleaner teeth & gums, a healthy shiny coat, improved energy levels, increased mobility in older arthritic dogs, stronger immune system, less doggy odor & improved breath, smaller stools, slower more steady growth rates in puppies, etc.

There are a number variations of the raw food diet, some include grains or veggies, others totally exclude them, others include dairy products, others again exclude them. The diet is as individual as the people feeding their dogs. Best is to read as much as you can and determine your own path.

The Basics of the Raw Food Diet

RAW MEATY BONES
Your dog's diet should be comprised of 40-60% raw meaty bones. The dog must be able to eat the bone as well as the meat. Chicken or turkey necks, backs, wings , frames or carcasses, or chicken leg quarters are the usual and most common RMB fed to dogs. Whole rabbit, duck, pheasant and quail are great substitutes when available. Some pork bones (such as neck and breast bones) also are consumable by the dog. Whole fish can be used in place of RMB occasionally (up to once a week). A large knuckle bone would not be considered a RMB since only a small amount of the bone is actually eaten. The RMB can be given either whole or ground. Whole would be ideal as it provides lots of exercise for the jaw and neck muscles and helps keep the teeth clean. But if your dog is elderly, missing many teeth, has difficulty chewing, or if you are worried about feeding whole bones them by all means grind them up! Ground bones are much better than no bones at all!

MUSCLE MEATS
Muscle meats (this inludes heart, gizzard and tongue as well) can also play a part in your dogs diet. Now and then you can feed a pure muscle meat meal (no bones) but don't do this all the time as boneless meat is high in phosphorous but low in calcium. Muscle meats are great for grinding or mincing and mixzing with veggies, supplents etc. Keep pure muscle meats to 30% or less of the overall diet. Chicken, turkey, lamb, goat, rabbit, pork, beef & fish be used. You can even feed emu, ostrich, duck, buffalo, venison, moose, elk, musk ox etc if they are available feel free to give them a try too.

VEGETABLES & FRUIT
Vegetables and fruit play a very small role in the overall health of our pets. Because dogs have a very short intestinal tract they cannot efficiently process vegetable fiber. In the wild, a dog would receive very little plan matter in the diet, mostly in trace amounts through the process of eating the intestines and stomach of their prey - they shake out most of the contents but a small amount would end up being consumed. To effectively emulate this process for our domestic dogs, it is necessary to break down the fiber of the vegetable/fruit material . This can be easily done with a juicer (using the remaining pulp), a food processor, a blender or a grinder.

If you choose to feed veggies, he best and most important vegetables to use are dark leafy greens, such as: romaine lettuce, spinach, kale, chard, beet greens, turnip greens, collards, parsley, cilantro, dandelion, etc. You can feed other veggies too, but in smaller amounts than the leafy greens. Broccolli, cauliflower, cabbage (careful with these 3, they can cause gas, and avoid in dogs with thyroid problems), carrots, yams, sweet potatoes, yellow squash, beets all have high nutritional value. Also usable occasionally but with less nutitional value is cucumber, celery, zucchini, lettuces other than Romaine. Raw potatoes should not be fed, other vegetables from the Nightshade family (tomatoes, peppers & eggplant) can be fed in small to moderate amounts but are best avoided in an arthritic animal as they may aggravate the condition. The only vegetable that would be considered absolutely off limits is onions. A small amount of fresh ginger root and garlic is an excellent addition to the veggie mix.  Some people instead of feeding raw veggies will instead feed canned plain pumpkin or baked yams as a source of fiber in their pets diet.

Fruit if fed, is best used ripe to over ripe. In the wild, a dog would only get very limited amounts of berries or similar fruits during a small portion of the year. Fruit should be fed only in small amounts and fed separately from other foods, at least a couple hours away from other meals...it is digested much faster than meat and veggies are feeding everything together can cause the fruit to ferment in the gut! That said, small amounts of fruit mixed into the regular meals is well tolerated by most dogs.

Variety is the key to success. Alternate 3 - 4 vegetables. Buy in season produce and be sure to use your vegetable trimmings from your own meals.

RECREATIONAL BONES
These are larger bones like beef knuckle or shank bones. Recreational bones are for chewing and gnawing, rather than eating entirely. This action cleans teeth and massages the gums. Recreational bones should ideally be offered a few times a week, or daily with a teething puppy.

ORGAN MEAT
Organ meats, such as liver and kidney, should be fed in small amounts several times a week. (Plan for organ meat to be about 10% of the diet overall) These can be either ground and added to the meals or given in chunks. Organs are very rich so too much can cause loose stools. If you feed chicken backs, take a close look at them, they often have nice pieces of kidney and sometimes lung as well attached to the spine! Heart, although an organ, is made of muscle tissue so should be used as muscle meat rather than organ meat.

Tripe (stomach) is another organ you may come across, and is another organ (like heart) that is not fed like an organ meat as it is a muscular organ. Avoid the bleached white tripe you may find in grocery stores, it is highly processed and good, with little nutrition left in it. The "good" tripe is raw, unprocessed 'green' tripe...this still has wonderful enzymes, beneficial bacteria, and pre-digested vegetable matter. Tripe has a perfect calcium/phosphorous ratio (comparable to RMB), so it can be fed in place of a RMB meal several times a week if desired. Only two problems with tripe....for one it stinks!!! (But the dogs love it!) The other is lack of availability in many areas. You will never find green tripe in a butcher shop or grocery store, since it is not something people eat....but many raw-food companies sell it, and it can ever be mail-ordered! Check with other local raw feeders for sources, or check with me and I will try to find you a source.

EGGS & DAIRY
Eggs (ideally free-range) can be added to the diet. They are an excellent souce of protein and vitamins. They can be mixed with veggies or ground meat, and some dogs will eat them plain. Always include the shell when you feed eggs, you may have to crush it up into little bits and mix it in. Contraty to the 'old wives tale', raw eggs are very good for your dog as long as fed whole! Egg white does contain avidin, which binds up biotin.....but the yolk contains a ton of biotin which more than offsets the avidin. So the only way you would produce a biotin deficiency from feeding eggs would be to feed egg white only for a long period of time.

Dairy is not an essential part of the diet, but many dogs enjoy it so it can be added occasionally for variety if you wish. Plain yogurt and cottage cheese are the best (buy the higher-fat ones, not the low-fat), other cheeses can be used as training teats, etc. Many dogs have problems digesting cows milk, but will do fine on goats milk. The best "dairy" in my opinion is kefir (most health food and some grocery stores have it), it is somewhat similar to yogurt but has a much better profile of beneficial bacteria cultures and is excellent for the digestive tract.

SUPPLEMENTS
Very few supplements are needed if you are feeding a varied diet. The one supplement I consider essential is a high-EFA(essential fatty acid) oil such as Salmon oil, Herring oil, Anchovy or Sardine oil or Arctic Vigor (seal oil). You should be adding an EFA oil to your dogs diet at lest 3-4 days a week for most pets. Kelp is a supplement used by many people for its trace minerals, but this should be used in very small amounts, I recommend no more than 1/8 tsp for a Toller, and no more often than 2-3 times a week at the most.

SERVING A RAW DIET

It is up to your whether you feed once or twice a day. I personally feed dogs over the age of 5 months only one meal a day, as I find my dogs do better on less frequent feedings. To contain mess, many people feed their dogs in the crates, some will feed outside or even teach their dog to eat in the bathtub or on a placemat in the kitchen.

Many raw feeders fast their dogs once a week, giving just water and possibly a recreational bone. This allows the digestive tract a rest, and helps clean out toxins and parasites from the system. Remember, a wild dog will not necessarily eat every day. In fact, many raw-fed dogs will fast themselves!

TRAVELING WITH RAW FOOD

Feeding raw food can make traveling a little more difficult, but it certainly can be done! If you will be traveling where there will be electricity, a portable electric cooler can be used as a mini-fridge and will keep you meat fresh as long as needed. For camping where you have no electricity, a cooler will suffice for several days (the Coleman Extreme brand will keep meat frozen at least 5 days I hear, you could also consider using dry ice in the cooler), beyond that you can go to non-raw but still healthy alternatives, such as canned salmon, tuna or mackeral for protein with canned pumpkin for veggies. Eggs will also keep quite well. There are also several forms of dehydrated diets available, you just have to add water to it and there is dinner! They can be quite expensive, but are great for traveling! Wysong Archetype, Steves Real Food, Solid Gold Buckaroo Beef, and NRG (this last one contains grain, so may not be suitable for all dogs) are some of the most common brands of dehydrated diet.

LEARNING MORE ABOUT RAW FOOD DIETS

I highly recommend reading the following book: "Works Wonders - Feed Your Pet Raw Meaty Bones" by Tom Lonsdale. There are many e-mail groups on the topic of feeding raw, including a group specifically for Tollers! The group is called HolisticToller, you can access this group here.

There is also an excellent e-mail group for beginners to raw feeding, called Rawk9s, you can access this group here.