Extra firm Poo

[oakley]

Hey all, my pup is currently on kibble with 7-8 meals a week raw. I am going to try to do all raw soon.. but I'm just getting used to this...

My boxer puppy Oakley is only 12 weeks old but really enjoys raw. Last night she had two chicken drumsticks, the night before she has a chicken back, and all meals in between then were TOTW Pacific.

She just passed a VERY firm poo.. she even seemed to struggle a bit to pass it. And the poop had a little blood on the outside.. I investigated and there was none INSIDE, so I believe this is from her straining.

Is this normal?

Is she getting too much bone?

I know its not the kibble because when on kibble only she had consistently firm poos... but not too firm.


Thanks for your help as I find my path to true raw...

[DaneMama]

Since kibble takes a long time to digest...can stay in the stomach for 12+ hours...feeding her raw, even at a different meal time can cause problems just like this. Especially since the raw you fed her was high bone content. Mixing the two creates a cement like paste that gets super hard and can cause damage to the colon, which is why you saw blood.

If I were you I would just bite the bullet and switch her completely over. If you have kibble left over, donate it to a local rescue.

[rannmiller]

Or just feed her the rest of the kibble till it runs out, then switch completely to raw.

[oakley]

Thanks for the quick reply. Hmm.. I might have to do just that.

[oakley]

The bone crackin makes me a bit nervous.. still adjusting. I know. I'm a wimp! But shes just a baby with baby teeth!

[DaneMama]

Here...watch this...Akasha is only ~8 weeks old munchin' on a chicken wing. Hopefully your fears will dissolve quickly. There is really no need to be scared at all. Crunching bones is what their teeth are made for

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz2rJn4Uhxc

If you really are worried, whack the chicken part with a mallet a few times first to soften it up...but don't chop it up...that can be dangerous...

[Lynn In Tenn]

Hearing the bones crack is a good sound. Then you know they're chewing their food:-p

[JayJayisme]

My two pups had all sorts of problems on different high-end kibbles but I too finally found TOTW Pacific Stream to their liking. One thing I noticed though is that they produced a LOT of poop on this food. While it's true this food has no grains, it does have potato as the filler. I think they literally pooped all of it out because both of them were going frequently and leaving rather large piles.

I made the mistake of trying to "ease" them into RAW instead of switching cold-turkey. I had my reasons, and they fulfilled their purpose, but if I had to do it all over again and I had the option, I'd go cold-turkey and switch them to 100% RAW from the start. During this time, even when they were on 80% RAW and 20% TOTW, they had problems with hard poop. The problem didn't work itself out until I had them on 100% RAW for awhile with a good ratio of meat to bone.

Every dog is different but both of mine had similar experiences. Now, as every RAW feeder will tell you, their poop output is less frequent, smaller, stinks less (almost no smell at all), and it turns to dust in a couple days if I leave it (which I usually don't). If there is any way you can go 100% prey model RAW, I highly recommend it. Your dog's system will normalize in a few weeks time and you can forget about all of this kibble nonsense and all the problems that come with it.

[oakley]

Thanks guys. Im going to do all raw now... :D :O :)

[DaneMama]

All grain free foods are still packed with fillers. They are higher quality fillers but fillers none the less. Potato and sweet potato are the most common ones. The dog food companies still have to think about profit and therefore use fillers in any of their foods.

I am so glad that you have decided to switch all the way to raw. You will definitely see a huge improvement in the poo department as well as countless others