Male long-haired Chihuahua, 6 lbs, age 2 years and 8 months.
I have started giving him three Natures Menu Raw nuggets (venison variety) for his middle meal of the day. I feed him three times a day, six hours apart. His other two meals are currently Barking Heads wet and Lily’s Kitchen wet (NOT the organic variety, which contains carrageenan and has made him suffer :().
At the moment, he is doing well, and I will update if things change and if I observe anything unusual. If he continues to do well I will keep him on this regimen. I don’t intend for him to be fully on raw nuggets, as I like him to have a variety of nutrients and foods.
He enjoys the raw food, and has had no adverse reactions. His poos have changed to: less frequent, firmer, drier, smaller, crumblier and odourless.
I have noticed that he appears tired after his raw meal, and goes off to bed for a nap, but he has only had four days of part-raw so far, so I don’t know if there is a link and I am not concerned about it anyway.
I weigh him daily, and he is gaining a bit (now over 6 lbs 3 oz already), so I have cut down on the amount of the other two (wet) meals.
I noticed that after Day 2 he was shedding a lot of hair (for him) on his back end and back legs. This could be the recent warm weather, but I have had him for 16 months and have not seen this before, even in the long hot summer of 2018. He has previously shed lightly all year round, but now I am combing out clumps.
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Not sure about the moulting. My dog mostly eats raw but she hardly sheds at all. She never has really. I rarely find a single hair.
It could be the weather, I suppose. I’m just making observations at the moment and trying not to make any assumptions. If I hadn’t changed his diet, I would still have been very surprised to see this level of moulting. He is certainly looking well in every way and somebody commented on this today. I did bathe him the other day though!
His diet was riddled with carrageenan for a few months, which caused havoc with his digestion, and this ended recently so he is definitely on the up, healthwise.
Day 12
The extra moulting was short-lived and only lasted a few days. His bowel movements are once per meal, still tiny, dryish and not smelly.
He has had no issues whatsoever with the changeover, and I must say he eats the raw nuggets at lightning speed. He has three nuggets per meal and I ‘cut’ them with the back of a spoon into four sections and spread them all out, but this doesn’t slow him down much.
He’s back on two meals per day now (8 - 9 am, and 7 pm). Wet food in the morning and raw at night.
I wish there were more raw foods that came in nuggets rather than a large-ish block, as he only eats around 50 g of it per day, so I couldn’t thaw a block out and I doubt I could cut it when frozen. There’s not much variety where I live. Many companies don’t deliver to islands, and he eats so little it probably wouldn’t be worth it anyway. I think I may be able to get Nutriment here but they are in blocks (I think). At least Natures Menu have a few varieties of nuggets; the only thing is, the main meat type may differ but the other ingredients are the same or similar, so maybe the nutrition won’t vary much in that case.