Tylee's Part 3, Final Thoughts #chewyinfluencer

Ptera has been eating Tylee's, the new Chewy.com exclusive human grade cooked food for the past month. I've shared our thoughts a couple of time since we started (see Part 1 and Part 2), but wanted to make one more post with our final thoughts.

We were provided with Tylee's for a month in exchange for our honest review. We were not compensated in any other way, and all thoughts expressed are entirely our own.



After a month, Ptera was still excited for her food every meal time. She ate eagerly at every meal, and she cleaned her bowl completely. While I could see some picker dogs potentially picking out or eating around some of the vegetable pieces, Ptera didn't do that at all. If your dog is picky in a way you think that might happen, I would recommend making sure the food is really thawed all the way, as it gets a bit mushier, so would be harder for a dog to pick out the vegetables.



I wanted to share a couple short videos of Ptera eating the Tylee's, so you can see that I am being entirely truthful both about her enthusiasm for the food and in that she doesn't pick through it.





Since this is a frozen cooked food, it took me a little while to figure out the best way to serve it. I started out just dishing up a meal's worth frozen and letting it thaw (sometimes being lazy and not letting it thaw all the way). Then I moved the whole bag to the refrigerator instead of the freezer. That worked, but I found that the food was mushier when fully thawed out. That made it both harder and grosser to scoop food out of the bag, especially as I got to the bottom and had to reach my whole hand in. The food is human grade, and all that, but I still didn't want my hand smeared with it just from serving my dog breakfast. So I ended up deciding that the best method for me was to put a few days worth of food in a glass bowl with a lid and put that in the fridge to serve out of. It was easier for me than remembering to put a single bowl of food in to thaw twice a day, and worked out really well. We also traveled while feeding Tylee's, and found that it was easier than traveling with raw food. Since this is meant to be thawed out, it lasted just fine in a cooler as long as there was ice in there, and lasts longer at fridge temps than raw does (and that is a really good thing if you have ever traveled with frozen raw food only to have it go bad in the cooler!).



As for how Ptera has done on the food overall, I would say she did great. I did have to feed her about a cup and a half of thawed Tylee's to maintain her weight (she weighs 10 lbs), but she pretty much always eats a good deal more than the recommended amount for her size, so I wasn't surprised. She went through three bags of Tylee's for the month, though Koira did get it as a topper on her food quite a bit as well. At $34.99 (or $31.99 on autoship) per bag, feeding Tylee's is more expensive than a high quality kibble, but pretty close to on par with prepared raw foods and cheaper than many of them. I likely won't continue feeding Tylee's regularly, but I think it is going to be my go to food if I ever need to start doing home cooked diets for my dogs. Tylee's is basically a home cooked diet without the hassle and worry of doing it at home, since you just have to thaw and feed and don't have to worry about balancing nutrients.



Ptera's skin and coat have been non-itchy and super soft. Her eyes haven't gotten gunky or teary like they often do when changing foods or on certain foods- so if tears and tear stains are a huge problem for your dog, I would highly recommend trying out Tylee's. At no point while eating Tylee's did Ptera have digestive issues. Her stools were formed and regular.



Overall, I really liked this food. Delivery was always timely; the food was always frozen solid when it arrived. Ptera loved it as a meal, and Koira loved it as an occasional topper. Neither dog had any negative effects from eating this food.

Right now, Chewy.com is still having a Buy One, Get One Free sale on Tylee's, so if you want to try it, now is the time!

Fit Food Friday: Rotational Diets

I've had a few questions lately about what I mean when I say I feed a "rotational diet" to my dogs. A lot of people feed rotational diets, and it doesn't always mean the same thing to all of us.

The basics are the same. Feeding a variety of different foods on a rotational basis is a rotational diet. (I've now used the word rotational so many times that I feel like it has lost all meaning to me- ever have that happen to you? I'm just going to say RD from now on, I think.) Exactly what is fed as part of an RD is what varies the most, person to person, dog to dog.

The big thing sticking out to the side is a tendon

I think most people who feed an RD rotate between flavors of kibble in the same brand (for example a fish formula and a beef formula by the same manufacturer), or else they rotate between flavors and brands both. I do those things, but I also add raw food into the RD I feed to my dogs.

Lots of meat and connecting tissues

I tend to buy meat on sale, get old freezer burned meat for free or dirt cheap, or get butchering scraps. This particular meat is butchering scraps from an elk. Humans may not like to eat the tendons and connective tissues that come with meat, but it is great nutrition for the dogs, who don't mind the texture and have jaws meant to deal with it. And of course, along with the silverskin (connective tissue from between muscles) comes some amazing wild game meat that the dogs absolutely love and that cannot be replicated with domestic animals.

Individually packaged pumpkin

So I rotate between a number of kibbles that work well for my dogs, some dehydrated foods, and raw. Since my dogs get such a wide variety, they rarely have any issues switching cold turkey from one to the other. And even when they do have an issue, it tends to be mild enough that a day or two of adding pumpkin to their food solidifies everything up.

Ptera's meal, with Weruva pumpkin on top

Ptera has had a venison based kibble before, and has had raw, but has not had raw elk. Wild game meats like elk and venison can be very different from domestically raised meat, lean and rich and with a different flavor and balance of nutrients. Since it is something new, I like to add a bit of pumpkin to the food to make sure we don't have any problems.

In the past, I've opened a whole can of pumpkin puree, used a few tablespoons a day for a day or three, and then had the rest of the can get moldy in my refrigerator. Or, occasionally, I'll remember to freeze the rest of the can in an ice cube tray and then lose the pumpkin ice cubes at the bottom of the freezer somewhere, to be found the next time I clean it out to the bottom. (I am not the most organized person in the world. Like, at all.)

Koira's meal, with Weruva pumpkin on top

Weruva Pumpkin Patch Up is 100% pumpkin puree, just like the cans, but in sized out pouches. They come as either 1 oz or 2.8 oz serving sizes. I got the 1 oz option for my dogs, because as much bigger as Koira is than Ptera, she is still a pretty small dog by most standards. One pouch is roughly the same as what I would use if I opened up a can. And while the pouches do cost more than buying a can, they are much more convenient, and won't go bad if they don't get used up in a few days (meaning that over time, if you use a few tablespoons from a can and throw the rest away, it doesn't take long for these pouches to be a better deal). And they would be great for traveling, when dogs often get nervous or excited to the point of digestive upset, and pumpkin can be a lifesaver. Way easier to have a few pouches than to worry about carrying a can with you, a can opener, a spoon to dish it out, and a way to store the opened can.

In terms of a rotational diet, I am likely not the norm, since I do add in raw food on a regular basis as well as feeding a variety of kibbles. The meat I feed varies a lot, though it is always pure meat with no added salt or flavorings (the dogs don't get bacon or ham, etc). But I try to be pretty calm about what my dogs eat overall. Outside of a very few foods, I don't worry much about if they eat a treat or a piece of food on the floor, because a tiny bit is unlikely to hurt them, and their stomachs are used to processing a variety of things. I try to feed high quality foods (which to me is a food where the majority of the protein comes from meat sources as whole meat or meal, but not by-products or generic "meat" rather than a named source, and produced in the US or Canada), and rotate what they eat both for variety and to make sure they are getting a well balanced diet over time.

Anyone else feed a rotational diet? If so, what does that mean to you for your pets?

Disclaimer: I was provided with Weruva Pumpkin Patch Up in exchange for an honest review. I was not compensated in any other way, and this review is entirely honest and in my own words. 

Stella and Chewy: Final Thoughts

Toward the end of the bag

We have been feeding Stella and Chewy's Super Beef food for an entire month now, and I wanted to give our final thoughts on the food overall. (Part One and Part Two of our three part review series.)

My first conclusion is that in many ways, it is way, way easier than feeding a prey model raw diet, or a prepared frozen raw diet. No freezer space need be taken up, no thawing needs to be remembered. When traveling, it is so much easier to put a few patties into a container and toss them in the car than having to remember to put meat in the cooler (at the last minute, so it doesn't thaw any more than it has to). The patties mean I don't even need a measuring cup, I just count out the number of patties.

The dogs really like it. They get super excited for their meals. They aren't super picky dogs normally, so this doesn't mean as much as it could, but it was still a plus- I certainly didn't have to talk them into eating, and they didn't linger over their food.

The freeze dried texture meant that when crumbled and covered with water, it was a great food to use in a puzzle bowl, taking longer to eat out of the puzzle bowl than kibble. Whole raw food can't be used in a puzzle bowl (though it can be a bit of a puzzle to eat on its own because of size, shape, bones, etc).

The ingredients of the Stella and Chewy's are excellent, and I have no second thoughts about if I am feeding my dogs a good food or not.

Stella and Chewy's bag

On the other side, there were some things about the Stella and Chewy's that I didn't love. The first and biggest was the sheer amount of food Koira needed to eat to stop losing weight. She was up to 13 patties per day. While 40 lb dogs are included on the feeding recommendations on the back of the bag, it does say that for larger dogs, use this food as a mix in or topping, and I think that that applies to Koira, despite her weight. And at least part of that is simply because the cost of feeding that much of this food is absurdly high. On the other hand, Ptera did fine on the food, maintaining weight and muscling, and eating a petite 3-3.5 patties per day. Between both of them, a bag of food last just over three days. For Ptera alone, though, a bag would last about three weeks, which makes the cost much more reasonable.

The only other thing was that I really did have to break apart the patties either into pieces, or crush them to a powder. Koira ended up kind of gulping and swallowing multiple times if given a whole patty, which I think was because the food gets a little slimy while wet, which made it weird to eat in large chunks. Some of the patties were super easy to break up, while some were harder, and my fingers could be a little sore after powdering them up. But breaking them into 4-5 pieces made them easy enough to eat for both dogs, and was fast to do, so it isn't exactly a big issue, just a slight dislike on my part.

Back when we first started using Stella and Chewy's and took a trip

Overall, this is a food that I really enjoyed feeding to my dogs. They enjoyed their meals, and the ingredients meant I was happy feeding it to them. At just over $40 for a 25 oz bag, I can't justify using it as the main food for Koira. But for traveling, camping, and as a back up food to have on hand (for when I forget to thaw out regular raw food), I think this absolutely hits the mark. And if I only had Ptera, who eats a much smaller amount, I would certainly find this a reasonable food to feed full time or as part of a rotational diet.

I would like to that Chewy.com for giving us the opportunity to try this food for a month. We did receive the food in exchange for a series of three honest posts about our experience, but we weren't compensated in any other way.

Stella and Chewy, Part Way Through

I wanted to give an update on how the girls are doing on the Stella and Chewy food we are reviewing for a month for Chewy.com.

Patties, counted out and divided 

First, I had to dramatically increase the amount Koira was eating. The feeding guide on the back of the bag suggests 8 1/2 patties for a 40 lb dog, so that is what I started Koira on. But she started getting really ribby pretty fast. For a dog who is already on the thinner side of healthy and who gets a good deal of activity, it doesn't take long for her to drift from "healthy weight" to "too skinny". I upped her intake to 12 patties, and she was not gaining any weight, so I upped it again to 13 yesterday. I will have to see if that is enough or if I need to up it again.

Crushed patties ready to add water and feed

Of course, Koira is notoriously hard to keep weight on. Most kibbles, she has to be fed a completely absurd amount of food for her size (like, the 4-6 cups range, when she only weighs 40 lbs, for most grain free high quality kibbles we have tried). Prey model raw normally keeps her at a good weight more easily than kibble, and I wasn't sure what the impact of a freeze dried raw food would be on that equation.

Ptera, on the other hand, is getting the suggested amount for her weight of 3 patties, with an extra half patty every few days. She appears to be maintaining her weight really well, and is looking good overall.

The patties can be fed whole and dry, whole and covered with water, broken into pieces, pieces covered by water, etc. To use the puzzle bowls with the dogs, I like to crush the patties and add water. It seems to provide a good deal of challenge to the dogs so their feeding time lasts longer than two seconds.

I think it is safe to say that even after 2/3rds of a month of eating this food, the dogs are still fans.

Normally, Koira eats in the bathroom, while Ptera eats in her crate. But that doesn't make for good pictures, so I fed them outside this time, making sure to keep them well separated so there were no disagreements over who gets the food.

I have to say that I was highly entertained watching them eat out of their puzzle bowls. I normally watch a tiny bit, but actually sitting on the ground with them the entire time they eat isn't something I've done before.

Ptera's nose is too big to fit into the slots, so she has to use her tongue to work the foodstuffs out. And she is serious about her foodstuffs.

Koira's nose is also too big for most of the slots (that is how it is supposed to be for these bowls). But she has the tongue work down pat.

Koira is much more systematical that Ptera when it comes to working the food out of the bowl and into the mouth. But that might be partly due to the design of the bowl each of them was using, since Koira's has longer stretches of straight grooves.

If you look close in the above photo, you can see Ptera's tongue working on getting the food out of that groove.

But, though it takes them awhile, the dogs can manage to completely clean these bowls out, without missing more than a tiny drop or two of food.

I'll be posting again at the end of the month to give a full sum up of our thoughts after a full month of feeding this food.

We were provided with this food in exchange for our honest review. All opinions expressed are entirely our own, and we were not compensated in any other way.

Stella and Chewy's Dehydrated Food

For the month of June, I am teaming up with Chewy.com to do a month long food challenge. Both of my dogs will be eating Stella and Chewy's freeze dried food for the entire month, and then I will be posting here a handful of times to let you know how it is going.

First, a little background. Both Koira and Ptera each a rotational diet. Generally, their diet is prey model raw alternated with a decent quality kibble. No kind of strict routine is applied- if I have time and remember, raw food gets defrosted and fed. If I am busy, forget to defrost, or don't have any raw, they eat kibble. So sometimes, they will go a while on one diet or the other. When traveling, I tend to bring along raw for the first night, and kibble or dehydrated raw for the rest of the trip.

Two days' worth of food, bagged by day

Now, I use a handful of different dehydrated and freeze dried treats and foods with my dogs, generally when I get them as samples, but some that I buy for traveling or because my dogs love them. I've never been totally thrilled with dehydrated foods that I've tried, for a variety of reasons, though the dogs always seem to like them well enough.

Koira gets 8 patties, Ptera gets 3 each day

I'm taking a trip this weekend, and while packing dog food, I thought it would be fun to do a quick comparison of the new Stella and Chewy's freeze dried food, and another company's dehydrated food that I have been using when traveling recently. First, the Stella and Chewy's is a much higher percentage of animal products. Almost the entire ingredient list is beef, beef bones, beef heart, beef liver, etc. Since I feed a prey model raw when at home, and don't generally add in fruits or vegetables except as treats or snacks, this suits us great. The other food has a lot of vegetable and fruits added in, which is fine, just farther from what they are used to. 

Alongside the dehydrated food we've been using while traveling, which requires a measuring cup and can be goopy and messy in our travel bowls

Smell wise, the powdered kind we've been using on trips smells more like vegetables and herbs than like meat. The smell might be more pleasant for me, but has made me wonder in the past, since I would expect a more meaty smell from a dog food. The Stella and Chewy's has almost no smell when dry, but when soaked in water, it smells very meaty. I'm not a big fan of the smell, but since it doesn't cling and isn't strong, I don't mind, and I actually like that the food I'm feeding the dogs smells like meat.

Ptera wanted to sneak in for a taste

Overall, with just a few days so far into our month long food trial, I am really liking the Stella and Chewy's food. The dogs seem to enjoy eating it, and I am preferring it to the other dehydrated or freeze dried foods we've tried in the past. It is as easy as kibble (or just slightly more complicated, if I decide to break it up into little bits and soak for 10 minutes before serving), and way easier than whole prey model raw.

I am looking forward to the rest of the month, and seeing how the dogs do going forward.

Mackerel for Dinner

Koira is back on raw food after being on kibble for about 9 months. Her muscle tone just hasn't been what I want it to be, and she has been having a hard time gaining any weight at all, so I put her back on raw in hopes that it helps.

So far, her raw diet is a mix of chicken quarters, beef heart, lamb liver, kidney, and heart, and now, mackerel.

Checking out the bowl.

A local raw feeder purchased some mackerel for her dog, who decided she wouldn't touch the stuff. So I was able to buy 15 pounds of it from her for Koira to try out. Luckily, it seems like Koira is willing to eat them!

Nomming on fish

These guys are small enough that a pound of them is about 7-10 fish. I fed them frozen to Koira because years ago when we did whole (large) sardines, Koira wouldn't touch them if they were thawed, but would eat them frozen.

Lots of effort to get through the frozen fish.

I might try letting them thaw a little, though. They were pretty cold while she was eating them, which she didn't seem to appreciate too much.

Just two left to go.

It took a little encouraging for her to eat these, but once I handed her one, she went to town on them. One by one, she plucked them out of the bowl and enjoyed.

Mackerel is surprisingly bloody.

Althogether, I think Koira is doing really good back on a raw diet. She hasn't gained any weight or muscle tone yet, but it hasn't been very long either. We'll give it some more time and hope she starts picking those up soon.

I really, really love this photo of her for some reason. You can't see it, but she has part of a fish in her mouth right here.

Tasty Tuesday: I and Love and You

At BlogPaws in Las Vegas this year, I met a ton of different people, including bloggers and company representatives. One of the booths that my dogs wouldn't stay away from was the I and Love and You booth, so when I was contacted and asked if I wanted to do a review, of course my answer was yes.

I was sent two products to try. The first one was a bag of their dehydrated raw food.

One pound of this dehydrated food equals ten pounds of prepared food. When trying this food out, Koira got a little more than one cup of the dry food, with water added to fill her bowl. She was seriously a huge fan. She would do a little tap dancing routine while I prepared the food, and seemed heartbroken when I left the food to sit for a little bit and absorb some of the water (though I also fed it immediately a few times with no ill effects). Actually, when I left the food to sit for a few minutes, I would often have to go chase the cats away from it, because both Martha and Theodore Trex apparently loved this food as well.

Overall, I was really pleased with the food, and would certainly use it again. It would be a great food for a raw feeder to use while traveling (way easier than packing frozen meat, since it doesn't require a cooler or anything). And, since this food is available not just online and in high end pet stores, but also at Kroger's stores, it is easy to find and pick up when needed. No need to wait for your online order to ship out to you for your trip. Locally, Kroger's is Fred Meyer, and the store in my town carries a variety of I and Love and You products.

The other product I was sent to try was a Boost-a-Pest flea and tick tag.

The tag has no chemicals and is supposed to work with the dog's natural energy to help repel fleas and ticks. I had Pallo try it out, since it does use a jump ring to attach to a collar, and Koira can't have metal jump rings. The tag itself is small enough that I think it would work just fine on pretty much any size of dog, even really small ones. If I'm being honest, I was skeptical of this tag working, since it seems like some kind of voodoo magic that makes it work. That said, this has been a really bad flea year, and Pallo has always been one of those dogs that seems to get fleas all the time. Go to the park, come home with a flea infestation. Every time. And that hasn't happened recently. It seems like fleas really are staying away from him. And the tag is supposed to work for a full year. Let me tell you, I plan on getting another one in a year, since I really do think it is helping, and seriously, we need whatever help we can get around here during a bad flea year.

Pallo is wearing his flea repelling tag in this photo. It looks just like a standard small tag.

Overall, I am just a big fan of I and Love and You. While they did send me these products for free to try out, all opinions posted here are mine alone, and totally truthful. I highly recommend this company and their products.

Supper Time

This is about what supper time looks like at our house. Not pictured is the cats' bowl with their own chunk of meat.

Last night, everyone got some nice free range, grass fed beef.

Typically of Pallo lately, he refused to eat it. I did win a couple of large bags of high grade kibble at our flyball tournament raffle last weekend, so he got some of that instead. He's been eating kibble the past week since we won those, but I wanted to try him on raw again to see if he would eat it. Nope. Koira and the cats don't have any such issues, though!

Tasty Tuesday: Dog Meat

In this house, dog meat is what I call the meat that is meant for feeding the dogs. I find that I rarely purchase meat for me to make for myself, and yet I regularly purchase huge quantities of meat to feed my dogs and cats. Each of the dogs eats roughly one pound of meat per day, while each cat eats about a half pound. We go through 3 lbs of meat per day or about 90 lbs per month. Crazy.

My freezer is pretty constantly packed full of dog meat. Here it is from last night after I packed in 50 lbs of lamb and beef. I don't have a huge chest freezer- I think this one is the smallest freezer than can even be called a chest freezer, at 3.5 cubic feet. The stats for it say it can hold about 122 lbs of frozen meat, which sounds like a lot until you remember I go through 90 lbs per month.

Yesterday I spent a portion of my evening making various meat deals. I no longer feel at all shady meeting up in random parking lots to transfer bags and boxes of meat into my car- though I certainly get some weird looks sometimes! My favorite local lamb farmer met up with me down at the park so I could pick up lamb liver, kidney, and heart. I feed the hearts as regular meaty meat, and my dogs love it. They also get a meal of liver once every two weeks or so, and kidney every two weeks as well. I really like getting local grass fed liver and kidney for my dogs, since these toxin cleansing organs can be pretty nasty from commercially/conventionally raised animals.

I feed based on the idea that 80% of my dogs' and cats' diets should be meaty meat (as much as possible of that meat being red meat), 10% should be edible bone, 5% should be liver, and 5% other organs. Since these are guidelines over time rather than strict rules for every meal, I tend to thaw out whatever is at the top of the freezer and toss it to the beasts at feeding time- within reason, of course. The white paper wrapped packages in this shot are of boneless beef that I picked up at 10 last night in a Lowes parking lot. When I pull one of them out to feed the beasts, I'll let the whole thing thaw, then cut it into meal sized portions, distribute what is being eaten that day, and stick the other chunks into the fridge to feed through until it is gone.

I do want to add that the package of chicken wings was not purchased for the purpose of feeding the dogs. I got that free, along with a good amount of other chicken, after a family member realized it had been in their freezer past the recommended amounts of time. It is a bit freezer burned, but the dogs and cats don't care. Wings and other small parts like that are not recommended for raw feeding dogs due to their small size making them a choking hazard. But since I have them, I feed them or other boney meat 2-3 meals per week to provide the needed amount of bone in the beasts' diets.

And this last shot is of some lamb kidney from grass raised Oregon lambs, sliced up into smaller pieces. Pallo seems to have an aversion to the texture of both kidney and liver, so the best way to get him to eat his organs is to cut it up into small pieces like this, freeze solid, and then toss to him as treats. I let them freeze like this until solid before tossing them into a zip top bag to be fed to the beasty.

Does anyone else feed their dogs raw? Or have any questions about raw feeding?

Show off that figure!

Well, we are still around in 2013, despite being absent for a week. Today we are back, and participating in the Show Off Your Dog's Waistline Campaign. I am pretty proud of the amazing shape my dogs are in, and think that this is a major issue. So many people think my dogs are too skinny, while they hold on to the leash of a dog who could probably stand to lose 10+ pounds. So many vets don't tell owners when their pets are overweight, or downplay it if they do. I always make a point to ask my vet twice about my dogs' weight. The first time, I ask if their weight is good. She always says yes. Then, I say, "My dogs compete in dog sports, including a lot of running, jumping, twisting, turning, and physical activity. How is their weight for that?". Sometimes, the answer is the same, that they are at a good weight. But, I've had her suggest taking off as much at 5 pounds from the dog she just said a minute ago had great weight! Being athletes changes things, but shouldn't all dogs be kept at the weight that best keeps them safe while running, jumping, and being active?

For a great, short read about dog weight, I will refer you to one of my favorite sports vets and writers, Dr. Zink. Her article Corpulent Canines is a great easy to read article about the weight we keep our dogs at, in sports and in conformation, and how those may affect the dogs.

Here are my dogs. Pallo, as a corgi mix, has a naturally stockier build than many dogs. His bones are thick, his skin is thick, and while he is technically short haired, he has plenty of fur on there too.

From the side, Pallo has a very obvious tuck up behind the ribs. His ribs are not visible, but can be easily felt. His shoulders, back, and rear are well muscled and defined.



From the top, Pallo has only a slight waist. His hips are obviously wider, but he doesn't have a big dip in. His spine is not sticking out, and his ribs are not visible. This is appropriate for a dog of his coat and build.



Koira is leaner and more muscular in build. Her bones are thinner, her skin is thinner, and her coat is near non existent. Yes, if a lab looked like this, it would be severely underweight. For Koira, this is perfect weight. I might even try to put a bit more muscle on her.

From the side, Koira has a defined tuck up. (It was cold outside when we took the pictures, so she was hunching a little bit from cold.) Most of her ribs are slightly visible. Her muscles are outlined and defined, though she could use some additional muscle definition. Tendons are visible stretching across the outside of her ribs.


From the top, Koira has a visible waist. Her ribs are visible, but not sticking out (I will say again, though, that she was cold, so her ribs are a bit more sticky-out than they would otherwise be). Her spine is visible but not protruding. Her muscles are well defined. For a dog of her coat and build, this is an appropriate active weight.


To keep my dogs in this condition, I do a lot of things. We go out for a few hours at a time at least three times per week. We go to flyball practice at least once a week. Swimming, dock diving, lure coursing, skijoring, disc, hiking, and general off leash play are all part of our physical routine.

I feed my dogs accordingly for the amount of exercise they are getting. Spending a full weekend at a flyball tournament? The dogs get extra helpings of nutrient and calorie dense hearts, as well as additional snacks like dried meat jerky and raw or hard boiled eggs, on top of their regular raw meals. Spending a week sitting at home while I'm working a lot? The dogs will get just the base raw meals, with a balance of meat, organ, and bone.

The most important thing to make this work is that I look at and feel my dogs on a regular basis. I make sure they are in good muscle condition and that they are not gaining too much fat. Relying on a scale for my dogs is tricky, because my dogs can gain a lot of poundage in muscle if we are doing some really active training and conditioning. Three pounds gain of fat would be bad, but a three pound gain in muscle (or more) has happened more than once with these guys, and I would certainly not want to cut back their food because of the number on the scale!

The best example I can give of this is that, when I adopted Pallo, he weighed in at the vet at just over 25 pounds. He had no waist and was visibly chubby. He was around 9 months old then. He has since lost a lot of fat and gained a lot of muscle. Pallo is the same height (within an inch) as when I adopted him, but now weighs 37 pounds of healthy muscle!

So, anyone else have some dog waists to share?

Tasty Tuesday: Lamb bones

I found a great local supplier. She raises lamb on pasture, with no added grain, no antibiotics, no hormones. And, she is willing to sell bones, heart, liver, and kidney for great prices! All of the products are human grade too, which makes me feel awesome about feeding it to my dogs. I'm never comfortable feeding them things that aren't okay for humans.

Meaty meaty lamb bones

I generally don't buy any items that are simply called "bones" because I am a believer that all bone should be accompanied by a large amount of meat. These lamb bones, though, are awesome. They have a thick layer of meat on most of them, and fed as part of a meal made up of liver or kidney or hearts, they provide a decent amount of chewing work.

Koira always chews up her bones really carefully, spending lots of time on them. This is MUCH better than what some dogs do, which is gulping down the chunks as fast as possible. Gulpers are more likely to have problems like choking or blockages because they just try to shove the food in as fast as possible.

Plus, it is nice to just be able to occupy my dogs for a good 20+ minutes just with feeding them their breakfast. This particular bone session was preceded by a half pound of liver each. The liver was sucked down in a few minutes with a few chews. Pallo even likes this grass-raised lamb liver, though he turns his nose up at all other kinds of liver, or organs in general. It must taste good even to him!

And, for those bone scraps small enough that I worry about giving them to the dogs- into the crock pot to make stock! Home made stock or broth is really the only way to go, and I've found that using stock like this to freeze into cubes is a great treat for the dogs, and encourages them to drink more water if I toss some in their water bowl at events. And, with making it myself, I don't have to worry about excessive sodium or all those sneaky added chemicals and ingredients like onion.