Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat

Hi Holly!

Dehydrating can killl bacteria and/or prevent multipliying, but some can live through it if you dont dehydrate enough.

But! How are you planing to dehydrate the meat? One way is by temperature (i.e. I dehydrated hot dogs for treats on 150°C, and it took hours!!), and the other way I can think of atm is drying by breeze of air (im sorry, i cant think of better word atm).

Drying by temperature is easy, and its basically cooking, since you have to use high temp (higher than 100°C that is). And have in mind that anyway most bacteria die at temperatures higher than 70°C, so you might as well cook the meat in the water.

Drying by air is much more difficult and it takes a lot of time, so I dont think its worth it, unless you normally dry meat for yourself. Drying by air would probably need some salt too.

Nice puppy you got there!

Is he a dutchy?

I don't know how safe raw is for dogs with a compromised immune system.  What I do know is that different types of bacteria can stand different things - I currently work in a neuroscience lab, but have a decent background in endocrinology and animal nutrition (majored in both for my master's degree), so maybe I can help a bit.  Freezing and dehydrating will kill a lot of bacteria, but there are still some that will survive those processes - really, only cooking will kill almost everything (and it will kill everything harmful so long as you cook it at temperatures above 160 F).  A combination of two processes really, really does the trick, if you're looking for the best way.

With freezing, if you can possibly do this, freezing the meat at a temperature lower than what normal freezers can handle will help.  Around -80 degrees C will kill a lot more.  The only way I can see this happening for normal folks is to have a cooler and use dry ice.  Dry ice will reach that temperature in the cooler plus the release of CO2 (which is all dry ice is) will actually help kill more bacteria than just normal freezing alone.  This works really great for bones, which shouldn't be cooked.

I unfortunately do not know very much about how dehydrating affects bacteria survival, but like I said above, if you combine it with another method, I think you should be ok.

However...if there's any concern, I would just cook everything and just not worry about it...which defeats the purpose of raw. :/  

Dakota also did not have chemo (he did not have OSA) and I didn't put him on any special diet right away. However, I did change him to a grain-free kibble. Then several months ago I moved him over to Honest Kitchen. And I must sing the praises of Tracy because I knew how she fed Maggie and I sent her at least 40,000 PMs that she graciously answered, guiding me to what I'm doing now. Which is a little bit of everything. Sometimes I mix the Honest Kitchen with a good kibble. But mostly I'm mixing it with raw meats. The dog who doesn't like food now likes food. Embark is really the only one D loves, though he likes Preference ok. The one with the quinoa in it--oh my dog don't even let him see the box! He hates that one!

I'm buying ground beef and turkey to mix in. I will branch out, but this is what I can do right now in terms of commitment.

The bulldog monkeybutt, the one who would eat a shingle if you put jam on it, of course loves it all. I hoped Honest Kitchen would cut down on her poop production...alas, it has not. She still poops about 4 to 6 times a day (yes, yes she does) but at least it's easy to clean up.

My only complaint about Honest Kitchen is how it gets all over the walls with the slobs I have. Anyone else have that problem, or am I the only one with slobs?

Shari

Tracy, I asked a question here a few months ago about how long it takes for dogs to digest. I mentioned that Evelyn poops all the time. Dr. Pam said (and I think this is a direct quote), "Bullies are big poopers." So no matter how I mix it, she craps her brains out. That's about the nicest way I can say it. She poops about every time she sets foot out of the house. She will poop at 7 a.m. and at 11 p.m and every time in between. (Yesterday she went out and pooped; 30 minutes later my husband and I walked her to the mailbox and he asked why I was taking a plastic bag. Let's just say he lost the bet.)

I do mix the food so that it's pretty thick, but they snort and flick it all over the wall. It's ok. It could be worse. It could be poop, for instance.

Shari

I feed our girl Honest Kitchen Embark with Orijen kibble. I mixed in raw ground beef or turkey for a while but swapped to canned Evo 95%. I'm going to start to include fresh raw again. She did fine with the Embark through her chemo. She loooves her nosh. She's waking me up earlier every morning to get her first meal!

joanne & TWP lylee