It's Not Easy Being Green

Since we decided to forgo feeding Roxie kibble almost six months ago in favor of a home-cooked diet, we also decided to see how she do with frozen raw food. We got a great opportunity to do so when we found out that Aunt Jeni's had a coupon for some free samples. Our samples came last week and the first one we had Roxie try was the lamb. It was actually harder than I thought it would be to give my dog ~RAW~ meat, what with concerns of it upsetting her stomach or giving her salmonella and so on. But Roxie not only wolfed down the lamb concoction, but she also ate a raw chicken neck. I'm happy to report that she had no digestive upset from this experiment. She in fact, seemed to really enjoy it. So, over the next couple of days, she was allowed to finish the rest of the one pound container of the lamb recipe and had a few more chicken necks. Again, she seemed not to have any problems with those meals.

After a few days eating some of the home-cooked stuff I had thawing for her in the fridge, we decided to go ahead and try the container of the turkey recipe that we got from Aunt Jeni's. I felt slightly more wary of this because it was poultry, and raw poultry at that, albeit frozen raw poultry. But I think what took me aback was its appearance:


It's GREEN!!!
(Personally, I think my cooking looks way better!!)

Roxie didn't seem to be bothered by it and she wolfed it down just as she had the lamb. I'm not so sure about it. I still have reservations of feeding her raw poultry, mostly the safe handling of it. So I'm thinking that if we decide to use frozen raw food in the future, we may just stick with the red meats. Why bother at all? Well, I think that occasionally feeding this would give Roxie more variety in her diet, which is definitely important to make sure that she gets the all-important balance over time of the proper nutrients that she needs. This particular brand of frozen raw uses some ingredients that I haven't given to Roxie yet -- almonds, papaya, alfalfa sprouts, celery, among others -- so it does bring some variety to the mix. And many of these frozen raw prepared diets are already completely balanced, so I don't have to add any supplements. Plus, if I haven't had time to get to the store or cook up a batch of food for Roxie, it's easy to pull this out of the freezer and thaw it for a meal. At this point, I don't think I'm going to go entirely frozen raw for Roxie, but I do think that we'll incorporate it into her diet occasionally so that she gets a good variety of foods. And she likes it and seems to do well on it so for now, why not?