December Raw Diet Update

Luna's energy levels have been fine while she's been eating raw foods. However, one day we did not feed her raw foods, and her energy levels went through the roof.

To make a somewhat long story short, Luna had a couple episodes of empty-stomach, nighttime vomiting (hork...hork...hork...dog owners should know what I'm talking about). We figured that it was induced by the fact that raw meats pass out of the dog's stomach much quicker than kibble. However, to be on the safe side, we gave her chicken and white rice for a day. Her energy levels rocketed sky high! We have never seen her that hyper before. We took her out at about 9:20PM, and she was tearing through the yard. Every now and then she'd jump about a foot into the air. When you're less than a foot at the withers and less than two feet long, a 1 foot vertical jump is pretty big! She would also take flying leaps of about two to three feet as well, ripping up grass in between flights. Our theory is that the carbohydrates in the rice were responsible. After reverting to the normal raw diet, her energy levels seem to calm down as well.

I also note that after feeding her the bland diet for one day, her stomach felt a good bit bigger than when she's being fed raw. It has been a couple of days since we fed her bland, and her stomach has gone back to normal size.

She had a vet visit on the 12th to get her rabies vaccination. The vet also noted that her ears were great! This is a very good sign, because ear infections/issues were something we had targeted for elimination via raw diet.

We have seen many DIY feeders giving their dogs supplements of fish oil and vitamin E. We're trying to stay away from supplements if possible, so we are giving Luna fish on Fridays (Catholic dog? No, just easy to remember), which should supply her with omega 3 fatty acids and some vitamin E. We are also going to feed her an uncooked egg for lunch on Sundays. The packaging for our eggs says that one contains 25% recommended human daily value of vitamin E, which should be more than plenty for a little dog like Luna. Egg also contains lots of other nutrients; combined with a little bit of liver (which has virtually everything) every day, we think she'll do fine.