Luna's Raw Diet Starts Anew

That Luna, she's got a lot of heart.



...dehydrating in the garage at 125 degrees F, since 6 PM yesterday.

A few weeks before Pearl was born, we switched Luna over to high quality canned food, then eventually to high quality dry food. We did this because we wanted to eliminate possibilities for Pearl to catch food-borne illness from Luna's licks, which were and sometimes still are quite plenty. After we stopped the raw diet, we did deep cleanings of the house.

Mostly we were concerned with Luna's fondness for licking faces, but now that she has been with Pearl for 4 months, she knows that licking Pearl's face means getting swatted. Sometimes I'll put her right to her face to see what she'll do, and Luna will sniff and turn her face away. "I must flee temptation!"

I also started to cut the contents of a bag labeled "Organs" but when I offered some to Luna, she sniffed and turned away. I'm not quite sure what organ it is, nor am I sure what animal it came from, but it did have a bit of an "off" odor to it. I just figured it was the normal smell of an animal product which we never buy for ourselves, but I guess Luna decided that she didn't want it.

I've decided that from now on, I will dehydrate all organ meats for Luna. It's a bit of work every time I have to dehydrate, but I think it's much more convenient after that. Undehydrated organs can only stay unthawed for so long before they start getting gross. Dehydrated organ pieces stay in the freezer - I can take a piece out and give it to Luna and don't have to go through the hand washing process that I do with undehydrated (I still do rinse though). Also, if the power were to go out for an extended period of time, dehydrated organs will be much less likely to go bad. Related to this is that dehydrated organs are MUCH more convenient for travel.

(I don't believe there's as much nutrient loss from dehydration. This is also why I dehydrated at such a low temperature, for meats.)

Of course, I do realize that heart is closer to a muscle meat than an organ, so I will have to dig through our chest freezer and attempt to find some liver, the best multivitamin a dog can get. We will be in the vicinity of one of the big Asian grocery stores this weekend, so we'll be able to stock up there, if I can't find liver already in our possession.

Luna's in for some treats the next couple of months. We have the usual chicken leg quarters, but we also have duck feet, goat pieces, whole sardines, and one gutted/skinned rabbit.