If you are driving along and see a sign for Buffalo meat, or any kind of meat where someone might raise livestock and butcher their own, pull in and ask what they do with parts they don't sell. You will be surprised at what all you can get for FREE with creative thinking (and begging) LOL. A wide variety of raw meaty bones and organs is what you want and this way of feeding does not have to break the bank and in fact should be cheaper then high end so called quality kibbles.

While I am in the group of people who agree that dogs do not need carbohydrates, I do feed them on occasion if I don't have anything thawed out or just feel like it! This happens maybe once or twice a month. I get a canister of Quaker oats and cook it, throw in a dozen eggs and a little bit of raw honey and serve that up to my gang. They love it! Keep in mind I have 6 Danes when you hear these amounts! I also buy bags of cheap pasta every now and then and cook it up and mix in a few cans of  Salmon or Mackerel.

 So, while raw foods do not pose a threat of e-coli or salmonella poisoning to dogs who eat the raw diet as a sole diet, raw foods CAN cause problems if it is forced to sit in the gut with kibble waiting on it to digest. This is why vets will tell you to never feed raw food to your dog.  So you want to be sure your dogs system is empty before you start feeding raw meaty bones!

 For the first week or so, you will want to feed just chicken backs. Nothing else. I don't recommend starting dogs on leg quarters for a couple of reasons. One is that they might not chew the food as well as they should at first and leg bones that are not chewed well will take longer to digest. It may cause an upset stomach. Backs are smaller bones and even if they aren't chewed up very well, they will break down quicker then a leg bone will. The idea here is to go slow and give the body time to adjust to this new exciting way of eating. By only feeding chicken for the first week or two you are giving the body time to adjust. Once you have done this and things are going well and stools are normal, you can try a new meal or add liver or heart in small amounts (slice) to the chicken meal, then back to chicken for the next 2 to 3 days. Watch your dog when he goes out to potty, this is what will tell you if everything is going well. Keep doing this regimen until you have slowly introduced most of everything you are planning on feeding. By introducing things slowly it gives you control of all the variables. If your dog is doing fine and then you try something new and he gets loose stools or vomits, you will know exactly what did not sit well with him and you can eliminate that particular food from the diet for a couple of weeks and try it again.

 Organ meats will not be fed as an entire meal. You won't ever be dishing out 2 or 4 pounds of organ meat at once. When you feed organ meats, you will feed smaller amounts with the chicken meal or other meal. We feed organ meat 3 or 4  times a week. Examples: Slice of beef liver with a meal, Small chunk of beef kidney with a meal. etc.

 Amounts: This can get tricky. Some websites say to feed 2 to 3% of the body weight of your dog however I find that this is not what usually works for most just as a bag of kibble comes up with X amount of cups per weight, it is just a base estimate as all dogs are different and metabolize food differently. Some run with their owners daily while others lay on the couch most of their lives so the best way to get your amounts down is trial and error. So lets say you have a medium to large breed dog.  4 or 5 chicken backs would probably be a good amount to start with. If your dog starts to lose to much weight, feed more, starts to get fat, feed less! Easy! Judge your amounts by body condition. My Danes get 6 or 7 backs, or 2 or 3 large leg quarters, when I feed fish, they get 2 cans and a sweet potato. When I feed ground meats it is usually 2 pounds and a large sweet potato.  I feed my adults once a day. Some people want to feed twice a day. This is all up to you and for you to figure out what works best for your schedule and your individual dogs.

 Some dogs who have eaten kibble for a very long time have no idea what to do with a piece of raw chicken. They know it is interesting, they know they want it, but they are not exactly sure what to do. Some dogs will try to hide it, bury it and dig it back up over and over. If you have one of these dogs who will not eat the chicken right away, don't worry! Most dogs will eventually eat it. I believe the best way to handle it is to offer the bowl of food and if it is not eaten with in 20 minutes take it and put it away and offer it again in a few hours. You may have to do this several times. Do NOT give in and feed something else. It is human nature to want our dogs to eat but please be patient here. It will not harm your dog to go a day or even 2 without any food at all. They will eat it and most likely love it once they do. Very important. DON'T GIVE IN or DON'T GIVE UP! Don't break it into smaller pieces, don't beg them to eat! Don't set the bowl down and stare at them! Set the bowl down with confidence and love and walk away. Dogs pick up vibes and if you are nervous or cautious they will be nervous and cautious too. So set the bowl down and walk away. If you want to watch from around the corner or whatever, that is fine. Most dogs just dig right in and don't care about any of this, but I think it is important to share this info incase you have one of these dogs who is a bit harder to convert to raw! If you start breaking it up for them, they will expect it and they will also not chew as they need to. No coddling necessary. If you beg/baby your dog to much he might really enjoy that extra attention and start playing you like a fiddle! Things will move along a lot faster if you skip the mushy, poor baby act! hehehe!

   Most cases of diarrhea can be cured with a sweet potato. Baked, peeled and mashed in a meal. The sweet potato is also good for constipation. If you see a lot of loose stools try removing the fat and skin from the chicken for a few days and see if that helps.

 A run of loose stools and I am not talking about diarrhea could mean that you need more bone in the diet. Try some leg quarters for a few days.

 Dry poop means you need more muscle meat/ground meat/less bone for a few days will straighten that out. When I say dry, I mean DRY. I will never forget the first time I saw one of my dogs taking a poo and when it hit the ground it was DUST and an actual plume of dust rose from it! I was on the phone is 2 seconds freaked out about that one! HA, Just a little more muscle meat needed to cure that one! I'll tell you when you go from big mushy huge piles in the yard to watching what looks like dirt clods falling out of your dog, its more then amazing!

 If you have tried for 3 days to get your dog to eat chicken backs when you first start this diet and they still won't give in, try cooking it just a tad. Basically throw it in a hot pan and flip it over a couple of times real fast and serve it again. Don't cook it long enough to cook the bone at all, just warmed enough to bring out more flavor. Some people have had luck doing that and also by sprinkling a bit of garlic salt on it. If 3 days have passed you are pretty much free to try sprinkling anything on the food to make it more appealing. If this works, which it usually does... just slowly do less and less to it until it is back to regular raw again. But again, I don't suggest doing this unless it is day 3. You need to give the dog every chance and opportunity to take the food as planned. RAW!

 Last but not least... If you have a vet that is 100% against feeding the raw diet, Find a new one! You can still use your current vet for some things, but it is always a good idea to have a vet on your side with the diet. Holistic vets are in every state! You can find one in your state here: http://www.ahvma.org/referral/index.html

 If your current vet is anti raw, you will find that he or she will readily blame any and everything on what you are feeding. You need someone in your corner! Seek out a vet who is open to the raw diet and limited vaccination protocols and you and your dog will be happy campers!

 Good Luck!