Hi Deb! Here is what I wrote to a friend's sister recently: Raw feeding your dog is not difficult, contrary to what you may read on some web sites, where ultra-high maintenance type people act like it is rocket science. Think about it, we feed ourselves pretty well so why can't we feed our dogs without a doctor okay or pet food company okay? It's all marketing! To start a newbie dog out, put down an old towel or plastic mat - I use a vinyl outdoor tablecloth - and give her a chicken leg. I warm up chicken pieces in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes since Odo doesn't like it cold out of the fridge. See how she reacts. If she doesn't pick it up or looks unsure what to do, pick up one end of it and hold it up to her to sniff and encourage her to eat it. if she is a food gulper, you might have to hold the end and get her to eat it more slowly. don't be afraid, dogs can swallow much larger things than we can. You do want to supervise any feeding of meaty bones, just in case the dog swallows too much and tries to hork it back up. �Sometimes a dog will do that. If Odo is hungry and excited, he might swallow too big a piece. He will hork it up and break it into more manageable pieces. Ideally, the dog will crunch the bone and scissor the meat and skin into pieces they can manage to swallow. Dogs don't really chew - they don't have molars. If she doesn't want to eat a chick leg, cut the meat off for her instead. If she is not accustomed to eating bones, you can feed her other raw food and meat-and-veg table scraps. You can also buy premade raw meat patties that contain ground bone, but this premade stuff is expensive. You can make your own patties and freeze them. �I did that in the beginning. Now I just give Odo the stuff separately. The ideal raw diet is mostly meat, bones, organ meats, eggs - dogs can eat egg shells too, cooked veggies, raw veggies. Don't feed garlic and absolutely no onion, which is deadly for dogs. Here is a list of food I feed Odo: Chicken legs, wings, necks Beef meaty bones Ground meats Turkey necks Pork chop bones Eggs - Odo doesn't like raw eggs unless they are mixed into a meat patty. i will give him scrambled egg when we eat them. Cooked veggie scraps like squash, green beans, broccoli, carrot, sweet potato, asparagus - whatever you are having. Feed starchy vegs like sweet potato and carrots sparingly since they are high in calories. Raw lettuces - Odo like this with salad dressing, he won't eat it plain! Dogs do have their likes and dislikes just like we do! Organ meats like liver - this is very nutritious but very rich. Try tiny portions first. Red meat like beef is richer than poultry, so start with small amounts. Regarding doggy taste buds - they do appreciate tasty stuff like we do, so sometimes when Odo looks longingly at our aromatic grilled meat, I'll do something extra like rub his raw chicken in my plate juices (after dinner!) or put a little cooking juice or broth on it. Dogs don't need grains. Dogs don't need dairy so don't feed yogurt or cheese, even though, like us, dogs love all that. Meat and bones should be 80 percent or more of what you feed. Dogs notoriously get sick with the runs when introduced to new foods. So introduce one new food at a time, a small amount at a time. Keep a can of unsweetened pumpkin onhand - it helps with diarrhea. If you give your dog bones that she gnaws on but doesn't eat up, that's okay. Some bones may be too hard for her to break. In fact, many raw feeders give their dogs bones that are too large for the purpose of gnawing on, which is good for the teeth, gums and jaw, and keeps the dog occupied in something that wild canines do. Just be sure to supervise, train her to keep bones in one place so she doesn't carry raw bones all over the house. Don't feed any commercial treats, edible bone treats, and absolutely no rawhide products. These are bad for dogs. For treats, those dried chicken breast pieces are good, and Kong toys stuffed with ground meat/egg mixtures (maybe a touch of peanut butter), then freeze the Kong. it will take her a while to work the stuff out. Odo is 20 lbs and he eats 2 chicken legs worth for dinner, and doesn't like to eat breakfast, just a couple of treats during the day. Best of luck!

Dear Ruthieg, Yes, the foods are mostly soy protien but with enough whey(milk)concentrate to make the amino acids complimentary. That's why I was so impressed.They have very high quality protien but are solow in carbs, sugars and calories. But they are expensive. I became a distributor to get them at cost. But they are still high. So that's why I am looking for similar foods at more realistic prices. Faith www.faithandrewsbedford.com

Wildchild has a few valid points actually. Women eat too many carbs which is why we gain the weight so easily. Men tend to eat more protien. It's just the way we are. Complex carbs are better for you in that they have way more fiber and fill you up faster. It's okay to eat the white stuff, you just have to be careful how much white stuff you eat. Yes, Asians do eat white rice and yes I've seen a LOT of fat Asians. Trust me on that one! They don't eat a lot of potatoes, or white bread. They eat servings of rice and servings of noodles. Not big humungous super sizes of these things, that we tend to do. They eat smaller portions more often through the day. Which is what we should be doing. Instead of just breakfast, lunch and supper, (3 big meals) have smaller meals and break it into six meals a day. Eat until satisfied, not full and certainly not stuffed. Eat off of a smaller plate, it looks fuller and after a while you won't notice your serving size has shrunk. Read the packages for fat content, and more so: salt content. I don't eat anything that has more than 10% of my daily allowance of salt. Watch the fat free foods. Fat is replaced with sugar so you want to weigh in what's best for you. Fat or sugar? Muscle weighs exactly the same as fat. A pound is a pound is a pound. BUT, it takes less muscle to make that pound than it does fat. You know one rock can weigh a pound, but a room full of feathers is what it takes to make a pound. Same idea. I've been on WW's for over a year. I learned one thing from them that you don't need to spend much money one (like I did). Buy a few Diabetic magazines. Read their articles. Weight Watchers leans very much towards a diabetics diet. Whole grains, heart healthy foods, exercise, sleep.

Great post, it was hard to find on Google! As you may see, I'm currently scouring the net for more info on CKD food. I'm constantly on the look out for CKD food for my stage 1 CKD kitty. I couldn't feed her the chicken hills science diet k/d because it contains sugar. I can't feed her royal canin ckd because she refuses to eat it. So far I have her on weruva slide n serve brat pack chicken & lamb because it is the lowest phosphorous (wet) at around 15% (you can find all their nutritional information on their website) but the dry matter is quite high at around 80% and Tanya's CKD suggests a dry matter of around 50%. While both my senior cats love it (my ckd cat is around 16 the other is around 14-15) I feel like maybe I should look for a lower phosphorus one for my ckd cat. I ordered Tanya's CKD food guide book off Amazon recently and look forward to checking it out once it arrives. This thread was a very helpful, informative read and it took me forever to find, I stumbled upon it by accident. Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed and God bless you and your kitties. I'd like to mention that before switching to Weruva (and now still on the search for another healthy kind) my cats both USED to eat the CKD Royal Canin food, both wet "E" (they only like pate) and the hypoallergenic dry (which has soy in it, that's why I stopped feeding it to them) and they did horrible on it. My CKD cat kept throwing up, wailing every night, refused to eat, was always miserable, had intense muscle wasting, and just slept a lot and drank a ton of water and peed like crazy. My healthy cat, who is usually quite active, had really poor energy levels and would get exhausted too easily. After taking them off that food they're doing a million times better. My healthy cat has more energy, and my CKD cat has a better appetite, pees and drinks a bit less, is brighter and more active and mobile, more affectionate and friendly, and only wails when she's hungry lol shes still stage 1 so currently no supplements and I can be a bit liberal with her food choices (still want low phosphorus!! I'm not risking feeding her a high phosphorus food) but I do worry down the line about what I'll feed her in the future. For now, I'm comfortable feeding her low phosphorus and moderate protein non-prescription foods from reputable companies that are good quality and I agree that I'd much rather have cat eating and happy on a non CKD diet than miserable and suffering on a CKD vet diet. For now, she seems ok and I will keep monitoring her blood tests. I don't know what the future holds in terms of her nutrition though. Best of luck to you guys and kitties. God bless. Also have you heard of biotin in cat food interfering with blood test results? I need to do more research into that!