I took two girls, Pink and Purple and two boys, Yellow and Olive, over to a friends house yesterday to visit her and her two dogs. They even better than I’d hoped! Immediately upon setting them down they were all over the place checking the new house out and greeting the strange dogs. I at least expected them to pause when I first set them down. But no, it was high gear the whole way. It took a while for my friend’s dogs to warm up to the puppies. But when they did it was great watching them play.

If you are going to switch your pup from raw to dry I would start by just adding a little dry food as a third meal. Then start adding a little at the beginning of the other two meals, your pup will not be as hungry for the raw food and you can gradually start fading it out. I recommend using a brand of dry food that is grain free, that has two or more meats as the first ingredients and has 30% or higher protein level. That is the closest dry food can get to raw. Orijen, Core by Wellness, EVO, Taste of The Wild, Go! Natural and Barking at The Moon by Solid Gold are a few good ones.
There is a wonderful resource that publishes a list of the best dry foods each year. The Whole Dog Journal is definitely worth subscribing to! http://www.whole-dog-journal.com

I also recommend that you continue your pup on Nuvet Plus, a nutritional supplement. If you feed raw it is not such a big deal but if you feed dry food then pup will be sure of getting the live vitamins and minerals that he needs. I have been bugging the Nuvet director I talk to get more information in print about the fact that the supplement is cold processed. That is what convinced me to use this supplement over others. Heat kills live goodness and live nutrition is what living creatures need for optimum health. When I learned that Nuvet was a cold processed supplement I knew that their wonderfully impressive list of ingredients would actually be helping my dogs. I knew it would also be something that I could wholeheartedly recommend to others. I will be uploading a page to my website about Nuvet in the near future. Till then you can check out their website at www.nuvet.com. I include information and a sample in each puppies care package.

The pups are given one conventional worming. The rest of the time I use a natural chemical free wormer called Diatomaceous Earth (food grade only of course!). It works by mechanical means, cutting the soft skin of the parasite so they dry out and die and then get eliminated by the host animal. This website has a wealth of information on this product and its many uses. http://wolfcreekranch1.tripod.com/defaq.html

I try to keep vaccines to a minimum, since I believe they do more harm than good.  The only vaccines my Airedales are given is rabies, as required by law. I strongly recommend that the puppies be kept on a no vaccine or limited vaccine regime. I do urge that if vaccines are to be given that they be given singly and at least two weeks apart.

The pups are doing wonderfully. It’s easy to forget that they are dogs. The cold has settled back in but it doesn’t faze them a bit. I was worried about them the other night, it was cold and the wind was howling. That was till I went out to check and found them romping around outside like it was mid summer! I gave them some hay to snuggle in and went to bed reassured. I make sure their food is warm of course. But otherwise they don’t need any special help with the cold. Just a draft free bed. I went out to give them an early lunch today and they were all outside snoozing in the sun in their little slide fort. It was 5 degrees out.

The puppies are six weeks old. They will be eight weeks old on February 10th. If all goes well they should be ready to be picked up any time after that.

I have been asked about food by many of you. Please bear with me if you’ve heard this before. Of course my desire would be for you all to continue feeding your puppy a raw diet. But I realize that not all of you can. I will cover raw feeding first and dry food second, I have been doing a lot of research and now have some recommendations in that area.
There are as many opinion about raw feeding as there are people to ask.  On the whole though they all agree that it is a good idea. My philosophy is, use common sense and listen to your dog. I feed meat and vegetables. Some people say dogs should have only meat, but I listen to my dogs and they really like getting veggies. In fact the only vegetables my guys don’t like are potatoes and tomatoes. But I’ve heard of Airedales that like even those. Their favorite veggies are carrots and corn on the cob. I feed my dogs raw meaty bones and a veggie-ground meat mash, with recreational bones and whole veggies thrown in as a treat when I have them. They get fed once a day in the evening and have a water or broth fast once a week. A puppy would not be fasted till they were over a year old.
Any books by authors Ian Billinghurst, Kymythy Schultze, Tom Lonsdale and Carina Beth MacDonald are good for learning more about feeding raw. Carina MacDonald’s Raw Dog Food is the best for newcomers. This website also has lots of good information. http://www.dearjubilee.com/diet/diet.html
I feed my guys as much of a variety as I can get my hands on. They get beef, chicken, turkey, pork, rabbit, and venison. I am planning on adding mutton to the mix if they like it. Oh and organ meat, heart, liver, kidney, stomach, lung, just about anything of that sort. They love it! Raw meaty bones can be a bit hard to get one’s mind around at first. I know I had trouble. The big question is, just what is meant by “raw meaty bone”? This site is wonderful for answering that question. http://www.rawfeddogs.net/Recipe/List A picture is definitely worth a thousand words.
There are many different places to get raw meat. The grocery store is the first place that comes to mind. It can also be pretty expensive. Watch sales and put a bunch in your freezer when you seen a good deal, just like you would if you were shopping for yourself. Don’t only shop at the meat counter, see if you can talk to the deli manager, some stores cut their own meat. Our local store does, I talked to the manager and they are giving me all the beef scrap I want for free. They would just throw it out otherwise. It is not bad in the least, it is the trimmings from human grade meat. Another option is to find a butcher or a farmer who raises his own meat critters. Ask what they do with their undesirables, tell them you’ll take it off their hands. If you word things just right you can really good deals. If you know someone who hunts tell them you’ll take all the parts they don’t want. I doubt you could get anyone to let go of antlers, but if you could dogs just adore chewing on antlers! They don’t go bad or look nasty either!
Co-ops are another good place to look. Here is one for those of us in the New England area,
pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/NERFS/
If you live outside of New England this yahoo group will help you find the co-op nearest you,
pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/rawfeeding/
This group is great have in your back pocket, there is vast experience on this list, both with raw and dry food. I would urge you to join no matter what you plan on feeding
pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ADTnutrition/
There are also companies that sell raw food, some sell plain ol’ raw meaty bones, bulk or singly and some sell premade mixes. Oma’s Pride sells both and they have the best prices.
www.omaspride.com/products.htm#bbvl
Bravo! is a company that only sells ground meat or mixes. I like my meat to be a close to the critter as possible but some people might be more comfortable with a more packaged product. Bravo! would be a good way to go or Oma’s mixes.
www.bravorawdiet.com/index.html
There are a few other companies, The Honest Kitchen & Nature’s Variety being two of them, though I nearly choked when I saw their prices!
www.naturesvariety.com/ & www.thehonestkitchen.com/index.shtml
I was doing some research the other night and found that feeding raw can cost less than high quality dry food even for the average family. Like learning to drive a car there is a learning curve but once you know how and figure out your resources it becomes just as easy.
Regardless of what you choose to feed you will need to have some raw food on hand for your pup. I do not feed any dry food so you will need to make the switch if you are going to. I would have enough on hand to take at least a week changing over. These pups have been eating beef, chicken thighs & legs, chicken, turkey & rabbit organs and venison. I will be able to send you home with a little bit of frozen meat if you need. The Bravo site has a handy little calculator for gauging how much raw food to feed at different ages. www.bravorawdiet.com/howmuch.html I would use it for a starting place then watch your dog and go from there. Right now I am feeding the puppies as much as they want twice a day. I keep trying to feed them three times a day but they are not hungry for it.

We will be right back after these messages! (The message being, I’m heading off to bed! Have a good night folks!)