Day 5 of a diet including raw

[shingigz]

Male long-haired Chihuahua, 6 lbs, age 2 years and 8 months.

I have started giving him three Natures Menu Raw nuggets (venison variety) for his middle meal of the day.  I feed him three times a day, six hours apart.  His other two meals are currently Barking Heads wet and Lily's Kitchen wet (NOT the organic variety, which contains carrageenan and has made him suffer  ).

At the moment, he is doing well, and I will update if things change and if I observe anything unusual.  If he continues to do well I will keep him on this regimen.  I don't intend for him to be fully on raw nuggets, as I like him to have a variety of nutrients and foods.

He enjoys the raw food, and has had no adverse reactions.  His poos have changed to: less frequent, firmer, drier, smaller, crumblier and odourless.

I have noticed that he appears tired after his raw meal, and goes off to bed for a nap, but he has only had four days of part-raw so far, so I don't know if there is a link and I am not concerned about it anyway.

I weigh him daily, and he is gaining a bit (now over 6 lbs 3 oz already), so I have cut down on the amount of the other two (wet) meals.

I noticed that after Day 2 he was shedding a lot of hair (for him) on his back end and back legs.  This could be the recent warm weather, but I have had him for 16 months and have not seen this before, even in the long hot summer of 2018.   He has previously shed lightly all year round, but now I am combing out clumps.

[Tinyplanets]

Not sure about the moulting.  My dog mostly eats raw but she hardly sheds at all. She never has really. I rarely find a single hair.

[shingigz]

It could be the weather, I suppose.  I'm just making observations at the moment and trying not to make any assumptions.  If I hadn't changed his diet, I would still have been very surprised to see this level of moulting.  He is certainly looking well in every way and somebody commented on this today.  I did bathe him the other day though!

His diet was riddled with carrageenan for a few months, which caused havoc with his digestion, and this ended recently so he is definitely on the up, healthwise.

[shingigz]

Day 12

The extra moulting was short-lived and only lasted a few days.  His bowel movements are once per meal, still tiny, dryish and not smelly.

He has had no issues whatsoever with the changeover, and I must say he eats the raw nuggets at lightning speed.  He has three nuggets per meal and I 'cut' them with the back of a spoon into four sections and spread them all out, but this doesn't slow him down much.

He's back on two meals per day now (8 - 9 am, and 7 pm).  Wet food in the morning and raw at night.

I wish there were more raw foods that came in nuggets rather than a large-ish block, as he only eats around 50 g of it per day, so I couldn't thaw a block out and I doubt I could cut it when frozen.  There's not much variety where I live.  Many companies don't deliver to islands, and he eats so little it probably wouldn't be worth it anyway.  I think I may be able to get Nutriment here but they are in blocks (I think).  At least Natures Menu have a few varieties of nuggets; the only thing is, the main meat type may differ but the other ingredients are the same or similar, so maybe the nutrition won't vary much in that case.