The rescuing of Ezra with her multitude of health issues led me to seek out more holistic ways to help my dog and get her off the man-made compounds administered by the vet. In my search, I dove deep into raw feeding and the biologically appropriate way to feed our canine companions. This was my raw feeding journey – I contacted a nutritionist because I didn’t know where to start but knew that I needed to change my dogs’ diet immediately (especially for Ezra’s health). This nutritionist supplied me with 3 rotational recipes that I prepped for my dogs. Looking back, I now understand that the recipes were based on a ratio diet.

I fed a ratio diet for a year into my raw feeding journey, and while I am grateful that this nutritionist helped me get started on raw feeding, I am even more grateful that I knew that my dogs still weren’t getting the proper nutrition that they needed, and thus I furthered my research and understanding.

Although I saw tremendous benefits in that first year of feeding my dogs a species appropriate diet, I also saw some downfalls in this style of feeding. Ezra’s coat was still dry and flaky, and Diesel’s nails were easily breaking. These are signs of nutritional deficiencies. Not to mention that my shepherd has such a sensitive GI tract that not properly formulating his meals led to a lot of GI issues. For example, too much fish would cause him to throw up because fish is really rich. One of the rotational recipes that the nutritionist made for my dogs was to feed fish 3 times a week, and for Diesel it was like 12-16 ounces of fish in one day, which is just too much fish. Another example, too much fat would cause diarrhea, too much liver or secreting organs, which are all super rich, would also cause diarrhea. So basically, there was still much that I needed to learn after starting my raw feeding journey.

So overall, my dogs did not do well on the ratio diets. These diets can be a good starting point in formulating a meal, but they should be taken with a grain of salt. So, let’s break down some of the ratio diets:

PMR diet, or the prey model raw diet, is supposed to be the most natural diet that mimics what the dog would eat in the wild. So, this would be whole, wild prey animals that are fed with no plant ingredients (except what would be remaining in the animal’s stomach). This would be whole duck, chicken, quail, rabbit, pheasant…etc. If whole animals are not fed, then parts of whole animals would be fed following these guidelines:

-       80% muscle meat

-       10% bone

-       5% liver

-       5% other secreting organ

BARF diet, or the biologically appropriate raw food diet, includes the addition of fruits, vegetables and seeds and nuts and would following the guideline of:

-       70% muscle meat

-       10% bone

-       7% vegetables

-       5% liver

-       5% other secreting organ

-       2% seeds or nuts

-       1% fruit

Vegetables and fruit contain fiber and phytochemicals that have anti-cancerous properties and are beneficial to immune function and health. These phytochemicals are not found in any other food sources other than plant ingredients so for me it’s important that I feed my dogs a variety of plant matter.

To figure out how much to feed – take your dog’s weight multiplied by 2% (inactive), 2.5% (moderately active) or 3% (active). Remember… these are just guidelines and at the end of the day you have to see what percentage your dog thrives on. So, using Ezra as an example - Ezra is 50 pounds and I would feed 2.5% of her body weight, so she would get 1.25 pounds of food a day. I would break this down using the percentages we went through above. Using PMR as an example, it would look something like this:

80% muscle meat --> 1.25 x 80% = 1 lb

10% bone --> 1.25 x 10% = .125 / 60% (bone percentage of duck feet) = .21 lbs or 3.33 oz

5% liver --> 1.25 x 5% = .0625 lbs or 1 ounce

5% other secreting organs --> 1.25 x 5% = .0625 lbs or 1 ounce

Ratio diets are on the premise that by rotating proteins and providing your dog with a variety of different types of animals you will fill in nutritional gaps over time. So I did the BARF style ratio diet for a year with my dogs, using an abundance of beef, pork, turkey, duck, rabbit, quail, sometimes chicken, and sometimes more “exotic” animals such as bison, emu, venison, goat, goose, lamb…etc. and still found they were deficient in certain vitamins and minerals. Every dog is different, and it was by carefully observing my dogs, their bathroom habits, and how they looked overall that I realized I needed to dig deeper. I found that they were mainly deficient in magnesium, zinc, manganese, iodine, vitamin D3 and vitamin E. Increasing their zinc levels helped tremendously with their skin and coat and now they both shine. Providing their recommended allowance of magnesium and manganese keeps their nails strong and my shepherd no longer gets cracked or broken nails.

I also want to mention that holistic vets and nutritionists all have their own opinions of how exactly a dog should eat, whether that be prey model, BARF, and the addition of different types of carbs, fiber, pre and probiotics, digestive enzymes, etc. You will always get conflicting opinions when doing your own research. So it’s important to discern what is best for your dog and what feels right for you. I take a very in the middle of the line approach. I technically feed BARF style raw, but I don’t follow those exact percentages because it’s not what works for my dogs. I also add in some carbs in the form of quinoa, sweet potato, steel cut oats, or cooked squash. For one, adding these helps to take up some calories, but I can still hit 2-3x the recommended allowance for protein in using 10% carbs in my dogs’ diet, so trust me, they are not missing out on the quantity of meat that they get. I also use these for fiber, and to boost some vitamins and minerals, especially magnesium. But there are many people out there that would disagree with feeding any type of carbs, especially starches, to dogs. So again, it’s what you feel comfortable with, and what works for your dog.

So, over the next couple of weeks I want to dive deeper into these deficiencies that are found in ratio diets and how we can close that gap using whole food sources. 

Blessing <3