You would be better off feeding them meat raw, not feeding grains and certainly not onions as they are toxic to dogs, the more you feed the more the more likely it will have consequences. Cooked food is not natural for dogs.

If you feed a balanced raw diet, including bones, their stools should be small and solid. There are many websites that will give you a better idea of what should be fed as part of a natural diet, do a google search.

I have always fed my dogs a natural diet and my parents did the same when they had dogs. I couldn't imagine feeding kibble or even cooked foods to my dogs, it seems alien to me.

Onion is toxic in high enough doses and given they are small dogs it would only need to be a small amount to cause problems , i feed raw with bone mixed into the meat and they get a bone or 2 a week to chomp on , mine also get a veg pulp i do with a hand blender , this can consist of anything i have left in the frodge such as carrots cauliflower brocolli , cabbage , courgettes , sometimes sweet potato , the one i know of to aviod are sweet corn on the cob the cob is toxic , onion , garlic is ok in small doses as it acts as a natural antiseptic . any mix of the above veg is fine i tend to mostly do carrot and cabage blended they absorb more nutrients into the system .

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Thank you for the advice, Ryan and Andrea. I am going to alter the diet of my dogs to raw meats mixed with bone and veg. I do have some queries tho'.

Will it be safe to change from the cooked food to raw straight away or should I maybe half cook for a week? Is liver ok for the dogs; I tried it before and I was not joking about the state of my car.

My vet has a sign up saying no onion, garlic and brocolli - all poisonous. Andrea's cpmment on the cob of the corn was another surprise. I live in the country and I often throw an eaten cob for the pups to play with!!. I have tried a google search for dog nutrition (hence I found this site) but I could not find any advice on what was dangerous and what was particularly good other than from yourselves. At the moment I will stick to the meat, bone, rice and carrot.

What about a raw mackeral?

fish is great, i get sardines and such for mine every now and again, somewhere within this forum is a list of fruit and veg that they can have, if my memory serves me right but you can also get books about raw feeding which tells you about vegs. or just google raw feeding. dogs can't have too much liver i believe.

Try the Yahoo group Britbarf. It has a load of files on how to get started and what to be feeding/avoiding, and plenty of helpful on the end of an email for any questions you have.

My 3 month old lab puppy has been on a raw diet since a week after we brought him home and he is doing extremely well. I wouldn't put him on kibble for all the money in the world!

Best of luck with the switch, you won't look back.

Sarah and Buddy

Garlic in moderation is fine, only very large amount of garlic will harm them, small amounts are actually beneficial. Onions are toxic but again in large amounts but they offer no nutitional benefit so better to be safe rather than sorry and avoid completely.

Fish is an important part of the diet it provides vital nutrients not provided in sufficient amounts by other meats. Rice is completely unneccesary, although it is higly digestable it is not particularly nutritous. The diet should be based around 60% muscle meat (and fish), 30% bone, 10% organ meat and minimal fresh raw vegetables. There is no call for grains in a dogs diet.

Ryan is correct no grain is needed in the diet , switching over to raw instead of cooked is fine to do straight away . liver , kidney etc is quite rich so maybe mix some organ meat with some muscle meat to start so the dogs get used to it that way a whole meal of it shoul,nt cause a problem . Have a look at Landywoods web site this is where i get my raw meat from, so do some other members, i hav,nt had any problems with them at all with orders etc some on the other hand have with getting orders wrong but they are reasonably priced , i can feed both my labs for about 2 months on about 35 quid.

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all my dogs are fed on a BARF diet and in my opinion its the best thing for them.

I have a 4 month old american cocker spaniel and want to move him on to a meat and veg diet off of his kibble.

I spent many many hours researching and discovering how bad some dog foods are and I changed his food (from the breeders brand) to one I could live with and which I think is one of the better kibble foods. (In case anyone is interested I found this website very helpful: Dog Food Analysis - Reviews of kibble)

Rocky is my first dog and very young so I'm uncomfortable changing his food drastically (i.e. to raw meat and veg) without having thoroughly researched what I'm doing but the concept makes sense to me. My vet's promote one of the 'bad' kibbles so I don't feel they will be particularly helpful on this issue. I have three questions:

1 Is there a good and most importantly comprehensive guide to the meat and veg diet that someone could recommend? I'm sure there are 100s but a recommendation would be really helpful.

2 Where do people buy meats/bones from? I live in NY, USA and the local groceries sell fillets of meat etc. Is there a delivery service selling meats and bones etc near me such as Landywood in the UK?

3 Has anyone had problems with feeding their dog(s) a meat and veg diet?

Many thanks indeed.