Bailey surveys her kingdom, better known as our backyard.
Ok, this is definitely a G-rated blog, but it’s true. Bailey does like it raw. And the more raw, the better.
Raw rabbit, in particular. Followed closely by venison, lamb and chicken.
In case you’re a newbie to my blog, I need to disclose that I work at Nature’s Variety. This is not a shameless plug for my company (I promise) but I wanted to share my story of how I made the choice for her to eat raw.
Nature’s Variety is a holistic pet food manufacturer with several products, including Instinct Raw Frozen diets. I had learned all I that I knew about pet nutrition from another pet food company that I had previously worked for. Raw diets weren’t part of the training I received. In fact, it never even came up. Raw pet food? Who would do that? What the what?
Before I worked here, I thought people who fed their pets a raw diet were going to be people throwing out raw chicken carcasses to their pets in the backyard. Uh, no thanks. What I found was it’s actually a frozen meat patty that you just take out of the freezer, thaw, and serve. Hmm. That’s not weird, right? In fact, it’s pretty easy.
More research followed, and I learned a lot. I bought into the idea of raw frozen diets in theory, but at that point, I wasn’t a pet owner. I dug a little deeper and found people whose pets’ lives were virtually transformed from feeding a raw diet. Of course there were comments like, “My pet really loves it!” but more often than not, the comments were ones like this: “I was hours away from taking my cat in to be put down (because of struvite crystals he was peeing all over, prescription foods not working, vet bills…) when a friend told me I should try a raw diet first. After two months of being on the frozen raw food pellets, my little man is doing great!!”
That’s pretty powerful.
When Bailey came along, that’s when I had an “a-ha moment.” (Did Oprah trademark that phrase or can I use it freely?) Someone made three important, yet the most common sense, points to me:
- Would you want to eat the same food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day, for the rest of your life? (If it happened to be mashed potatoes or mint chocolate chip ice cream, I might try it for a while.)
- When people tell you dry kibble is good for a pet’s teeth, it’s the equivalent of brushing your teeth with an Oreo cookie. (maybe that’s stretching a little, but it’s a great line, nonetheless.)
- And the most important point – If your dog could choose his diet, what would it be? Cooked, dry kibble, or a fresh meat?
Think about that for just a minute. If your dog could choose. Well, pet parents, we’re the one who gets to make that choice for our dogs and cats. Those three points changed my view because it made sense. And the bonus? Doggieroo LOVES it. She literally dances when I take it out of the fridge.
So here’s my challenge to you. If your pet has never tried raw, go out and buy a trial size bag of NV Instinct Raw (you can get a coupon on our website at www.naturesvariety.com/tryit) and place it side by side next to his dry food, and see what he chooses. And maybe you’ll get a dance, too.
