raw foods: We are feeding him royal canine brand of food and we have heard good things about the raw food diet, but we have NO idea where to start? What can you feed them? Does it have to specially prepared for dogs? Can you feed kibble for one meal and raw meat for the next like breakfast & dinner? Our dog is almost 8months old, is this a safe age to start raw meat or does he have to be older? basically any info you can give us will help! THANKS!|||I wouldn't recommend it at all. Though dogs are carnivores, they still need other nutrients that a meat-only diet can't provide. This will not make your dog healthier, and it's both time consuming and expensive. And though someone else claimed that kibble is just sugar, that's not true at all. Some kibble is like that, but if you're smart and do the research, you can find a hard food that's completely healthy.|||Go to Leerburg.com and use their search bar to look for Raw Diet. You will have enough info to keep you busy the rest of the evening.....|||You can feed them lots of different things. You will mix so much raw meat (never pork) with very fine processed (food processor) veggies. Yes, you can feed kibble and raw. You can start a pup on raw diet so his age is not an issue. Only thing to remember with raw is that they require extra calcium when on raw and you can achieve this with finely (& I mean finely) ground egg shells, you can use the shells from the eggs you use. Just grind, sift, grind, sift then sprinkle onto food or you can actually order this already made from the internet. Just google "feeding dogs a raw diet" and LOTS of info will come up for you. Browse it all and see if it's for you. They also have some great recipes for doggie biscuits and snacks that you can bake up batches of that are natural and ssooo yummy for your friend. I feed a raw diet & my girls have never been happier or healthier!! My shih tzu had lots of allergies that the vets tried endlessly to cure with lots of pills and shots. After I put her on raw, (which I did slowly to cut down on any detoxification) she has NO allergies at all and she plays and carries on like she's a 6 month old pup again. It was actually amazing! Good Luck and I know your friend will love you for it!!|||dont bother starting this fad diet... I have long known several people who have been on this kick...they quit and had bad results! NO GOOD. its expensive, potentially dangerous and not recommended by a lot of vets its a TON of work. You actually can do a lot of harm to your dog on it if you do not mix it just right, you have to supplement them just right because dogs require a specific balance of nutrients and if they miss a specific nutrient over a period of time, it can cause all sorts of horrible problems like blindness, bone density problems, etc. There are also a lot of parasites in raw meat you have to be aware of (worms! etc) Just get yourself a high quality dog food... you;ll be so much better off! Been there done that with B.A.R.F and other fad garbage|||You can feed any meat sold in the grocery store that's not spiced or seasoned (no ham, sausage, bacon, etc). We usually start with chicken because it's easy and cheap. The meat needs no preparation: unwrap it and hand it to the dog. Some dogs even like it frozen. It is best to completely abandon kibble; there's no reason to feed it, since it's mostly just bulk that the dog cannot digest mixed with sugars that make them hyper and induce illness. Plus, a raw-fed dog's digestion adapts easily to handling meat and bones; it's best not to make him switch back and forth. Any age is good; a puppy can be weaned directly from mother's milk to raw feeding. The ideal diet should consist of approximately 80% meat, 10% edible bone, 5% liver, 5% other organs. NO veggies, NO fruit, NO dairy. NO supplements other than a spoonful of deepsea fish body oil for the Omega-3 that corn-finished meat does not contain.