I have a confession to make. Reagan is not my only kibble eater. Riley is also a full-time kibble consumer. As you know, Reagan suffered coat problems over the summer and I finally concluded that she simply was not extracting nutrients from raw food. For some unknown reason, Reagan simply requires that her food be cooked. She now eats a very high quality kibble and is doing very well on it.Well, during all of this I started to notice that Riley's coat got very dull and dry. The red stripes in her coat looked bleached out and yellow (see below).
At first I couldn't believe that I would actually have a 2nd dog that did not do well on raw food. What are the chances? I had fed raw food for 10 years happily and with no problems with seven greyhounds. I started to feed Riley half kibble and half raw and the improvement was almost immediate. Also, like Reagan, Riley never produced the kind of poop that raw diet feeders rave about. She was actually better on kibble as well. I finally switched Riley to a full time kibble diet. Now she is a picture of health (except her trademark ears... we can't do anything about those :-).
Reagan and Riley's issues really threw me for a loop. With 2 young dogs eating kibble, what would I feed future dogs? I am happy with how my four seniors are doing on raw food, so I was not about to switch them too.I decided that I was not really comfortable with my veggie mixes. Dogs have a hard time digesting fruits and vegetables. The availability of the nutrients depends on my ability to tear up the cell walls of the plant material. You can do this by using a juicer or a food processor, but I was not confident that I was doing a good job or providing enough quantity. So my seniors all get 1/2 a cup of kibble instead of veggie mix now. In the future, I think I will continue with a modified half and half diet and adjust accordingly if I have a hound that clearly does best on one or the other.
