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Hey, Reader!

This afternoon, I really only meant to rehydrate some of my freeze- and air-dried veggie mixes to add to a fresh batch of raw meals.

I store them in a kitchen cabinet that only holds miscellaneous doggie items like my slow feeders, dog snacks and treats, and dog supplements.

When I went in there to grab the veggies, I figured it would be a good opportunity to clean out that section of the cabinet and reorganize everything while letting the veggies rehydrate for 30 minutes.

That got me to thinking that many people don't truly understand why plant matter like veggies and fruit are a part of balanced raw dog food. I keep hearing from people who say that dogs are carnivores and therefore should only eat raw meat.

Well, true-ish, but they forget one thing:

In raw feeding, we're trying to replicate an entire whole prey animal

And that includes the stomach contents.

Not just some breast meat, a raw meaty bone, some liver and some kidney.

🌱In raw feeding, plant matter represents the predigested stomach contents of a whole prey animal.

So yes, if you're not feeding whole prey animals that include the stomach contents, you should be trying to replicate them via means of puréed veggies and fruit.

Why puréed plant matter?

Because dogs don't have the enzyme that breaks down plant cell walls. That's why we need to do that for them.

If we don't, our dogs can't absorb the majority of the nutrients in the plant matter.

At that point, we might as well not feed it to them.

Don't believe me? Go ahead and feed your dog a whole carrot and then see how much of it will come back out.

Spoiler alert: Most of it - and that's because your dog can't break down the plant cell walls of the carrot.

​Click here to learn more about vegetables in raw feeding.​

Happy raw feeding,

Barbara

My raw feeding recommendations:

• ​This trial pack from Raw Paws Pet Food lets you test 9 proteins for less—plus get 15% off with code K9Savings.
• Raw Feeding Miami has an amazing raw dog food ingredient selection. Use this link for 10% OFF your first RFM purchase.
• ​Try ​this 10lb trial box from Darwin’s for 50% less (up to $100) —you’ll get to test it without wasting money. Fun fact: I started my raw feeding journey with raw dog food from Darwin's!
• ​My favorite resources for a healthy dog lifestyle - everything from freezers to knives, food storage containers, cutting boards, supplements, meat grinders as well as dog training tools and travel gadgets.

Got Questions, Comments, Or Ideas for Future Topics?

Feel free to email me anytime at barbara@k9sovercoffee.com.

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