Thanks for the advice. I quit on the raw diet. Its not a good time of year for me to make the switch. I'm a teacher, so if I decide to go back to it, it will be over the Summer when I can be home all day to take my dogs out every few minutes when they have the squirts. I hate the thought of my puppy soiling his kennel again, and having to sit or lay in it, miserable. It would be even worse if both dogs soiled there kennels at the same time, and I had to clean it up alone. It really sucks trying to bathe a German Shepherd with diarrhea in his fur.
On a side note, I was pretty shocked to see how much bone came out of my pups poop after eating the wings. I thought the stomach acids would break them down.
Bummer, but I totally understand.
When you're ready again you can maybe try a different protein to start, just in case chicken was an issue... it sounds like they might not need so much bone to start with, either - Denna has the issue of bone coming out the back-end when there's too much going in the front-end at once. Chicken bones normally do get digested in the stomach, but you can over-do it, and the system just shuffles the extra out the poop-shoot, by design. I found it cool how the bones were all nicely lined up for elimination.
I've heard some people start with boneless meat first (but very few)... you could expect to see Zero poop for a day or two if you go that route - that could be a bit concerning for some people. But it would give the stomach time to build up the acids to more properly digest the bones. You want to give them enough bone to keep things solid, but not so much that it goes through undigested... there's a learning curve involved for each individual dog.
And, there are LOTS of dogs that do just fine on good kibble, or there are freeze-dried "raw" kibbles out there too (which you could probably even mix in with "regular" kibble). Lots of options!
We didn't switch to raw until Denna was 6 months old, either. It took me that long to get organized and find time to "do it right".
