When Morrigan was about 16 mopnths old I switched here over to a raw chicken diet. Mostly thighs and legs. She loved it. It gave her a great coat, tremendous muscle tone and the prettiest, strongest teeth you can imagine. A chicken thigh bone is to a mastiff what a potato chip is to you or me.

When the first litter of puppies was born, I fed them their first raw meal at about 7 weeks old. It was not a problem. As the pups grew, it became more and more difficult to simply handle the raw food and after a few months, I abandoned the raw diet and switched to Nutro.

I bring all this up because I have recently slaughtered a couple of my monster chickens. They each weighed about 18 pounds and looked more like turkeys than anything I had seen in a chicken house. Regardless, we have been eating allot of chicken, we had some frozen and some of the thawed was a week old. I didn't want to freeze it that late so I thought I would give it to the dogs as a reward for just being fantastic doggies.

Lexus, Susie, Lilly, Roxie and Trojan are old hands at the raw chicken eating game. They don't try to gulp it down but they cetrtainly don't waste any time either. Susie got a thigh and it was gone in about 40 seconds. None of them came close to swallowing it whole, they just recognized it for what it was and systematically devoured it.

I was a little concerned about CiCi. I didn't know how she would react. I shouldn't have worried. She took it as an old pro and ate hers with a calm efficiency.

That leaves the little/big guy. Puddy is quickly becoming the largest of my dogs. He is putting on serious weight and his neck is developing beautifully. When he got his thigh, he licked it for about three minutes. I felt bad for him because he knew he wanted it but he didn't know how to go about it. To his credit, he didn't try to swallow it whole. Finally, with just his front teeth, he picked up the thigh and gave it a gentle shake. A TINY piece of meat came off and he swallowed it. From there he got continously more aggressive until when I gave him a leg (I had an extra piece and he got it) he just picked up the meaty end and gnawed it down like a kid crunching on a lollipop.

I don't think I will wait so long before raw feedings anymore. Maybe a couple times a week from here. I love what it does for their teeth and I love watching them be a dog. Carnivores are meat eaters and I think I do them a disservice to keep fresh meat from them. Raw chicken for seven please.