Hi Deb! Here is what I wrote to a friend's sister recently: Raw feeding your dog is not difficult, contrary to what you may read on some web sites, where ultra-high maintenance type people act like it is rocket science. Think about it, we feed ourselves pretty well so why can't we feed our dogs without a doctor okay or pet food company okay? It's all marketing! To start a newbie dog out, put down an old towel or plastic mat - I use a vinyl outdoor tablecloth - and give her a chicken leg. I warm up chicken pieces in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes since Odo doesn't like it cold out of the fridge. See how she reacts. If she doesn't pick it up or looks unsure what to do, pick up one end of it and hold it up to her to sniff and encourage her to eat it. if she is a food gulper, you might have to hold the end and get her to eat it more slowly. don't be afraid, dogs can swallow much larger things than we can. You do want to supervise any feeding of meaty bones, just in case the dog swallows too much and tries to hork it back up. �Sometimes a dog will do that. If Odo is hungry and excited, he might swallow too big a piece. He will hork it up and break it into more manageable pieces. Ideally, the dog will crunch the bone and scissor the meat and skin into pieces they can manage to swallow. Dogs don't really chew - they don't have molars. If she doesn't want to eat a chick leg, cut the meat off for her instead. If she is not accustomed to eating bones, you can feed her other raw food and meat-and-veg table scraps. You can also buy premade raw meat patties that contain ground bone, but this premade stuff is expensive. You can make your own patties and freeze them. �I did that in the beginning. Now I just give Odo the stuff separately. The ideal raw diet is mostly meat, bones, organ meats, eggs - dogs can eat egg shells too, cooked veggies, raw veggies. Don't feed garlic and absolutely no onion, which is deadly for dogs. Here is a list of food I feed Odo: Chicken legs, wings, necks Beef meaty bones Ground meats Turkey necks Pork chop bones Eggs - Odo doesn't like raw eggs unless they are mixed into a meat patty. i will give him scrambled egg when we eat them. Cooked veggie scraps like squash, green beans, broccoli, carrot, sweet potato, asparagus - whatever you are having. Feed starchy vegs like sweet potato and carrots sparingly since they are high in calories. Raw lettuces - Odo like this with salad dressing, he won't eat it plain! Dogs do have their likes and dislikes just like we do! Organ meats like liver - this is very nutritious but very rich. Try tiny portions first. Red meat like beef is richer than poultry, so start with small amounts. Regarding doggy taste buds - they do appreciate tasty stuff like we do, so sometimes when Odo looks longingly at our aromatic grilled meat, I'll do something extra like rub his raw chicken in my plate juices (after dinner!) or put a little cooking juice or broth on it. Dogs don't need grains. Dogs don't need dairy so don't feed yogurt or cheese, even though, like us, dogs love all that. Meat and bones should be 80 percent or more of what you feed. Dogs notoriously get sick with the runs when introduced to new foods. So introduce one new food at a time, a small amount at a time. Keep a can of unsweetened pumpkin onhand - it helps with diarrhea. If you give your dog bones that she gnaws on but doesn't eat up, that's okay. Some bones may be too hard for her to break. In fact, many raw feeders give their dogs bones that are too large for the purpose of gnawing on, which is good for the teeth, gums and jaw, and keeps the dog occupied in something that wild canines do. Just be sure to supervise, train her to keep bones in one place so she doesn't carry raw bones all over the house. Don't feed any commercial treats, edible bone treats, and absolutely no rawhide products. These are bad for dogs. For treats, those dried chicken breast pieces are good, and Kong toys stuffed with ground meat/egg mixtures (maybe a touch of peanut butter), then freeze the Kong. it will take her a while to work the stuff out. Odo is 20 lbs and he eats 2 chicken legs worth for dinner, and doesn't like to eat breakfast, just a couple of treats during the day. Best of luck!

Wow, what a lot of really great ideas for me . . .and for all of us here. Thank you!!! I'm following a lot of it and have lost 12 pounds so far. Mainly by cutting out most carbs and white sugar,and as Kelly suggested, doing interval training. I'm also keeping bags of fresh, pre washed baby carrots, baby bell peppers and green beans to munch on when I get hungry. Last night we grilled out burgers and I had mine without the bun. It's getting easier to eat like this and I'm finding the cravings for sweets and cheese are becoming less with each day . . . thankfully! As I mentioned in an earlier post here, I wasn't vastly overweight, just at the tops of what my weight should be for my height and age. Now I'm 12 pounds lighter and my clothes fit so much better! I'd still like to drop another 8 pounds. We fly out this Thursday morning to Palm Beach and then on to the Tampa area 4 days later. I've already eaten dinner and lunches out several times since I started this weight loss drive and have found it pretty easy to eat out healthfully . . . as long as it's in a regular and not a fast food restaurant. Salads with grilled meats, nuts, etc. are my go-to's, with a lite salad dressing on the side; hold the croutons and bread sides (LOL). But, as always, I have to be so careful that "lite" doesn't contain any artificial sweeteners, as I'm extremely allergic to them, especially aspertame/aspartame. So many thanks for all the great, helpful ideas. I'll continue to read them, although I'm not sure if I'm taking my laptop with me to Florida yet. Lynn

UPDATE: We feed our kitten the highest quality food we can find. For wet we generally use the canned "Hounds and Gatos". (This is the pate form and so each time I mix in water to get my cats extra hydration). For convenience we also do give out dry food but it is the Canadian made "Orijen" which is very highly regarded: Our other cat who is 14 years old had been on the "kidney friendly" Hill's KD food for several years. I decided to stop this and have had him on the same (as the kiten) high quality protein foods for several weeks now. (To keep the older cat from eating the kittens food we have the kitten's food bowl on top of the....dryer (it is high enough up that the older one cant jump up)).

I'm not sure about psoriatic arthritis, but after contending with rheumatoid arthritis since I was 14-years old (I'm 62 now), I eliminated gluten from my diet (as of January 1, 2013) and have had tremendous results. Over the years I have followed the McDougall Diet, Dong Diet, Macrobiotic Diet, Mediterranean Diet, Anti-Inflammation Diet, I avoid nightshades, and I don't know how many other things seeking relief, as well as being treated by my physician with medication since I was 24-years old. The only other thing (non-prescription) that ever gave me real relief was taking GH3 (a.k.a. Gerovital GH3 Procaine Hcl Formula - the original formula by Dr. Anna Aslan) in the late 70's, and then it was no longer available in the U.S. and my arthritis was back. That's also when I tried all the different diets, herbs, chiropractors, exercise programs, water walking, you name it!!! I became the proverbial "health nut". And along with that came decades of milling my own flour from whole grains and making all our breads and baked goods at home. Someone on this message board started a discussion about the book, "Wheat Belly" by Dr. William Davis in late 2012 and gluten-free recipes. I checked the book out from the library out of curiosity and never looked back, as well as reading a string of other books on the subject. My mother had celiac disease, so I was already familiar with a gluten-free diet. I was using almond flour and coconut flour in baking to avoid high-glycemic carbohydrates, and developed gluten-free recipes for a local sorghum mill - all before going gluten-free, so the transition wasn't a difficult one. My sister also went gluten-free after seeing my success and it addressed many of her "gut" issues, and her daughter (mid-30's) also went gluten-free for her severe arthritis and had the same great results as I did. BTW, I also had tendonitis (elbow, shoulder) and carpal tunnel, from years of knitting and crocheting (professionally), and Plantar Fasciitis to the point I haven't been able to do more than hobble a few feet if I was barefoot. All of those complaints have also been all but eliminated and they all have one thing in common - inflammation. Inflammation is a symptom. In my case, the cause was gluten. Good luck on your search. Been there, done that...... Following the McDougall Diet nearly killed me. I was constantly hungry, weak, my hair fell out due to the low amount of fat, and my body was still riddled with inflammation after 6-months. The good thing I took from the diet was sticking to whole foods and mostly a plant-based diet, but I need meat and good fats as well as plants. However, I have a friend who has thrived on the McDougall Diet for many years, although she added back some meat and dairy eventually, but her health issues weren't the same as mine.