My dog too small for BARF?

[amasa]

Hello all,

I've been trying to feed my dog the raw diet for a little while now, but I dont know what to do because all the ideal RMBs (chicken necks, wings, backs, etc) are too hard for him to eat. Ive watched him, and he tries really hard, and I can hear his teeth trying to chew/break/eat the bone but he just cant eat them. He takes like 45 minutes trying to eat it and afterwards the bones are cleaned off but he cant eat the bones themselves. Is it really supposed to be that hard for dogs? Im assuming its because my dog is tiny and everything he's trying to eat is bigger than him but maybe Im wrong and everyone else's dog has this hard of a time? The only bones he's been able to eat are cornish hen, but even then, he can only eat the softer bones.

My dog is a little poodle. He just made 3 pounds now, and he is about 6 months old.

Its really frustrating, because I love my little dog so much and I want him to eat healthy which is why I switched him over to raw. It just seemed healthy and made sense to me, but RMBs are such a big part of the diet that I dont know what to do if he cant eat them. Cornish hen is the smallest animal that Ive tried with him. There were other small birds at the butcher that I go to like squab and some other birds that I cant remember, but they were sooooo expensive and they were only a little smaller than the cornish hen. Luckily, that butcher also sort of caters to raw feeders. They sell "dog" food separate -same grade of meat as human food, but just with bones like coarse ground chicken, turkey, lamb, beef, etc and other specialty wild stuff like even kangaroo. So Ive been feeding that as well, hoping it will sort of help make up for the RMBs hes not able to eat, but I kind of think its not enough. I dont know for sure, since I dont know the exact ratio of bone to meat in the coarse ground stuff I get, but I just thought I would be on the safe side.

So I was thinking to add some extra calcium to his diet. Like some kind of powdered calcium (because I think he would prefer powder to me shoving my hand/fingers down his throat to give him tablets) to his non RMB food like his cottage cheese. I found this on Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...A23K7Q6AX9I9O7

but I was sort of hoping to find something not fishy.... since he wasnt into the sardines I gave him and other reviewers said that it smells really fishy. But also you have to add water to it and I just wanted a powder or something that I could add to his food. There were also some chews that I saw but they seemed to have a whole bunch of extra stuff in them and while I was thinking to get him a multivitamin too I just thought I would see if I could just get a separate calcium thing. I read powdered eggshells are good and I am already feeding him raw pastured eggs once a week but Im not really a big egg eater (since I want more of the eggshells for powder but not the egg). Do you think it is safe to up the egg number to twice a week? On other forums Ive seen people say they give their dogs 2 a week but my dog is so small I wasnt sure if that was too much for him. And does anyone have some kind of calcium supplement that they use that isnt fishy and works well for them? Or if anyone has any other tips on how I might make up the deficiency from the lack of bones I would greatly appreciate that too. Thank you so much all!