Prevent vomiting while feeding your pet a natural homemade diet

Have you noticed your pet vomiting when you introduce a new diet? It has been observed that sometimes a dog or cat introduced to a natural, wholesome, raw meat diet for the first time will vomit soon after the meal? This could happen on the first meal itself or within the first week. Why does this happen? And is this cause for concern?

Understanding the why

Dogs sometimes scarf down their food too quickly and this leads to them vomiting it. But in most cases, the dog usually eats the vomit. However gross that might appear, that’s perfectly normal. But what we’re talking about here is not this kind of vomiting. Perhaps you’ve taken the step to shift your dog from a commercially-produced diet to a natural raw diet. And when your dog vomits upon eating that, the first thought you naturally get is whether there is something wrong with the food you’ve given. Before you panic, understand this: when your dog vomits while eating raw food, it is actually a good thing. Sounds strange? Let’s read on a little more.

Digestive system:

A carnivore's digestive system is highly acidic in nature. But feeding cooked foods, including cooked meat, and commercial pet food can shut down the acidic digestive system. Raw meat, the more natural diet for a carnivore, stimulates the digestive system to become more acidic. The reason a carnivore’s digestive is acidic is not just to help in digesting protein in the meat and breakdown the calcium in the bones, but also to kill bacteria. We can’t stress this enough – dogs on a raw diet are less likely to suffer from food poisoning because their gut is working perfectly well. In fact, it is dogs on commercial foods or cooked foods that have less resistance to bacteria that can cause food poisoning.

Back to the vomiting

Now that we’ve underlined the crucial difference between raw and commercial diets, let’s get back to understanding why does the vomiting happens when you feed a wholesome, homemade, raw meat diet. If your dog or cat has been on a commercial or cooked diet all this while then its digestive system has been weakened. When you feed a raw meal, the body immediately begins to produce more acid. However, since the digestive system is weakened, the body has difficulty doing so. The result: the body vomits. This is when you might start to worry (naturally) but in a strange way vomiting is, in fact, a positive sign that your pet's body is trying to get stronger. As the digestive system gets stronger, the vomiting will reduce and eventually slow down. But while your furry pet is in the process of getting strong enough to handle the raw meat, what must you do?

Taking care of vomiting

The simplest way to deal with vomiting while your pet is making the transition to raw is to add some digestive enzymes to the diet. This helps is making digestion becomes easier and preventing vomiting. Look for pancreatic (meat) derived enzymes which are a natural source of enzymes for carnivores. You might need to offer double the prescribed dose for a few weeks before cutting back to the regular suggested dose. Once you feel your pet’s digestive system has stabilized you can stop providing the enzymes. There is another opinion that believes you can continue giving the enzyme at the regular dose. The more you improve digestion, the healthier your pet will be. Incidentally, you can administer the enzyme even if your dog or cat isn’t vomiting after being introduced to the raw diet. This enzyme helps maximize the digestion of food. In case you cannot provide enzymes quickly, you can go back to feeding its old diet until the enzyme supplements can be introduced. Vomiting can lead to dehydration and it is better that your pet retains some food (even if it is low-quality food) while you are arranging the enzyme. Even after introducing the enzyme if your dog or cat continues to vomit, you can increase the quantity of enzyme to see if that works. If it doesn’t stop you must consult a vet to look for an underlying cause, but that is a highly unlikely scenario.

Conclusion

On a cooked or commercial food diet your dog or cat might not show signs of indigestion. However, there is much happening inside which will show up later in your pet’s life. Poor digestion is the root cause of several health problems since without good digestion the body cannot get all the nutrition that it requires. And without nutrition, the body does not get the fuel it needs to maintain good health.