Kasie Maxwell Grujcic
I concur with Dr. Falconer on his suggestion to seek out the counsel of a qualified homeopath to help treat your animals' imbalances. A healthy animal should, indeed, be able to eat the foods their body's are so perfectly and elegantly designed to eat and homeopathy can help restore this balance and ability in such an easy and gentle way. It would be my first choice.
So, yes! I think you can and should try again. I'm so happy to hear you haven't given up entirely; your willingness to not give up on your animal is HUGE and will go such a long way in helping them to live the very best life possible. You are acting as your animal's selfless advocate and this is so wonderful to see :) It really shows how much you care and love them to continue to strive to make these good choices for them.
In case homeopathy is not your first choice, there are other things you can consider and I'll review some suggestions below.
For example, you may want to consider doing some "biological" at-home testing to determine if there are any imbalances that you can work on as your transition them back to a raw diet. A few great tests that can help you learn more about the inner ecology of your animal's unique system include:
a) AnimalBiome fecal test, to get an analysis of their gut microbiome that can help determine which specific probiotic strains or prebiotic fibers might be most useful in restoring a better balance to their gut microflora (and digestive health)
b) the Parsley Pet Nutritional Blueprint test can help you to learn if there are any issues with heavy metal toxins which can be found even in some ingredients/foods found in some of the best raw diets but might need to be avoided for your individual pet. The test results may lead you to adding in certain foods or herbs to help alleviate any issues they are experiencing. The tests also show if there is an imbalance in specific minerals and also their adrenal function/metabolic fitness - all useful when putting together a plan for an animal experiencing problems eating any diet.
c) Consider either the Glacier Peak Animal Life Stressors test or the HemoPet NutriScan tests for testing of food intolerances or reactivity. The Glacier Peak test uses bio-resonance reading for a very extensive test for many different ingredients and foods, and costs less to do. The HemoPet NutriScan test provides you with antibody levels to a limited number of foods and is more costly. These tests can help you come up with a nice starting roadmap/plan for which proteins could be used in your return to feeding fresh foods, and also help you to decide which things you might want to avoid.
These tests are certainly not required or necessary options, but some people have found them very helpful in sorting chronic problems like this out and figuring out a way to improve upon their current menus. I mention them here only to point out these options in case they resonate with you, and becasue you just may not have known about them - they're just something to consider.
If you were to walk into SFRAW, my question would be to ask you to think back to when your animal was doing really good on a certain food and then try to remember what protein that food was made of. We would probably start there - maybe it was salmon or beef or turkey? -- whatever the "flavor" was that they seemed the most stable on and enjoyed the most.
Then we'll feed just this - just the muscle meat from a super high quality source (regenerative farmed, wild, pasture-raised, well produced from a great supplier) and nothing else. Just the meat - either stew meat or ground burger meat. We can cook it at first, too, if this is what you think your animal would do best on.
This would be in addition to my usual transition suggestions reviewed in the podcast for fasting into the diet and going slowly when it comes to quantity.
If all goes well, after about a week or two we begin to build the diet - adding in a source of calcium first (maybe Animal Essentials Seaweed Calcium) then adding in one organ meat at a time - first heart, then liver, kidney or gizzard, etc.
We add one thing at a time and give it a few days or aa few weeks before adding in the next thing until we have a fairly well rounded base to work from.
This can be cooked. If any addition causes problems, we'll reassess and pivot - seeking out other options such as freeze-dried organs, for example.
Slowly you can start to cook these base meals less and less, so that you are feeding a mostly or fully raw diet eventually. At that time, we will begin to build in much more variety and create a better long-term menu plan.
But start with just plain meat first - then add in calcium, then organs one by one.
If vomiting occurs at any point along the way, you can try adding in a splash of raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar to the meals (or an HCL supplement). This can sometimes fix the problem, but for some it can make things worse. So you just have to try it and find out which way it goes with your dog.
Adding in prebiotics and probiotics will certainly help, too, and I have suggestions for this -- it's very specific and beyond the scope of this comment but there is a lot of new research on this fascinating topic that we can use to help our animals. It's pretty exciting! One probiotic product is not nearly the same as others that are available - there is a lot to know here. The combinations of different types of categories and different probiotic species employed make a huge difference in determining outcomes.
Prebiotic choices are many and we would choose one based on a number of things - perhaps you have a test result we can use (see above) to determine the best choice, or maybe there's one you are using for yourself that would help your animal, too!
Herbals can be very useful in these cases. Have you already tried things like slippery elm bark, ginger, fennel seed, peppermint, dandelion, chamomile, catmint, chicory? Incorporating digestive "bitters" can work wonders for some.
These are some simple suggestions that I hope might help you in planning your next steps.
Again, I applaud you for not giving up! We'll be here cheering you on as you slowly make you way back over to a raw food menu.
As you see, I think for your animal should DIY type diet at first but there's a possibility that a commercial diet might work in the end. This will be further down the path, however and for this, there are but a very very few that I can comfortably recommend, but I'd be happy to if you get to this point eventually.
I sincerely hope that some of my suggestions might be of use and help you and your dog try raw again together!