Why Dog Owners are Quitting Raw Food

Including me...

I fed my dogs homemade raw food for years and they thrived on it.

Shiny coats. Bright white teeth. Tons of energy.

Now, in 2025, I will never feed it again.

Here are reasons I decided to walk away and what I’m doing that I think is way better for my dogs:

1. My dogs didn’t love it

When I first started feeding raw back in 2018, I was so fired up.

I had just watched a bunch of DIY videos online, ordered $200 worth of ingredients from a local raw supplier, and spent hours in the kitchen prepping this beautiful plate of food.

And when I set it down in front of Harper?

She sniffed it, looked at me… and walked away.

I tried adjusting recipes and ingredients, but the truth was: my dogs just weren’t into homemade raw food.

That was a huge blow. And yeah, I was bummed, but I honestly just didn’t know any better at the time.

Some dogs love raw food, mine just don’t.

2. It wasn’t the “raw” aspect that made them healthier

For years, I told myself raw food was the reason they looked and felt so good.

But now, I think it was something else entirely.

It wasn’t because the food was raw, it was because it was:

• Made with whole, fresh ingredients

• Balanced properly

• Made in a way that my dogs actually enjoyed

And you can get those exact same benefits with cooked foods, they’re not exclusive to raw.

But you know what is exclusive to raw?

A much higher risk of harmful pathogens and bacteria.

Sure, contamination can happen with any food, just look at how often we hear about lettuce recalls, but cooking destroys most of those pathogens. Leaving it raw doesn’t.

And here’s the part I didn’t know early on: grocery store raw meat is allowed to have certain levels of harmful bacteria in it because the assumption is that you’ll cook it.

Commercial pet food companies don’t get that same pass.

The FDA requires raw pet food to have zero detectable pathogens, because most people serve it raw.

And that’s why I still trust some commercial raw food companies, but I stopped trusting myself to prepare safe raw meals at home.

I know some people argue that “dogs can handle bacteria better than humans” or “wolves eat raw in the wild.” And sure, those arguments make sense on paper.

But we don’t live on paper.

We live in a world where most dogs are bred for looks, not survival, and their guts aren’t always equipped to handle the same pathogens their ancestors could.

3. Food-safety fatigue

Food safety fatigue is real.

Even with solid cleaning routines, there’s just a lot to stay on top of with homemade raw:

• Keeping prep surfaces sanitized

• Making sure my dogs didn’t lick or spill anything right after eating

• Cleaning up after our dogs dropped raw meat onto the floor

• Worrying about cross-contamination during feeding and cleanup

It became exhausting.

There’s already so much to think about when it comes to feeding our pets and raw just adds even more stress to an already-complex topic.

4. Homemade raw is harder to balance

When you see “complete and balanced” on a pet food label, it means the food meets all your dog’s essential nutrient needs.

Balancing a homemade diet to meet those standards is hard. Even with cooked food.

And raw makes it harder.

Why? Because most homemade raw recipes involve feeding ingredients separately - chunks of raw meat, bone, liver, oysters, etc. - and a lot of the hard-to-find nutrients come in the form of powders or supplements.

But here’s the problem:

Some of those supplements (like kelp powder for iodine) smell terrible, and my dogs won’t touch them.

With cooked food, I can blend everything together easily in a food processor.

I can hide the weird-tasting stuff in meat and sweet potatoes.

But with raw? That just didn’t work for us because, in order to grind everything like the bones, you’d need an expensive grinder.

5. Bird flu

Aside from the regular stuff like salmonella and E. Coli, raw meat is at a higher risk of harboring and spreading the bird flu.

To date, no dogs have been affected but several cats have with a few even passing away from the bird flu.

It’s just not a risk I’m willing to take right now when I know that cooking kills the bird flu but still gives my dogs the same benefits as raw.

So what are we currently feeding our dogs?

Home-cooked, vet-approved recipes which you can learn how to make for your own dogs by clicking here!