It's the perfect time to write about this subject. as I'm listening to both of my dogs tearing and cracking away at raw chicken drumsticks. If this strikes horror into your hearts after a lifetime of hearing that you dog will choke on chicken bones, listen up. It's all an old wives tale.

When you think about it, wolves in the wild would naturally hunt and feed on all kinds of small animals, including any kind of chicken, turkey or pheasent it could catch. You never hear about wolves dying from chicken bones caught in their throats...

Bringing up the subject of dogs and their diet all stems from the death of my old best friend Peetie, who I wrote about earlier. After that horrible experience, I was determined to raise my dogs in the most natural way possible and a big piece of that is diet. In fact, to become a client of our holistic vet, you have to agree to adhere to a more natural diet. The most natural is of course - the raw diet.

Now I realize that not everyone can afford to feed their St Bernards whole chickens and turkeys every day, but with 2 small dogs (a 12 year old, 7 pound Maltese "Petaluna".... and a 1 year old, 4 pound Yorkie mix "Little Mima" ) I could handle it. So after our initial consult with our vet, I browsed the chicken section of the supermarket and picked up a value pack of chicken wings.

Little Mima got the wing tip - the end of the wing which is mostly cartilage. Petaluna got the 'wingette', with the 2 skinny bones. The 'drumette' was saved for later. Little Mima took one sniff, grabbed it and ran off with it. It was devoured in about 3 seconds. Hmmm.... we might be on to something here.

For Petal, I was a little scared. First of all, my 12 year old gal had never eaten a piece of raw meat, ever! Second, I was wary about those bones getting caught in her throat. Third, I was worried about her poor teeth. (She, like many small dogs had major teeth issues and had to get them scaled by the vet almost annually - loose teeth, red and bleeding gums, lots of brown plaque and bad breath!). So I skeptically held out the wingette for her to inspect. She looked at me, looked at the chicken wing, took a step forward and had a sniff. She then very delicately took it in her mouth and slowly walked away - thank you very much!

I couldn't believe it - she ate that raw chicken like she'd been eating it all her like. Cracking and crunching of bones was heard and that was it. We'd switched to a raw diet.