Most digestive trouble is not a mystery illness. It is a food a dog cannot fully use, or a change made too quickly.
This page is written for owners in Berkeley weighing up freeze-dried raw. The nutrition below holds wherever you live — what changes locally is delivery, not diet — so we would rather give you the substance than pad it with things we cannot actually verify about your city.
The portion mistake almost everyone makes
A rich food introduced quickly causes loose stool in dogs with no sensitivity at all. Because freeze-dried raw is concentrated, an unadjusted scoop is easy to overdo.
Measure from the chart rather than matching the visual volume of the old food — a cup of this weighs about half what a cup of kibble weighs.
Transition slowly, and mean it
Most new-food failures are transition failures. Move over seven to ten days: a quarter new for three days, then half, then three quarters, then all.
A genuinely sensitive gut may need fourteen. There is no prize for finishing early, and a rushed transition looks exactly like an intolerance.
Why single-protein formulas make this possible
Every Loyal Saints bag contains one named animal protein. Run a trial on Turkey with Salmon and you have two candidate proteins to reason about rather than nine.
No soy, no corn, no wheat, no GMOs, no artificial additives and no synthetic premix — which removes most of the usual suspects before you start.
Two meals beat one
Splitting the daily amount across two meals is gentler on digestion than one large serving, and it steadies energy through the day.
It also makes overfeeding easier to spot, because you are measuring twice.
Rehydrating, and when it helps
You can feed it straight from the bag. Adding roughly equal parts warm water helps in four cases: a dog who does not drink enough, a suspicious eater being transitioned, a dog who eats too fast, and mixing into an existing bowl so it clings rather than sifting.
Warm, not hot — the point is that this food has never been cooked. Once rehydrated, treat it as raw meat and refrigerate leftovers.
Reading a label without being misled
Guaranteed analysis is printed “as fed”, so it includes the food's moisture. A dry food and a wet food cannot have their protein percentages compared directly.
Convert to dry matter first: divide the protein percentage by the dry matter percentage, where dry matter is 100 minus moisture. A canned food at 10% protein and 75% moisture is 40% protein on a dry basis — higher than a kibble showing 30%.
Single protein, and why it matters practically
Every Loyal Saints bag contains one named animal protein — Beef, Chicken, or Turkey with Salmon.
Beyond ingredient purity, this has a practical consequence: if your dog reacts to something, a single-protein food lets you identify what it was. A recipe blending several proteins makes an elimination trial close to impossible.
Getting the interval right
A 14 oz bag is about 7.8 cups. Divide by your dog's daily amount to get the days per bag, then set the delivery interval slightly shorter so you are never scraping the bottom.
Common questions
Is grain the usual culprit?
Less often than assumed. Fat level, portion size and transition speed account for more cases.
Are probiotics worth adding?
They can help during a transition. Introduce one thing at a time or you will not know what worked.
How long should a transition take?
Seven to ten days for most dogs, up to fourteen for a sensitive one.
