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 Madison WI 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.
What settling actually looks like
Give any change two weeks before judging it. Stool firmness usually moves within a week, volume within two.
Persistent vomiting, blood, or weight loss are not transition symptoms. They need a vet rather than another food.
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.
Hydration, which nobody tracks
Older dogs drink less reliably and are more affected when they do not. Rehydrated food is the simplest way to move water into a dog that will not take it from the bowl.
It matters most in winter, when thirst drops but the air is drier.
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.
Why the scoop looks small
A cup of Loyal Saints weighs 50.9 g and carries 230 calories. A cup of a typical adult kibble weighs 101 g. Same cup, roughly twice the food by weight.
Per gram, Loyal Saints carries about 29% more energy. That inversion is why the correct portion looks stingy in the bowl, and why most people overfeed in the first week.
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%.
What freeze-drying actually does
The food is frozen solid, then the surrounding pressure is dropped so the ice turns straight to vapor without ever becoming liquid. The food never gets hot.
That matters because heat is what denatures protein in a conventional extruder. What comes out is raw meat with its water gone and its structure intact — which is also why it is shelf-stable without preservatives.
A note on measuring
Scoop and level rather than pressing down. The cup figures assume loose, level cups, and packing the food in will quietly make you underfeed.
Common questions
How long should a transition take?
Seven to ten days for most dogs, up to fourteen for a sensitive one.
Once or twice a day?
Two smaller meals is usually gentler than one large one.
Are probiotics worth adding?
They can help during a transition. Introduce one thing at a time or you will not know what worked.
