I've been buying kibble for more than 6 years and my vet recommended switching to a raw diet because of some issues we've been having. She recommended Darwin's or Primal. I tried a sample of Darwin and my dog just wouldn't have it. Then I tried the primal food and my dog went crazy over it. But, since we switched shes been licking her lips a lot. I noticed her kibble before had digestive enzymes, is it possible that my dog has gotten use to the enzymes helping break down food and now cannot do it herself?
I will ask my vet soon if I should supplement the raw food with the digestive enzymes, but I just wanted to see if anyone else has seen this before. I don't want to switch back to kibble because the raw has really helped with her skin...so I just want to make it work and keep her on raw.
First, welcome to our forum!
I can't say if I've seen it before since I never got Pookie switched to all raw. Anything is possible, including your dog's body not producing enzymes anymore because they were in the food. What I can say is that I don't think it would cause any harm to add enzymes to your dog's food, and it may help.
That said, lip smacking, IMO is a sign of indigestion or nausea, and what I'm suspecting is that your dog may not be producing enough stomach acid to break down the meat protein. Enzymes break down carbs, acid breaks down meat, and it's possible that the kibble "trained" your dog's stomach to not produce (as much) stomach acid. Now that she's getting meat, if her stomach isn't producing enough acid, it might be causing some indigestion. So what you could do, in addition to the enzymes, is also add a little apple cider vinegar to her diet. I'm not quite sure how you would do that with raw (in canned you could just mix it in), but if you're also feeding a puree of veggies with the meat, you could add the ACV to that. Or maybe to her drinking water. Not tons, but some. If she doesn't need it, she'll let you know.
I'm sure the others here will also have some thoughts on what might be going on, and suggestions. I hope this helps!
Edit: We have a section called "Apple Cider Vinegar for Pets Too" -- here's a link to one of the topics in it:
http://parenting-furkids.com/index.php?topic=2925.msg19991#msg19991