Dose anyone here make up the barf diet for their dog ??
If so, what is your recipe?
Have you seen any improvement in the dogs health?
Appreciate any info you have....
***************************************************************
03-29-05, 07:47 AM
Lydia
Hey Fritzzs. I feed the "BARF" diet to my cat and their health and fur is awesome. I recommend a book called "Reigning Cats & Dogs" to anyone who inquires about a raw meat diet for any animal. (NOOO, I don't know the author or anything, it was recommended to me by my vet).

You can actually download the book at THIS website (for FREE). Also check out some of the other links on the page.

Another book that would be great for you to have is . Dr. Pitcairn's Natural Health For Dogs & Cats It gives you lots of general information, including some recipes for foods. I've used this book for reference to other things MANY times!

~Lydia

03-29-05, 01:53 PM
Fritzzs

quote:
You can actually download the book at THIS website (for FREE). Also check out some of the other links on the page.


----------------------------------

What a great site: the best one yet...
Question: Do you use any kind of a thickening agent or serve it sorta sloppy..? Having Schnauzers with beards, they sometimes get a tad messy....
I start it tonight...Mucho Thanks

03-29-05, 02:14 PM
Lydia
I somewhat do my own "version" of the diet in the book...it's not sloppy because I don't mix it all together, but feed the various components separately...(see a recent post in ]THIS FORUM It was for recipes for homemade cat food...

I'm not sure what you could use for thickening...but, I assure you, those little guys will be licking their chops so much you won't have to worry about it making a mess on their little moustaches & beards!!! Big Grin

03-29-05, 09:35 PM
DvdGStwrt
The fallacy of the raw diet only idea is that dogs have been domesticated and have been right along side human beings when humans took up cooked foods dog started getting cooked scrapes. Dog has been breed for traits which include the “puppy” mentality that makes them well suited to be around humans. Unlike their wild relatives Domestic Dog is a product of human breeding methods and subject to the human diet for thousands of years. They can and do glean as much nutrition from our cooked foods as we do.

I do a variation on a theme when it comes to BARF. For instance I will give the dog steamed veggies instead of raw - but then when I steam veggies they are still crisp. She also gets her dry kibble to munch on whenever she wants a snack. I also give her both raw and cooked bones.

She gets a "plate" of food, cut up into bite sized pieces, dished out much like we dish out our own plates. She has teeth let her use them (this is perhaps why hers never need cleaning when we go to vet). This is not a restaurant where everybody can order what they want.

Giving a dog “people” food (i.e. scrapes of your dinner plate) is perfectly fine, as long as you are not having Ho-Hos, Twinkies and Ding-Dongs for dinner washed down with an early week Kool-Aide Red Punch.

Nearly anything you would eat in the course of a balanced meal with a few exceptions (sugar and onion and chocolate) is good for the dog – with that in mind we eat rather healthy here, I steam my veggies, I dry fry foods, I also take care to balance out the meals with all the good stuff. If you are eating TV dinners, canned foods and processed “quick” preparations this is not good for your dog – or you.

03-31-05, 09:03 AM
FredPuli
Raw diet a fallacy? Well, try the experiment of giving the dog a choice between raw meat and cooked food or commercially prepared dogfood and see which is preferred !

If anyone believes that our domesticated dog is as well off being given a human diet,they ought to explain just how the dog we keep as a pet differs in its digestive system from its ancestors Confused. Dogs do eat some vegetation in the wild, just as modern dogs do now, but only on specific occasion when the animal feels a need for the plant. 'Humanising' the diet is not really such a good idea. Dog food manufacturers do it because they sell to humans and because adding some basic vegetable material makes the product cheaper.

The modern dog is only some 12 generations away from the wolf, in that a controlled experiment in Russia demonstrated that is how long it took, by selective breeding , to create an animal with the behavioural traits and learning of the domestic animal. Smile

03-31-05, 09:21 AM
Fritzzs
Fred, you could not be more correct..
Anybody who feeds their pet human food is doing it a big disservice...
A human diet for a dog is totally wrong... It is as bad as people saying that a veggie diet for humans is as healthy as a normal diet...
Last night I started my dogs on the BARF diet, gradually of course...
Believe me, I haven't done this without a lot of reserch...

03-31-05, 09:36 AM
Lydia
THANK YOU Fred!!!!! The fact that dogs (and cats) have been brought indoors and treated as a member of a family doesn't alter their digestive system in any way. I don't have a dog now, but if I ever have one again, they will eat the same healthy raw-meat diet that I feed my cats right now. My cats are very healthy, have no digestive issues and although they are both long-haired, I've YET to find a furball on my floors!!!

Healthy food makes a healthy pet! Smile

03-31-05, 11:11 AM
aminator2002
I can't imagine a more unappealing acronym. What does BARF stand for?

03-31-05, 12:02 PM
Fritzzs
Bones And Raw Food = BARF

04-09-05, 11:51 AM
vshelton2
I already feed one of my dogs BARF but my Sheltie, Layla, which we have only had for 4 months now. She was a rescue and is 14 months old will not even try it. Any ideas on how to get her to start eating the food. I can really tell the difference between my rottie since she started eating the BARF diet and I want our Sheltie to reap the benefits too. Thanks

04-09-05, 02:19 PM
Fritzzs
Believe me, when he gets really hungry, he'll start eating it.... Never seen a dog starve itself to death yet...

04-11-05, 10:55 AM
Lydia
I would definitely recommend that you slowly introduce the diet if he/she seems not to be interested in it. Mix it in with the usual food a little more each time, until they eat it without having the need to starve them into it. It actually works best this way if there are any digestive issues.

Won't take more than a handfull of days to make the transition.

I remember the first time one of my cats had raw chicken in her mouth - - she just dropped it on the floor, stared at it and pushed it around. Now, she eats it and sometimes growls while she's chewing, as if she freshly killed it herself!! :-)

04-21-05, 05:39 PM
Rakuchild

quote:
Originally posted by vshelton2:
I already feed one of my dogs BARF but my Sheltie, Layla, which we have only had for 4 months now. She was a rescue and is 14 months old will not even try it.



My Aussie, he was also a rescue and would not touch people food. It's been a little over 7 years since he came to live with us and he still isn't interested in it, except for peanutbutter and any kind of fish. He has food allergies so that may be part of it. They had problems getting him to eat at the dog shelter and he was down about 15 lbs. when I took him home.

Would he have starved to death? I don't believe they would have let him do that, but it took me a week to find something he could/would eat and another 3 weeks to put 10 lbs. on his boney butt.

I saw this BARF diet on some television program about nutty people and their showdogs. The woman was feeding her Aussies raw eggs and chicken backs. Didn't seem like a good idea to me with salmonella and all that. There are warnings all over the chicken I buy to cook it thoroughly. If it's not safe for me to eat it raw, I don't think it's too smart an idea to give it to my dogs.

Also, I've noticed that though the dogs and cats in our family catch and kill mice, birds, possums, etc., they never eat them. Not even our dog who eats everything, including mulberries that fall off the trees and tomatoes on the vine! So the "need" for raw food must not be too strong.

I love my dogs, but with 3 of them, I couldn't afford the BARF diet. The human population in the house doesn't even get meat everyday! Big Grin I don't believe there is anything wrong with giving the dogs leftover veggies and scraps from the table, if they'll eat them. It's important to know what harms them, like chocolate.

I've got one dog who will eat anything,two who are extremely cautious about food, especially if it isn't in their bowls, and a feline dog (he is insulted by the "C" word) who is terribly fond of pancake syrup. It makes sense to me since dogs have evolved alongside humans, that they would develop food preferences as we have.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,