Tao and I have two dogs.  BB is a 5 year old Miniature Schnauzer.  Teddy is an 8 month old Yorkshire Terrier.  They are picky picky eaters.  They simply refuse to eat kibble dog food.  I kind of wonder if BB might have gotten a little sick during the melamine poisoning and has grown a distaste for kibble.  Teddy would never touch it.  In fact, to date, they won't touch Purina Puppy Chow, Purina Canned food, or those little Pedigree Little Champions packets. They turn their noses up at Science Diet Nature's Best, and Milk Bones Treats.  They also hate Purina T-Bonz treats.  Frankly, I was getting tired of taking uneaten food to the pound.  Not that I mind helping out pound dogs.

We take them to a local park each day for a good run.  One of the people there told me about the raw food diet or the BARF diet for dogs.  Basically you give them what their ancestors would have eaten and what feral dogs eat which is raw meat.  To me, the benefit is that I don't have to trust profit motivated mega companies with the health of my loved ones.  Thousands of pets were killed by poisoning, kidney failure: a horrible way to die where your poisons and fluids just back up in your body and you drown in it.  That really opened my eyes to what my pets are worth to me and the thought of saving a nickel on pet food and ending up somehow killing them Chinese poison stuck in my craw.

BB has ALWAYS had diahrrea, always.  I can count on one hand the number of solid stools he's had no matter what I feed him.  The only time he has had decent poops is when we started him on that food that comes like a sausage...I can't remember the name right now.  It's sold out of its own little refrigerator.  They would tolerate that food as long as it wasn't frozen.  Once you freeze it, the texture or something changes and they don't like it anymore.  We would purchase a couple of loaves of that stuff at a time, cut it up into small pieces and keep about a half a week's worth at a time in the fridge and the rest in the freezer.  No-go.  Once the frozen stuff thawed out it would start loosing it's texture and seemed to just go bad fast.  By the third day it would have a tangy odor to it and the dog's wouldn't go for it. 

So about a week ago I started on the BARF diet, or my own version of it.  Dogs, being domesticated animals have for thousands of years survived off the scraps from the table of mankind.  I don't mind feeding people food to dogs but I don't want them to get sick.  All things in moderation is what a proper diet looks like.  BB's stools have turned into chalky dry pellets after starting the raw food diet!  He strains a little at times but I think this will only help to express those stink glands he has back there and keep them drained.  He's never had a problem with them but I keep an eye open anyway.  Teddy has never had diahrrea a day in his life and his stools look like regular brown dog poop.  Neither of their stools is smelly!  That's the amazing thing.  I always pick up after the dogs so I like the smaller, dryer, less smelly stools.  And the dogs love the diet.

So far I've been feeding them chicken wings, chicken feet, chicken backs, livers, gizzards, and hearts.  All from chicken or duck depending on what's available at the local Asian supermarket.  The ethnic supermarkets have these less expensive cuts of meat, even pig snouts and 'pizzles'.   The dogs chew up those bones like machines!  The bones are amazingly soft.  It's not until you cook them that chicken bones get splintery, sharp, and brittle.  Even the backs and necks are quite soft on a chicken.  I tried turkey necks but those bird bones are harder and the small dogs can't handle them as well.  I supplement this food with some carrots and some table scraps.  I don't give them much from the table, but they always get a little.  Just a couple of bites most times because I think a family aught to eat together.  However I feed them the raw stuff out in the garage for safety's sake.  They like to drag the bones around to somewhere comfortable and work on them and I don't want raw poultry on my couch.  I have a couple of dog beds in the garage for them go dine at...like a booth at a restaurant! 

I have kept a bowl of kibble in the kitchen to see if they crave anything in there.  In case there are vitamins or something that the chicken isn't providing.  They don't touch it.  The instructions at the BARF for beginners website says they should eat about 2% of the dog's body weight per day.  60% of this is raw meat and bones, and 40% of this amount is veggies.  The dog's don't chew much and their alimentary canal is fairly short so they don't get much out the veggies unless you grind them up to break open the cell walls.  In the wild, dogs don't eat vegetation except the occasional grass to clean them out.  It comes out looking basically the same way as it did when it went in.  Grinding the veggies lets them get some vitamins from them.  For this I usually tempt them with table scraps.  Both dogs like carrots, either cooked or raw.  Who knew?  I can usually talk BB into eating anything at least once.  He's so cute that way. He will eat water melon with me and apples and other veggies if I tempt him by eating it first.  There are some other tricks for getting them to eat veggies but frankly, I let the dog be the arbitrator for what he wants to eat.  I just do portion control.  A wild dog will eat and eat and eat until it's sick, then it will walk away from the kill and sleep and then it will go back and repeat the process until the carcass is gone or something drives them away.  This is great in the wild where food is hard to come by.  But at my house, they would eat until they get fat and suffer from obesity related disease.  The last time we were at the vet, this HUGE woman came in and right behind her was a HUGE basset hound.  I felt so sorry for that dog because his low slung frame made carrying around that extra weight difficult.  He was obviously uncomfortable and he didn't even look that old.  Diabetes in animals can only come from diet. Insulin glands get worn out, inefficient and the cells get immune to the insulin.  It's a system that gets worn thin with too much carbohydrate metabolism.  It's a disease humans are all to familiar with.  Obesity and diabetes go hand in hand.  It's not something I want to give to my babies.  There is no known nutritional need for carbohydrates in a dog's diet.

So I portion out the meat and offer them a small amount of table scraps each day to round out their diet.  Never more than a bite or two of scraps unless it consists of veggies.  Over the next few weeks I'll change up the mixture away from the chicken a little.  By feeding the dogs this diet, it isn't really any more expensive than kibble!  That's the amazing part.  Choosing a mixture of inexpensive organ meat, backs, feet, and wings is cheap and fairly easy to prepare.  The only real work is the portioning.

Last night I went over to the local Asian market and picked up two weeks worth of food for less than twenty bucks.  I bought wings, gizzards, hearts, and feet.  The dogs love the feet!  I put everything out on the counter and brought out the scales.  I portion about a half a pound of food per day per dog which is a little light for the bigger dog and a little heavy for the smaller dog.  I mixed up the different parts and chop the feet up a little since the smaller dog has a harder time getting the bigger bones of the metacarpals broken down.  Usually Teddy will get the fingers off and BB will take what he can't eat so they self regulate their portions a little that way.  I put everything into some portion bags and put them in the freezer.  I will buy some little containers from the dollar store this week and use those for storage next time.  I take down two bags at night and put them on the counter.  By morning they are thawed but still cool to the touch.  I give one bag in the morning and one bag at night.  Essentially each dog gets a half a bag, twice a day.  They are satisfied with these portions.  BB is a little lighter.  I think he's lost some weight and that's good since he was just a few pounds over his ideal weight.  This isn't totally due to the new diet.  He has been loosing weight since we got Teddy.  BB's health is one of the reasons we invested in Teddy.  He was getting depressed, uninterested in doing anything.  Since we got Teddy, he's much more active.





BB's teeth also look better.  Without the sticky food clinging to his gum line, the tartar has decreased a great deal.  This benefit alone is worth the effort.  My friends have an old dog missing most of his dentition and to see him gumming down his food is sad.

The formula for feeding, as well as the answers to a host of other questions including my favorite, "will my dog get the blood lust from this diet?" at this site: http://www.njboxers.com/faqs.htm#started

The dogs love the diet.  Their stools are fewer, firmer, and less smelly.  The cost is close to or the same as, or even less than the cost of premium brand mega company pet food.  The benefits of this diet are hard to dispute.  However the diet is not without it's detractors.  There is a firestorm in the pet food industry, ($35.3billion by 2012!) regarding this topic.  These companies would have you believe you have to be a scientist to formulate food for your pets.  This carefully contrived view is the result of years of marketing by some of the largest corporations in the world.  One only has to look at the name brand "Science Diet" to see they are peddling a certain image.  You pets are animals that in the grand scale of things, have only just this second came out of the forest and moved to the warm spot by the kitchen table.  They are perfectly able to get all their nutrients from fresh meat.  That they should be kept on a diet of brown pellets for their entire life is a harsh punishment for the crime of offering their undying love to us.

As far as food born illness, I don't worry about it.  I've seen the things these dogs eat off the side of the road.  Their stomach acid is much stronger.  They don't chew their food at all.  The teeth are only there to break the food material into pieces small enough to get to the stomach.  The muscular stomach wall,  secreting hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes destroy all manner of bacteria.  In fact, a dog's saliva does not contain any digestive enzymes like ours does.  The saliva's only purpose is to lubricate the chunks on their way down the shoot.

Of course factory farmed poultry and the cruelty inflicted on these poor animals is a whole different matter.  Something for another essay I guess.  If you have any questions about this entry, or anything on this website, please don't hesitate to contact me.  I'm no expert on this diet.  I have only been using it for a few weeks.  However the beauty and simplicity, the idea behind it is really a good one.  The effects on my dogs were immediate and obvious as far as the diahrrea and foul breath went.  Good luck with your doggies.  Let me know how they are!

Best regards