My Favorite Things About BARF
Why I feed my dogs on BARF: When I went to pick up Cody from the breeder, he came with a bag of puppy-kibble and the advice to feed him that. He seemed to do quite well on this kibble, but at the pet-shop I was told that there are better brands and that I should switch to that. As a new dog-owner, I didn't know any better, and I bought a bag of the recommended brand. However, he was not too keen on that food and didn't eat much. He was skinny and often sick. So I started to surf the web and find out about dog-food. I had heard of BARF, but I was too insecure and thought I wouldn't have the time and the energy to prepare the food myself. I spent a lot of money on vet bills the first year of Cody's life, and tried different brands of dogfood. Then I acquired Pitcairn's book on dog-food and tried his recipies for a short time. In the meantime I kept on reading and surfing and found out more about BARF. I learned that for instance grains are not appropriate for dogs and that most dogfoods contained lots of grains. That explained why Cody used to have "soft droppings" which I usually had to scrape off the street. It also explained why he had so much gas. One day (I don't remember exactly when - he was about 1 year old) I took the step and switched him over to BARF cold turkey. Since then he hasn't been ill, his droppings are firm and small (almost a pleasure to pick up), he filled out, his coat is shiny, he doesn't have allergies anymore and he is in top-condition. Shopping (or as I call it "hunting") for food is exciting, I made many new friends, and the time I spend on preparing the food is actually not as much as I feared. The main ingredients of his food are chicken, lamb, guinea-fowl, and mostly table scraps or freshly prepared veggie-mix. Rui also BARFs and so do the cats, although the cats also eat ready bought cat-food (I must confess). I am not an expert on BARF and don't claim to be one, I am just a very happy pet-owner who feeds BARF, also called Biologically Appropriate Raw Food.
My Favorite Web sites
German site on BARF
German healthy dogs forum
Dutch email list on BARF
Dr Tom Lonsdale's site on natural dog-food
Dr Ian Billinghurst's site
Back to the BEACHBOXER home-page
My webshots album with pictures of BARFers
