Barf Dog Food

Can you think of a less appealing name for a dog food diet than "barf"?

When I first heard about the "barf diet" for dogs, I thought it was a joke.

It sounds like anorexic girls puking up their food to try to look like a bean pole.

Actually, puppies like to eat puke, it is what wolves feed their young cubs.

But the image of feeding your kids good food and them having them puke it up for the dog - it's just gross.

I'm not sure if wolves have some way of not puking up digestive juices too. That would not be good for the puppy's mouths. Would they have to really wolf the chunks down quickly to not mess up more delicate tissues?

But that is not what the barf diet is about - read below, several posts earlier, where I explain my reasons why, even though the barf diet MIGHT be good for your particular dog -

I wouldn't buy a puppy from from a breeder whose dogs needed a special diet -

And I don't think that breeding dogs with deficient digestive systems is a good idea.

Vampire Dogs

Did you ever think of vampires as nutritionally challenged individuals living in an era without nutritional supplements?

What would a person, a count with wealth eat, if he was dieing of malnutrition?

Might a person who found that he could not digest solid food, switch to blood?

Cattle or horse blood makes more sense.

There is a tribe in Africa, said to only swallow, water, cows milk, and the blood of cattle - which they get from nicking a bull and catching the blood in a gourd, and then stemming the flow from the bull.

The bull doesn't die - he is 'milked' for blood.

Many people could not live on this diet, as they loose the ability to make the enzymes to digest milk after childhood.

But what if a person lost the ability to make other enzymes?

The yuck feeling that people usually get from the idea of eating other people, might be a form of self protection - it is not safe to eat your own species, because their diseases become your diseases.

better dog foods

I once had two dogs of almost the same age. One was a purebred, the other was from the same father dog, but from a mutt mother, so the puppies were half brother and sister.

They were raised in the same environment, I kept them in the same environment.

I noticed that the purebred had looser bowel movements. The veterinarian said that some dogs are just looser than others.

I switched one of the most expensive brands of dog food. The purebred's dropping became firm like the mixed breed dog's always had been.

But the mix breed dog became so constipated, that I had to go out and get him a sack of regular dog food.

I like to free feed my dogs, and let them go in and out the doggie door as they please, so feeding each dog a different food would be difficult.

I tried feeding them separate, and mixing the new food in with the old food for the mixed breed dog.

The end result was that the purebred dog did great on the expensive food, she was lively to the point of being annoying, she had plenty of energy, she was vibrant and active, she seemed much more alive.

But the cute mixed breed dog, seemed depressed, less focused, less active, less happy.

I tried going back to the regular dog food. The mix breed dog perked up, became energetic, and happy.

The purebred did better on a diet high in fats. The mixed breed dog did better on a diet of high in carbs.

They needed different foods.

Barf diet.

Sometimes a person will find an amazing fact, and use it to jump to amazing conclusions.

Sometimes the jump to conclusions is more like transporting into solid rock.

People have made both good and bad out of the study of Pottenger's cats.

I found the link on wikipedia, while searching about the barf diet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Pottenger,_Jr.
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_feeding#Pottenger.27s_cats

I understand that there is a book on it, but I have not read it.

I have heard lots of people talk about the barf diet - unlike what wikipedia says, I was told it stood for "Bones And Raw Foods" - but wikipedia is probably right.

The 'information' gleaned by some breeders from reading about this is that raw meat and raw foods are good and cooked foods are bad. Which then begs the question of why people have been cooking meat since ancient times?

History buffs, is there a recorded time, when people ate their meat raw?

Cooking kill germs. Pasteurizing milk helped end terrible diseases. You don't want to even think about eating raw pork.

On the other side of the coin, cooking does denature (kill or mess up) some proteins and nutrients.

Your body, and that of your animals, SHOULD be able to extract the nutrition that it needs from a variety of sources, including cooked foods.

But "should" is often just another word for "wasn't, didn't, can't".

We have grown crops that are bigger, more plump with starch or sugar, and who yield more per acre - but we have not increased nutrition, and have sometimes decreased nutrition of crops.

We have depleted soils, then 'replenished' them with chemicals that might lack nutrients, especially those not yet named, and those that MOST people or animals don't need.

If you read the links above, you will know that Pottenger removed the adrenal glands of cats.

Normally, such cats would die. But he got too many cats, and so did not bother to cook the food for some of the cats - and those cats did better. The raw food fad was born.

Does it have merit? Yes.
Can it be dangerous or deadly? Yes.

From Pottenger's findings, what would I conclude?
If your cat has had it's adrenal glands cut out, feed it raw meat and raw milk.

(And from common sense, don't exhaust a female cat without adrenal glands, by letting her get pregnant!)

His study has helped people with adrenal disease.

But, it has allowed purebred dogs, who would have normally died before being old enough to mate, to live, and pass their mutations to the next generation.

This is NOT to say, that the generation of dogs with ill health thrived, or lived more than a few years - just that they lived long enough to multiply their problem.

Would I buy a puppy from a breeder who fed her dogs raw foods? NO!

While some people worry about a dog that is eating raw meat, passing on bacteria to people, my bigger worry would be:

If the breeder sees that her dogs are healthier on raw meat, than what they were on dry dog food - then isn't she saying that there is something wrong with her dogs that they can't thrive on dog food like other dogs do?

If you or your dog are sickly, then yes, find help finding a diet which helps you thrive.

But I would not encourage someone to breed dogs that can not live on dog food.

Dog Food

There's a load of stuff posted on dog food. Lots of people will tell you their opinion. But what you need to know WHY a breeder feeds or recommends a certain diet.

I was talking to an older breeder of purebred dogs about the health of her chosen breed.
She mentioned a few problems, so I asked her about a fatal inherited disease that I had read was common in her breed.

She didn't seem to want to answer at first, and asked me a few questions.
Then she said that that was an old dog book that I had read, and that the disease USE TO BE one in her breed.

I asked about the disease.
It was a disease which somehow prevented the puppy from getting the nutrition out of the food that it was eating.

So that, while all the other puppies would thrive on what they were fed, the affected puppies would slowly die of malnutrition -not because the food was bad, but because the dog's digestion was bad.

Shades of Pottenger's cats!

I asked her when the disease was last seen in the breed.
She said breeder's dogs didn't have it anymore, but sometimes a pet puppy would still die of it.

I asked if a person could look at a litter of puppies for sell, and know which were affected?
She said that regular people could not, but that the experienced breeders could, because they had watched it develop and knew what to look for.

I asked if she would be able to make sure that I didn't buy one of these affected puppies, and she said that she wouldn't go shopping for a puppy with me, but if I brought the puppy over to her house, she would tell me if it was affected or not.

She said, because it was a nutritional problem, the puppy slowly got sicker and sicker before dieing.

I could tell, that she didn't want to talk about it, so I didn't push - the conversation was spread out through several conversations. But I did understand, by what she had said, that she must have had dogs that had produced affected puppies.

I got up the nerve to ask: "What happened to the disease?"

She pretended not to understand. I reminded her that she had once said that the disease use to be common, and now was rare. (The disease was 'cured' before genetic testing for dogs.)

She finally said . . .

A dog food company had come out with a new brand of dry dog food. And that affected dogs, fed this food, did NOT die of malnourishment!

So, the disease was NOT cured. It was just controlled.

Although I will not mention a product name here, it is a dry dog food that you that you can buy in most stores that specialize in selling pet foods.

The dog food is NOT marketed for dogs with inherited digestive problems - if it were, could the breeder you bought your puppy from recommend it, without your knowing that she had sold you a puppy with an inherited health problem?

The breeder just says that it is a good dog food brand, and her health guarantee is void if you don't feed this one brand.

When I heard this, I knew that this wasn't the only breed with this problem, because I knew there had to be a reason, like some cover up, for so many breeders insisting that puppies they sell be fed certain foods.

I know that some of these show breeders do not like dogs - they would NOT be doing it out of concern for the future of the puppies that they sell. (To some dog show people, the dog show is a game they play to win, the dogs are just something they use to win the game.)

But then I talked to a dog owner, and she said, that she knew someone whose dog had died of this disease recently.

I mentioned the expensive dog food. She said the dog was fed this, and it still died.

I went back to the older breeder, who said that yes the dog food would save the puppy, but after awhile, the dog usually died of it, and they never were healthy, even on the expensive dog food.

It seems the dog food made up for some of the nutrients that the puppy was unable to extract from it's food, but that other trace elements were not in the food in quantities enough to save the dog. The dog just died slower.

One breeder, at a show, said that affected puppies only died if pregnant - the nutritional strain killed them. (Blame the victim).

Another breeder said that male dogs died of it too. And that spaying, with the stress of surgery, and the sickly dog's inability to recover from the operation, would often kill the female dog.

I tend to believe the last two, as the "Blame the victim" dog breeder once told me that she had little trouble selling affected puppies (with a different inherited disease) because the people who bought the puppy did not know what to look for - they interpreted the puppy's lack of energy and pleading looks as a gentle puppy, not a sick and dying puppy.

And that veterinarians usually didn't know what to look for (like the rare disorders that Dr. House treats - the veterinarian might only see pets with this disease once or twice in his lifetime).

She also said when their puppy's disease got advanced enough and the puppy died, the owners usually thought the dog died from being poisoned.

And that veterinarians sometimes guessed this too, as the symptoms mimicked some kind of poisoning. (Veterinarians are not trained to do the advanced medical tests that hospitals can do for people).

I didn't think that was very nice. But to some people, it's great, they unload a sickly dieing puppy for good money, and then get off free. And nobody can use a dead dog for breeding, and thereby take customers away from them. Grrrrr.

If you think that is a rare case, then you have no idea just how many inherited diseases are in purebred inbred dogs.

Remember the experienced breeder might sell puppies/dogs nearly every weekend - the people buying a puppy might have never bought a puppy before, and might only buy a few dogs ever.

When a breeder recommends a special diet for a puppy, ask "Why?".

Know that breeders may wait until you have bought the puppy, and are leaving before mentioning the special diet the puppy should have.

If you say that you have changed your mind, that with this new information, you don't want the puppy, be prepared to hear the breeder say that she doesn't use regular a receipt, where she can refund your money and sell the puppy to someone else;

-she uses "papers" that only arrive one per puppy, and that she can't take the puppy back because it would take weeks to straighten out the paper work,

-and to get new papers for the puppy that you decided NOT to buy -

-and by that time the puppy would be too old to sell, and she doesn't want to babysit the puppy for another month before selling it - just waiting on the papers.

Might be best to ask the breeder what they feed their dogs, and why? Expect smaller breeds to often be fed more expensive dog food.

Just my opinion, but I'd question large breeds who have to be fed dog food that costs more than steak, or who can not be fed dog food and still survive.