I have decided that 7 year old working cocker Fern deserves the best. After reading on COL for several months about those of you who feed BARF, speaking to my vet and reading a few recommended BARF books it now makes perfect sense to me to be feeding it.
I thought other COLers might find an occasional diary of how we progress helpful, for those who, like me, agree with the theory but are a little worried about putting it into practice for various reasons.
This is a bit of long intro. Hope you don't all get bored before the end. If no one replies then I can take a hint and shall post no more
.
Background.Fern is a perfectly healthy small working cocker, a good weight for her size, perhaps a little on the light side if anything. She is a fit muscly, turbo charged live wire. I want her to stay that way for as many years as possible. She was spayed after her first season. Apart from two trips to the vet to remove grass seeds from her ear canals, she has had no other health problems. She has a little tartar build up at the base of her canines but that is about all. She is my sixth dog and all the others have begun to go gradually downhill from about the age of six or seven. Feeding her BARF from now on is a sort of experiment I suppose, to see if I can prolong her fitness and zest for life.
Previous dietAs an adult she has always been fed once a day in the evening on tinned Pedigree Chum/Winalot/Asda Hero/Butchers -half a small tin a day with a generous handful of mixer. She has always had 3 or 4 Bonios a week, 2 or three low fat milky biscuits a day, a couple of beefhide chewstick (the cheap garishly coloured ones
) a day, with the occasional pigs ear and pumice denta chews(about 1 a week). I tried her on kibble once when I was given a pack, but she really wasn't keen, wet or dry. I felt that it was a most unnatural thing to be feeding a dog myself so wasn't particularly suprised that she gave it the thumbs down. She has always happily polished off melon skins, apple cores and skins, cabbage stalks and the remains of dinners (after we have eaten and left the table).
Small beginnings- raw eggs.
A few months ago she had her first ever raw egg. She carried around in her mouth for ages not knowing what it was for. She then proceeded to bury it in the soft pine needles under a tree in the garden, using her nose to dig out the hole and to cover it up again. It remained intact. As a working cocker I was pleased that she proved how soft mouthed she is. It was quite a shock for me to realise that I had a dog that had no idea what to do with an egg and I felt quite guilty. I dug it up and started her off by cracking it slightly on the patio. After a lot of tentative licking she ate the whole thing and crunched up the shell as dessert.
Getting there. chicken wingsMy biggest concern about feeding BARF was that Fern wouldn't crunch the bones properly and get bits stuck in her throat, her intestines, rupture her colon and have to be rushed to the vet in agony. Being a rather imaginative person I had scenarios playing through my head where the vet would be shaking his head saying there was nothing he could do and that I should have had more sense than to feed chicken bones to a dog. I even had similar concerns that eggshell would cause similar problems.
Having at last understood a)that
it is cooked bones that splinter, not raw and that one should never ever feed them and b)that raw meaty bones should of a size that are
impossible for the dog to swallow without first chewing and crunching I proceeded to offer her a chicken wing. She gingerly took it from me and obediently took it outside as I told her. After about ten minutes of licking and sniffing and puzzled glances in my direction she finally began to nibble small pieces from the wing tip. Then crunch, crunch, more licking of lips and she was away steadily chewing and crunching as though it was the best thing in the world she had ever eaten. It probably took her a full 10 minutes to eat and she was sniffing and licking the patio after it had all gone to make absolutely certain there was none left. She didn't choke, she was not sick and nothing got stuck on the way though. Phew.
Two or three raw chicken wings a week as an occasional daytime treat well away from dinner time has been the norm now for the last month or two.
Does anyone wan't to know what happens next?
