Wher would I get some proper info on this BARF thing 
I had never heard of it until I saw it mentioned on here
Neither had I until I joined this site. Intrigued, I bought some books on Amazon - Tom Lonsdale, Kmythy Schulz, Ian Bilinghurst - and once you start looking, Amazon suggests a load more, and you can also read the reader reviews which is handy. The books are very informative, and there is also a yahoo group called Britbarf (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BritBarf/).
Anyway, I read up on it thoroughly and decided I definitely wanted to move Ruby across. The more you read up, the more it makes sense, and the more alarmed I started to feel about commercial dog foods. Some are better than others, obviously, but Lonsdale talks in great depths about gum disease and, in short, the fact that bones clean teeth, and soft food rots them.
It also made me start looking at the meat percentages in dog foods, and I couldn't believe it when I stood in the supermarket one day reading the backs of all the complete foods they sold, and they were all about the same - about 5% chicken in a chicken flavoured complete food!
So we changed Ruby over about a month and a half ago (she is now just under 5 months). She is energetic, but not 'hyper' (same phenomen as kids with 'E' numbers I suppose), her coat got noticibly shinier, and her poo is now firm, doesn't smell and there is a lot less of it. As it is impossible to eat bones fast, she does not bolt her food down and then vomit it up through eating to quick as she sometimes used to. But the main thing and the biggest plus is that she absolutely ADORES her food. She really gets a lot of pleasure from it, and that's lovely to see, and it's nice being able to offer a dog variety. It's really helped with her teething and she hasn't chewed anything that isn't toys or food she's been given - all our furniture and shoes are intact, and she hasn't shredded any of her soft toys or blankets either. Regarding older dogs and BARF, there's lots of anecdotal evidence in the books and the forum for BARF curing illnesses, infections, poor health and improving immune systems.
The scariest thing in the whole world is giving your dog raw chicken wings for the first time, but Ruby crunches the bones and loves them. She eats things like chicken wings, chicken thighs, lamb necks, oxtail, whole fish, raw eggs including the shells (one of her favourites) and other cuts of poultry, beef or lamb with bone in, raw. Once a week she also has either kidney or liver. Alongside this she has vegetables and fruit (no apple cores, onions or onion-like items (eg leeks or spring onion), grapes or raisins). I don't give her grains or dairy. I also don't worry too much about meticulously weighing things She eats less in terms of volume of food than she did when on dry, but I guess this is to be expected as it's more nutrient dense.
I fully expected BARF to be a more expensive option (being pure meat and not just 4%), but I was surprised to find that it works out a lot cheaper, and far more convenient as I can just buy it at the supermarket along with all my food, and not drive out to a pet shop that sells the brand I want.
Hope this has been helpful. I am thrilled with the COL website for this reason alone, as I never would have found out about raw feeding otherwise.
One more thing: I've noticed a lot of people get in to quite heated discussions about feeding, which makes me a bit hesitant to post on this subject. Having said that, as I wouldn't dream of criticising others' choice of feeding - and am not doing so - I thought this post might be helpful to those considering it - but it is only
my opinion from
my perspective, so please don't anyone be offended.
