A BARF Diary.

[Penel]

I would give her canines a scrape - I use a flannel slightly damp just over my finger.  If it is really hard stuck to her teeth you can often get it off with your thumbnail 
I don't really ever use the word BARF when I am telling people what I feed.  I just say I feed a raw natural diet - and when they say what do you mean I say, raw tripe, raw meat, raw bones..... I think BARF sometimes puts people off...

[DennyK]

My butcher asked me last week if I was home cooking Paddy's food.  I told him, no I feed him raw.  He looked really puzzled  but interested - said he breeds and shows Dobermans but is having problems with two of them, although he home cooks all their foods.  I explained the "prey model" idea, no grains, no dairy - next thing, he was asking me to lend him my two books!  Took them in to him yesterday and he was delighted.  Might have a convert!

[Penel]

Excellent I'll be well impressed if you convert a butcher - thing is, once he starts feeding two Dobes a raw diet, they'll take all the bones 

[JackieD]

I keep devouring everything I can read on here regarding BARF how do you get round the Vet regarding this way of feeding ?? my vet is totally against it and made me feel a bit silly when I said I was going to try it  it wasn't what he said, it was the way he looked at me and paused which seemed like forever, before he said "I supposed you will feed what you will, we are here to put things right" he didn't say what "things" but I came away feeling like a "silly Mummy" who in the vet's opinion was trying to make my poor girl ill.
I did speak to my neighbour's daughter who is a vet nurse at a different practice but they too were not keen on BARF either 
Yet everyone on here seems to have had outstanding results, well with very few exceptions.

[Annette]

I  only only mentioned it to one vet at our practice and she was totally against it. However we decided we would still give it a try.

So many BARFers have said that their vets are against it but do comment on how healthy their dogs look (without realising they are being fed raw).

We haven't been to the vet since the change over so it would be interesting to see what they think of Buddy now.

[Penel]

Our homeopathic vet is a huge fan of the raw diet, our normal vets not so much  I just ignore them.  If I'd listened to them, Lola would have been on loads of drugs for nearly 3 years now, so that just shows I was right. 

[Tommo]

Right thats it, Baggins and Phoebe are both going onto barf aswell. I am fed up with the quantity and odour of the end result of their JWB diet. The O/H wont like it but this thread will sort out any worries. I will probably be feeding the pre prep. AMP frozen packs. This is just for conveniance due to our jobs. Bones are not a problem as one of my mates is a butcher. Just a quick question, can I feed them raw rabbit? I have a never ending supply of them around a friends farm. ( sorry to any rabbit lovers..... but farmers dont see them in quite the same way).

[Joules]

Great, another convert!

I would have thought rabbits were fine (part of a dogs natural diet surely?) as long as you know they haven't been poisoned! 

I don't blame you starting with the pre-prepared packs.  The chopped tripe that Coco had this morning is enough to make me heave!  She loved it though and it is gone in about 30 secs so I reckon I can live with it 

[sarahp]

Neither my present conventional vet nor my previous conventional vet were very impressed that I fed raw.  When Dill was ill I went against my own guts and fed him what the vet told me to - it made him worse.  I carried on with this for quite a while but in the end I knew I had to stop.  I went to see the homeopathic vet who told me what to feed (raw  ) and we've never looked back.

Daisy is also not very well at the moment and again the vet wanted her to go on a special prescription diet.  When I refused I was treated like an idiot and was told 'we have a special nurse who deals with diets she knows ALL about it'    I just walked away    I like my vets - they are very good, kind people, but they have years of being told by rich pet food companies that their foods are brilliant and only processed commercial foods contain ALL the vitamins and minerals needed.  I dont know whether that is true or not, but I do know that whenever I have fed them - for whatever reason - my dogs have not reacted well to them and that is enough for me to stick to my guns from here on in 

[Rhona W]

Just a quick question, can I feed them raw rabbit? 

I know Rachel (IWLass) feeds Molo rabbit. It's a balanced meal of bone, meat and offal all in one. 
I have a local butcher that is always advertising fresh rabbit, but I haven't plucked up the courage to do it yet. And the kids were absolutely disgusted that I could even suggest it. 

[Tommo]

I know that they ( the rabbits) have not been poisoned apart from a very sudden lethal dose of lead. As they are all rifle shot I wont be picking out pellets for ever and a day either. I would have to try and figure out how much to feed  next. Rabbit would only be on the menu once/twice per week. Am I correct in thinking that the pre prep frozen blocks contain bone and veg. too. I know that there are tripe, traditional, working and other varieties but is there one with veg. and bone too? I think that the bone is ground down and added, could be wrong.

[Rhona W]

The frozen blocks and bags do contain veg. and bone so there is no need to add anything to them. 

Just to mention, the blocks also contain grain, which some people do not recommend feeding to dogs, but the bags don't. 

[Claire]

So many BARFers have said that their vets are against it but do comment on how healthy their dogs look (without realising they are being fed raw).

Definitely.  I wait for the compliment about how good she looks, then I say it's down to her diet.

When I switched Ruby to raw, we were still attending puppy classes at the vets.  The vets' assistants/nurses that ran the classes were totally against the idea.  They said she could choke, and proceeded to tell me horror stories of dogs that had had their insides punctured, ruptured and torn with bones they'd found.  (Note the 'found' - i.e. KFC leftovers and the like that are COOKED).

It was worrying having to listen to the horror stories from professionals, but when they started talking about the risk of salmonella (I had just read about the shorter digestive tract in dogs, etc), their credibility went out the window.

I am SO pleased now looking at Ruby that I didn't let scaremongering by the uninformed deter me from raw feeding.

[Naughty Pair]

this has been a great thread for all BARF converts!!

Has really helped me!

I am justing trying to get my eldest dog Annie (16mths) to eat the bones - she is not that keen

Teri (8mths) loves it all - no sickness or anything!

thanks all!!!

[DennyK]

I know I posted before on another thread about my vets' reactions.

One (a woman) gave me a real dressing down.  And got one in return.  I pointed out that I'd done EVERYTHING they'd recommended for colitis, he'd had a colonoscopy, a gastroscopy, he'd had loads of antibiotics - six weeks' worth at one point - fed the prescription food, fed Nature Diet, fed (yuk - but the vet recommended it) Chappie.  None of it worked.  The drugs cleared the problem up temporarily then it returned.  So: their conventional advice hadn't worked and in the meantime Paddy was smelly, windy, uncomfortable, had scaly skin (his rear end too tender to be stroked over the rump) and produced some disgusting "outputs".  So why not try raw feeding. 

Interestingly, the other vet, a chap, said he wasn't opposed to raw feeding, but to modern farming methods especially with regard to chicken because of the campylo bacter risks, and he'd had two or three of those over the years.  (I forbore to point out that he'd probably had dozens/hundreds of dogs suffering from processed diet-induced diseases/illnesses over the same time frame which no one actually connected to diet).  Around the same time, someone (SarahP or Penel, I think??) posted on here about chicken being a meat which can cause reactions in dogs, and SarahP also confirmed that she put Dill onto lamb-only, so I've eliminated the chicken risk (which I think is tiny anyway) for the time being.