My journey to raw BARF feeding

by Serena Kenyon

My mother grew up during the 20’s and 30’s on a sheep station in SA, miles away from anywhere.

There were plenty of dogs and cats on the station. Whether they lived in the main house, worked the sheep or lived with the manager and his family, all the dogs ate a prey-based natural diet.

Kangaroos, sheep, rabbits, birds, chickens, mice – whatever was shot for them or hunted by them – was consumed in the raw and natural state.

The cats lived in the shearing sheds and ate a staple diet of mice, birds and sheep ‘bits’.

Dogs and cats were supremely healthy as a result. No fleas, worms, arthritis, skin problems, diabetes, cancer or “allergies”. The dogs died of old age or misadventure/accidents.

As a child growing up in the ‘burbs of Melbourne and Perth, we had Rough Collie dogs and Burmese cats as pets.
My mother taught me to feed our dogs on meaty bones, raw meat, raw offal and a few vegetable table scraps. Our cats ate the same.
I don’t remember doing it any other way, neither do I remember our dogs ever needing to go the vet for illness or disease. Our dogs were calm and well behaved, we didn’t have fancy beds or elaborate collars and leads but we did have very healthy dogs.

Fast forward quite a few years and I was married with children and it was time for another dog in my life.

I chose a small dog, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. His name was Timmy.
The local pet supply store loaded us up with bed, collar, lead, worming treatments, flea treatments, bags of biscuits and rolls of polony and packets of treats. Apparently this was “the correct way” to feed dogs now, despite my protestations to the contrary.
The car was full, the wallet was empty. We were told to have a nice day as we left the store.

Fast forward another 5 years and Timmy was euthanased to put him out of his (and our) misery.

For his entire life Timmy had been a cortisone junkie. Creams, injections and tablets in a relentless cycle trying to deal with and relieve chronic skin problems. Special washes, more special diets, different diets, different vets, more different food.
Timmy was miserable, always sick and the cost was enormous.

When he started having seizures that was the final straw and he was put to sleep with a green dream. It was a truly horrible dog owning experience.

I went back to owning rough collies and to feeding them how my mother taught me all those years ago. The dogs have been healthy and happy.

In 2000, I opened a dog clipping and grooming business called Divine Dogs.
Almost instantly I was surprised to notice that so many of the dogs I groomed had similar skin and health issues to Timmy.
But I didn’t connect the dots. Instead I sympathised with the owners – I knew only too well what they were experiencing.

When a friend of mine purchased a beautiful portugese water dog puppy from NSW and it came for regular grooming, I couldn’t help but notice the stand-out health, the beautiful skin and coat and calm demeanour of this pup. My friend told me the breeder had instructed her to feed the pup on BARF. My friend had to make it herself because there was “no product” to buy, but she had a recipe sheet from the breeder.
I still didn’t connect the dots. BARF sounded like a revolting word anyway.

Time passed (as they say in all stories) and by now we owned a rough collie - Atlas, a king charles spaniel - Geoffrey and a devon rex cat - Lawrence.

The incidence of disease and illness in customers’ dogs continued at a relentless pace. It seemed to me that dogs were getting sick at younger and younger ages. The most awful skin, ear and teeth problems, cancers, behaviour problems, inflammatory diseases like arthritis, digestive and bowel problems…oh my goodness it was almost impossible to be seeing healthy dogs at all! A dog of 6 was now called "old".

But occasionally there was a healthy dog and I always asked the owner what it was fed on…and it was ALWAYS a raw, predominantly bone, diet.

During 2006 I had work experience students from the local TAFE doing some grooming with me. One of them told me about a new food she had heard described in lectures. It was called BARF.
Call this a “road to Damascus moment”, but suddenly the lights went on in my head when I realised I had heard this word before from my friend with the portugese water dog.

I researched BARF; read the books “Give Your Dog A Bone”, “Grow Your Pups With Bones” and “The Barf Diet” and found a WA distributor and bought the product for my own dogs as it was much easier than sourcing all the raw ingredients as I was doing.

I started connecting the dots. Wrong diet means sick dogs (and cats).

This wasn’t even clever, this was just commonsense. Suddenly it all became very clear to me that the reason many dogs and cats are so unwell is because of the processed, cooked, grain and cereal-based food they are forced to eat, in our modern “convenience orientated” world.

There is however, no substitute for a raw, natural diet for which the dog through millions of years of evolution has chosen for itself. Only human influence has removed choice for the dog and isolated the species from its evolutionary diet. The domestic dog’s anatomy has not evolved to differ from that of the wolf…only its habitat has changed.

So I decided to conduct feeding trials on a few of my customers who were willing to "try anything". The results were as I expected and that I had read in the research.

* Skin, coat and ear problems improved enormously or completely resolved. Dogs stopped smelling – that awful, yeasty, foul odour that is so common. Veterinary medication and support for skin “allergies” became unnecessary.
* Behaviour improved markedly as dogs calmed down – no longer hyped up by a cocktail of colourings, flavourings, salt, phosphorous and other preservatives and synthetic additives.
* Energy levels and interest in life of older dogs increased significantly.
* One dog with diabetes, lost weight and came off insulin after a few months.
* Pancreatitis – very common – was resolved with the BARF diet.
… the list continued.

Feed a dog (or cat) it’s correct (biologically appropriate and natural) diet and the dog or cat will be healthy and have a strong immune system.

I continue to operate Divine Dogs from a shop-front in Willagee and I sell this wonderful food to my customers.

BARF is manufactured and distributed by Big Dog Pet Foods Pty Ltd. This company is based in Lawton, Qld.

I so highly recommend BARF to your companion dog or cat. It really will make an extraordinary difference to the health of your pet.

DO YOU WANT TO SLASH YOUR VETERINARY BILLS?
DO YOU WANT TO GET YOUR DOG OFF THE STEROID MEDICATION?

Read on...

What is BARF

Carnivores and dogs and cats in the wild eat raw meat, bones, offal and vegetable matter left in the gut of their prey.

This is your pet's natural diet too!!

Dogs don't eat rice, wheat or other cereals. Neither does their food come grilled, boiled, steamed or baked. And guess what! Dogs and cats can't cook........

Big Dog BARF is RAW, just as nature intended

Big Dog BARF is raw meat, crushed bone and cartilage, organ meat (kidney, liver, heart, spleen and tripe) leafy green vegetables, pulped fruit, fish oil, flaxseed, alfalfa, kelp. For a whole fresh meal, conveniently packaged, that your dog will love.

Big Dog BARF comes in a range of meat varieties

Chicken
Beef
Lamb
Combination (pork, lamb, beef, chicken)
Pork
Rabbit
Kangaroo
Turkey

Why RAW?

The wolf (Canis lupus) has existed in many parts of the world for hundreds of thousands of years. The domestic dog (Canis familiarus) is a direct descendant of the wolf and shares 98% of the same genes.
Dogs, like wolfs, are carnivores. They have large teeth of a carnivore and a short, highly acidic digestive tract suited to eating bone and protein. Their natural instinct is to chase and eat a prey-model diet.

When dogs are referred to as omnivores it is usually by those who are marketing commercial grain-based foods, or business owners and vets who are benefitting financially from the sale of commercial grain-based foods.

A dog's food should never be cooked. It should be fed in a natural raw state. Heating food (cooking) destroys most of its nutritional value by altering the state of the proteins, and destroying the enzymes.

Dogs (and all carnivores) don't have the digestive enzymes amylase and lipase in their saliva or pancreas that are necessary to break down and digest grain. Despite this fact the main ingredient of commercial dog food is grain by-product! (Why? Because it's cheap) Grains are highly toxic to dogs (along with yeast, salt, onions, avocados, chocolate, soy, corn and milk) and cause a range of inflammatory and allergic conditions.

Commercial dog foods are often laden with preservatives, colours, salt and phosphorous. The additives make the food more palatable and dogs overeat and they certainly overdrink. Dogs appear to enjoy kibble so the owner feels good about feeding it and continue buying the product.

The vast majority of commercial dog foods contain too many carbohydrates. This is linked to overweight, diabetes, renal problems, heart problems, teeth and gum problems and many more complaints.

So, we can take the dog out of the wild (as we have done with our domestic pets) but we cannot take the wild out of the dog (our domestic pets have 98% wolf genes)

We can, however, continue to feed our domestic pets a natural raw food that adheres to the evolutionary programme of nutrition they evolved to require. This nutritional program contains the range and balance of those whole raw foods our pets evolved to eat over the thousands of years of its genetic adaptation, that is its evolution.

This is the Bones And Raw Food (BARF) diet.

Please check the following websites for product information and stockist details
www.barfwa.com.au
www.bigdogpetfoods.com