Leashes to Litterboxes

As I was flipping the channels last night I watched a bit of Wife Swap.  What does this have to do with a pet blog?  Well one of the families on the show ate a raw food diet, including meats, and I thought I would jot down a few things about the diet.

The most popular raw food diet for pets is called the BARF diet (biologically appropriate raw food).  Now when I was first introduced to this diet as an animal health technologist I was against the diet.  I mean why would anyone think that feeding a raw food diet would be appropriate.  There are so many commercial diets available that are nutritionally complete and who would want the risk of salmonella or campylobacter problems.  Then, working at a skin specialist veterinary clinic, I saw the benefits.  We had a malamute that was allergic to almost anything under the sun (including the sun) and once the owners put him on a homemade raw diet the dogs coat improved immensley and his energy level tripled. So I think there is a place in the pet nutrition area for a raw diet.

I have included a list of sites that talk about this diet:

BARFWorld the official BARF diet site.  It talks about the diet, some pros and cons (take it all in with a grain of salt please)

BARFpictorial Aunt Jeni talks about some of the recipes she uses to feed her dobermans.

Canismajor a post about raw food.

Seefido.com a summary of the BARF Diet.

Ability.org a site with links for recipes.

AVMA and their stance on the raw diet.

A word of caution:

Please ensure that you clean your prep area, food dishes and wash your hands!!!

Tags: dog, cat, raw diet, BARF diet

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 10:43 am and is filed under Leash Tales, Litterbox Scoop, All Creatures Great and Small. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.