B.A.R.F. Diet

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king buddy

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I have heard about this raw food diet from the people I I adopted my sheltie. They were going to start feeding their shelties raw! My sheltie has allergies to wheat and corn so I give him a special food for this! Last week he helped himself to some peanuts in the shell and was so ill we almost had to hospitalize him! I was wondering if anyone else has a sheltie that is this sensitive to things like this! Who would of thought Peanuts! Do you think going back to the way nature intended him to eat would help?
 
I would love to feed barf but I'm a veggie and the thought of them crunching into bones makes me feel ill. The only raw meat I touch is liver and that's only when I'm making their treats but it still gies me the boak ( Scottish for makes me want to be sick ). I changed my pairs food to orijen as it about the closest to barf you can get in a commercial dog food.

Terri
 
One of my Shelties has Irritable Bowel Syndrome that started when she was a very small puppy with a bad case of worms. We've always had trouble with finding a food that wouldn't give her flare-ups. We found after lots of trial and error she needs a wheat free, corn free, pretty much everything free diet with a chicken base. She's nearly three, and about six months ago on the advice of a canine nutritionist I decided to try her on raw food. I'm not talking the raw diets you make yourself, which includes all sorts of nastiness I don't want to handle...I buy her a complete, prepared raw food called Country Fresh Real Chicken Niblets made by Animal Food Services (www.animalfood.com) and it's done wonders for her health issues.

When I thought about adding raw to her diet, my vet, who practices both holistic and maintstream medicine, cautioned me to only use one of the prepared raw diets. He'd had several clients who got salmonella from trying to make their own raw food. There are a number of really good prepared raw foods on the market at natural pet stores, prepackaged, frozen and ready to feed. All you do is thaw.

I don't feed Pixie only raw, I alternate between raw food for dinner and regular kibble (I use Timberwolf Southwest Chicken) for breakfast. She gets a good probiotic supplement as well with every meal. It's fine to use both raw and regular, but you can't mix them since dogs digest the two differently.

The most important thing if you're going to make the switch though is to do it VERY gradually. Because of Pixie's issues, I started her with one raw kibble a day (they're meatball/treat size!) as a treat in between meals and took a month working my way up to enough for a meal. It does sound as if your pup could benefit from this diet....Pixie has more energy, better coat and hasn't had a flare-up since I started her on this regimen. Good luck! :smile2:
 
I have fed the BARF diet in the past when I had yorkies. They did really well on it. I have not fed it to my shelties, as so far the only thing these garbage guts cant handle is pork. I believe they would eat anything put in front of them. Thankfully, everyone in my family realizes this and will not feed them table food, or I would end up with shelties the size of collies. :biggrin2: Good Luck and let us know how it works out for you.
 
My Chase is allergic to pretty much everything. He's never eaten commercial dry food or tinned food, but when he was younger he got a variety of treats that made him flare up. The first food he got was frozen BARF patties, chicken, lamb, or beef and veggies. He did well on that for a while, but then he started to get worse again, so I switched to frozen BARF patties with organic chicken mince, veggies, fruit, and some other things.

I love the frozen patties because they're healthy for him, and I don't have to cook and try and get all the ingredients right.
 
I have both of my guys on a Prey Model Raw diet. Romeo was weaned straight onto raw by his breeder (a wonderful lady that I greatly respect!). After Gio's onset of epilepsy I began to worry if some of the nastiness in commercial foods may have brought about the seizures, so decided to do the grunt work myself and provide him with a diet that I was confident in.

Feeding a raw diet does take work. If you are considering it, there is a lot of research to do to ensure that you are feeding a safe and properly balanced diet. But the work is totally worth it in the long run! Both of my boys are thriving on raw and I just love knowing that I am providing them with food that they were designed to eat.
 
My Sheltie Loves Raw

My Sheltie Momo is ten. I adopted him a year ago. After he had an adverse vaccine reaction in early May, we went raw. He is extremely healthy and bounds around like a puppy now. I do "mix it up": he'll get a Nature's Variety venison raw meal, then half a raw game hen on the bone for a meal, occasionally cooked meal (like lamburgers or seared fish). And I supplement.

It's actually not that hard. If he would always eat his raw bone, it would be really EASY. The bones are, as you probably know, great for their teeth.

Anyone who cooks chickens or beef for himself is risking salmonella and e-coli. It's just a question of which risks you want to run.

I do not feed raw chopped meat (other than Nature's Variety) because the possibility of contamination is higher.
 
According to my research and talking to other people who feed RAW, the home-prepared RAW diet is great, so long as you do your research. It isn't hard or anything, but it's not a one-size-fit-all diet.
The prepared RAW isn't true RAW, because it's been processed.

For some reason vets don't seem to like RAW, yet that's what was common before dog food was invented and the dogs did fine on it. Vet take a very small course on nutrition and it's usually from companies like Purina.:eek2:
Many people who feed RAW have told me that the dogs shed less, don't need their teeth brushed as much, stink less, use the bathroom less, and WOW!:cool:
But, like I said, the RAW diet isn't right for every single dog.
 
Safety Question

I feed one of mine a prepared raw dinner every other night because it's been great for her digestive problems. The other day I heard a report by a vet that canine raw diets are dangerous to humans because the dogs shed live bacteria such as salmonella in their saliva and feces when they eat raw. The report said that nursing homes ask if therapy dogs are on raw diets and won't let them come if so. Anyone know if there's any truth to this? My girl loves to lick and I'd never discourage her but that's a wee bit scary....
 
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