B.A.R.F. Diet......Pros & Cons? - Page 2

Hint: A little bit of vinegar will also soften tough cuts of meat like London broil or beef brisket. Most barbeque sauces have vinegar in them. It is also a miracle disinfectant, and you can kill most germs on surfaces with a vinegar wash. It will also clean galvanized metal so that paint can stick to it, which is normally a problem (peeling paint, unless the galvanized has been properly stripped or pre-treated with a special primer). Vinegar dissolves mineral content and you can put just a couple of tablespoons full in your kitchen pan, steam kettle or coffee pot, along with water to dilute, to de-mineralize them. You can get mineral deposits off of windows and tile, also, using vinegar! A salad with a wine and vinegar dressing is delicious and very healthful.. Aids in digestion and helps to sanitize the lettuce. When you cook a chicken carcass with a little bit of vinegar (truly only a couple of tablespoons is sufficient), you will see how the bones fall apart! Unfortuneately, if you are Pepsi or soft drink fans, this is what the phosporic acid is doing to your teeth, over time! (Better stay away from that stuff!) Thanks, Dic, for a very interesting explanation of how the relative human / dog digestive tracts work!

Good advice on what to feed and all I'll add is to never allow a GSD to become a picky eater by switching foods and adding this and that trying to make it more appealing. YOU decided what he eats, put it down, give him a set time to eat it, no more than 10 minutes and then, if he doesn't eat it, pick it up (or what's left)and put it away til the next time. No treats, no bones, no people food, nada other than water in between. He will soon learn that the food is going to go bye bye if he doesn't hop to it. He will not starve himself to death if he's otherwise healthy and catering to his food likes and dislikes will create a feeding monster over time. Frankly, if he tends to be picky I'm not so sure a raw diet will be anymore tempting to him over time than a commercial diet. He will probably tire of it too and you will be back to square one. Satin balls have a lot of calories and test appeal for dogs, but I wouldn't feed them to him since he's already showing signs of being picky and the satin balls might just make him more so. They are great for putting weight on dogs, but I don't think they would be appropriate in this situation. You want to teach this dog that he eats what you give him and if he doesn't he will be a hungry boy til the next feeding time. At 4 months he is realizing he is no longer in a competitive eating environment with his littermates and most pups tend to slow down when eating alone. This is the best time to teach him to eat what you give him and don't dawdle around with the food. He will still grow up healthy since he will eat in time. Coming from another breed where most eat like they are on death row, I have to say that GSD breeders totally amaze me when it comes to the way they baby their dogs about food. These dogs are expected to be tough customers full of drive and the desire to bring down the bad guy but they are allowed to dictate what and when they will eat? Who the boss now LOL?

Not totaly true Blitzen. My dog was not babied at all and was basicly skin and bones because he would not eat kibble. Lab work at the vet was normal and exrays showed nothing. He never got any treats or snacks of any kind and went up to 4 days with out eating. Switching to raw made a dramatic change and he has eating VERY well ever since. Although, I will say that the average "mom" or "dad" will have a strong tendency to cater to the dogs whims, if they think he is not eating enough. Debby

Debby, I will bet you any amount of money that dog would have eventually learned to eat whatever you fed him. I've seen and known of dogs exactly like him and some refused food for a week or longer and lsot weigh tin the process. They did not die, they did not faint from hunger, they learned to eat what was given them and gained back the weight. I'm glad your dog has continued to enjoy the raw diet and that may well be the resolution for you and his eating problem. Sooner or later most picky dogs will go on another hunger strike and then it's back to square one either trying all sorts of different food and treats or simply retraining him to realize that he eats what's put before him or he gets very, very hungry. Another thought might be 2 dogs and 1 dish LOL. Maybe your dog will never refuse his raw diet and maybe most picky dogs would not be picky if fed a raw diet, I don't know. It's a timely topic for sure since so many with this breed seem to label their dogs as "picky" while it's a fairly simple behavioral issue to resolve. Those who can't bring themselves to let their dog get hungry might want to try a raw diet to see if it works for them as well as it has for you. Otherwise, I'd just let the little faker get good and hungry LOL.

Well, Blitzen, you can bet all you want, but I spent over a year with him refusing to eat kibble. I would think that was long enough, if his appetite would have kicked in. Personally, I don't blame him for not wanting to eat the stuff. The change was absolutly immediate. No question in my mind it had nothing to do with JUST being picky as he has continued his voracious appetite for 6 years now! It's not ALL about behavioral issues. Yes, many probably are, but life is just not that simple and answers are not that easy. Your talk is very harsh concerning the dogs. Not all are "little fakers" and for you to matter of factly say they all are, makes you come across very arrogant and closed minded? What you are basicly saying is that there is no other possible reason for a dog to refuse to eat. Which is simpley ridiculous. Debby

Blitzen, just curious... Are you in the veterinary field? Sure sounds like someone the pet food industry brainwashed. I could be wrong....but I was there myself in the past. Debby

I have had a couple of dogs that were so drivey that they would rather run all day than to eat. I had to actually bench chain one of them into the corner with an automatic feeder and a water bucket for a few hours every day, and then she would maintain normal weight. Otherwise, she looked like I starved her. And none of my other dogs looked like that. This one just liked to run laps all day, herd flies, fence fight the other dogs, etc. She'd rather do anything other than eat, but when her choices were limited, she took the time to eat and assumed a normal weight and condition. Interestingly, I got her from a private party who she was driving nuts. They got a lot of neighbor complaints about barking, and when I took her in to x-ray her hips, we found a steel BB bullet embedded in her thigh! It never bothered her, but she apparently had bothered someone else, very much! I had another that got so dangerously thin (in an idiot's care, which I did not know about until too late (that he was not dealing with things, that is), and this one also ran all day. Not related, by the way, but also a GSD. But she just ran, ran, ran constantly. She would eat but everything she ate apparently she ran off. The guy told me something was wrong with the dog and that I should come to look at her. She was skin and bones, wouldn't get up, would not eat. I was SO angry! I had to force feed her for two weeks, canned dog food, before she would start to eat on her own. The technical name for her condition is called, "exertional myopathy", and some of our breed are prone to this sort of thing because they have this extreme drive to be active and to herd other animals and this leads to fence-fighting, running laps in the kennel, etc. The Germans have a name for it, "Laufwillen", meaning the compulsion or drive to run / trot.

(Continued) We must never forget that this is a herding breed, and moreover a special type of herding. I thought I knew this breed until I got Ed Frawley's videos on "continental" or "tending" style of herding, i.e. GSD herding dogs. Roby Kaman and Jody Potter of Fidelco are on there, doing herding training. This is a completely different style of herding than what border collies do or livestock guardian breeds. You would have to watch the video to understand, but believe me, that these dogs have a powerful inner drive to run laps around something like a yard, a herd, etc. all day! They are keyed in and focused on other animals. Until you understand this aspect of our breed you will never realize why some of our dogs are compulsive runners like this, but some are, and they do NOT do well in a kennel environment, because the least little bit of activity from another dog or whatever will get them up and pacing again. With little or no rest, pretty soon you have what the livestock people call a "hard keeper". Hard or impossible to keep them in condition. Many if not most other breeds will go find a nice play to lay down, be it shade, sun, or a couch, but the GSD tends to be up and at it. Some run actual trenches into the ground around the perimeter of their yard. Probably the best thing for these obsessive-compulsive runners is to have a period of forced rest every day. Usually crate time in a quiet place is good, but some dogs spin and paw in their crates. It is not the containment that frustrates them into doing this, but they are just a very active breed and like to be on the go. Not all in the extreme, thank God, but there are definitely some high-drive crazy's. I would say that with picky eaters, you will definitely need to focus on high-calorie food. One thing that I discovered when I had my kennel, is that the dog food manufacturers often do not put enough fat into the food. It used to be that the bags were lined with a plastic or wax-impregnated paper, to prevent the fat from leaking out into the outer bag. But I noticed that my dogs were getting thinner and harder to keep in condition, and I put some of their brand name dog food into a paper bag overnight to see what kind of oil stains I got on the bag. There should have been lots, but there was almost no trace of fat in that food. And I do know that quite a few years ago, that most manufacturers stopped incorporating the fat content into the food itself, but would spay it on afterwards with flavor enhancers. Well, I think that they are cheating our dogs. We think of fat as something that we do not need or want, but dogs absolutely do need it, especially active dogs.

(continued) But fat is actually a rather expensive commercial commodity. It is costly enough that restaurant owners in the past would often lock up their recycling grease containers, due to theft! It can be made into soaps, cosmetics, industrial lubricants and many other things, as well as animal feeds of all kinds. If a dog food manufacturer could save $.55 a bag, and sold hundreds of thousands of bags annually, do you think they would do it? I think so! I actually saw the quality go down in the food I was buying, and this was the number one problem, insufficient fat content. I had to buy corn oil to supplement them, because their hair was getting dry and many of them had insufficient body fat. It's hard to get dogs back into condition, when they are down, especially if they are active or outdoor dogs. The brand I was buying was sold at Costco and labeled under their Kirkland name. I called them to complain about it, but the lady they had me talk with just went into denial immediately, saying that no way had they changed their formula. I could absolutely tell (in my opinion, OK?) that it was changed by the look, the condition of the dogs, and I could even tell approximately when they had changed it...Well, my opinion, OK? But the dogs seemed to think so, too! I feed one kind now, the original brand that I used to get years ago, and that Nutra-Nuggets. I think that they used to be Diamond brand, and that was really the best for the price! It is made in Missouri. High meat / fat content! Nutri-Nuggets is what Costco was selling at first but apparently they relabeled it and changed over to their own Kirkland brand and it just went downhill from there. Considering that most pet owners have dogs which are too fat, it might work for them. But it sure did not work for my dogs! Now that I have just a few dogs, I can spoil them a bit and I vary their diet at times, depending on what is available. They get leftovers added into their food a lot and they really love it!

Dic, the more I think about it, the more I think that the dog food biz has just gone downhill. There was a time when the very best dog foods were designed for commercial use. The original Iams was actually a mink food, very high in protein and fat content. It was pulverized meat and a few corn flakes, saturated in fat. Designed to give a great coat, it was, and the show dog people got onto it, and from there it eventually became kibbled and caught on with pet owners because so many breeders were using it and recommending it to their puppy-buyers. Now, the pet food industry is geared towards high-end pet food industry (retail) and the needs of those people is completely different, because the people who pay top $$$ for pet food usually have spoiled, overweight dogs. They NEED relatively non-caloric food! They don't need the high-octane stuff! I cannot blame dogs who don't want kibble. Boring crap! If you look at some of the staple European dog foods, over the years, many of them were designed or intended to have meat added. They had flaked / crushed corn and other grains and dried vegetables in a mixture, but the meat, eggs, etc. was supposed to be added fresh.