Dogs of the North Further Reading A Bit About BARF

BARF (Bones and Raw Food)

Say the word "Eat" at my house and Kira and Chief go absolutely nuts. They will also respond to "Are you hungry?" and also know the names of particular foods such as "Cookie", "Fish", "Bones", "Carrots", "Cheese", etc. Malamutes love their food and Kira and Chief thrive on the diet I feed them. Food is not just nutrition but fun too. Mealtimes are a highlight of every day and often at our house, we even play games with the food. Sometimes I will throw an apple along the ground - they will chase it down and proudly savour it. Often I will throw the fish out into the yard (this is great fun in the snow) and they will "hunt" it down and shake it in their mouths to "kill" it. We also occasionally play a game where I hide treats all over the house and they will smell them out. They have a lot of fun!

As a rough guide, I feed each dog about 600 gm of food a day but there is really no set amount because there are so many factors that might cause you to vary food intake including health, exercise, climate, etc. The most important thing is to monitor your dog's weight and body shape as you would your own.

I probably break most of the rules that people advise about feeding, but what works well for one family does not necessarily work well for another. Kira and Chief normally eat one meal a day although they used to have two meals when they were younger. During weekdays because they won't exercise during the day, they only get a cookie in the morning and are then fed when I get home. If I am home for the day however, they are fed in the morning. There is absolutely nothing wrong with missing a meal. In the wild, a dog might go without food for days. Sure these are domesticated dogs but their digestive systems are not much different to that of their ancestors. Variety is what it is all about. I do not feed at any set time so they never know when they will be fed. Often they will come over to me and basically ask to be fed and sometimes I will respond straight away and sometimes I won't. When they were younger I reinforced my positiion as alpha of the pack, by always feeding them after I ate. They were required to do a 'down-stay' while I ate. I rarely have to do this nowadays as it is a habit they have grown used to.

The one thing that my dogs do get is a number of small snacks throughout the day. I reduce the size of their main meal accordingly. People sometimes look at Chief and Kira and think that they are a little overweight. This is particularly true of Chief who has a really slow metabolism and is generally a really lazy dog. I have at times reduced his food intake to almost nothing and it made little difference in his weight. In truth, most of Kira and Chief's size is their coat. I do not subscribe to the theory that all dogs should be thin to the ribs although I certainly don't think dogs should be overweight. Dogs like people, have different body types and metabolisms. People have three basic body types (mesomorph, endomorph, and ectomorph) and I believe dogs have an even greater variation of body types due to the huge differences between various breeds. Kira and Chief are two examples of dogs that have fundamentally mesomorphic body types. This is not simply because they are Malamutes. Since birth, both have always been fairly bulky Malamutes. You can still feel their ribs but they will never lose that bulkiness. Adam for example has a completely different body type.

I don't specifically cook anything for my dogs and I believe that's the way it should be. If you want to cook food for your dogs, ask yourself how many wild dogs and wolves you know that cook their food. Cooking destroys vitamins, enzymes, and anti-oxidants in food. It can also reduce the value and availability of protein. Not to mention that dogs absolutely love ripping tearing raw meat and bones. Why in the world would they want cooked stew? Then of course there's the fact that cooking bones such as chicken bones will make them brittle and very likely to splinter and kill your dog by puncturing his/her intestines. That said, feeding raw meat does not always work well for some people. In the USA, there seems to be an unacceptably high rate of problems with quality control in the meat and poultry industries. I have always fed Kira and Chief raw meat, poultry, and fish in both Australia and Canada, and have never had a problem. However, you need to be confident in your source.

Chief and Kira will often get table scraps which are of course usually coooked, but it is only a tiny part of their diet. I mentioned variety before and I personally believe that dogs that do not eat a raw diet but instead have a processed food and table scraps, will do better than a dog that eats processed food alone.

Bones constitute approximately 20% of Kira and Chief's diet. Again, variety is the most important thing here as too much of anything is never good. I am not against kibble providing it doesn't have scary chemical substances in it. There are kibbles that are entirely natural. Although I still believe kibble has an unacceptably high proportion of cooked grain, I would not be against feeding it every now and then. Again, the key is to vary the diet. No person would ever eat the same thing every day for their entire life. Doing so would undoubtedly result in a multitude of health problems because no diet no matter how scientifically formulated, is ever going to be completely balanced for every single dog. The balanced diet argument for kibble does not win any points with me at all. As people, we try to balance out diet by eating a bit of everything and we each vary our diet according to our specific needs which vary even for the same person, with age, climate, amount of exercise, etc. Imagine what would happen if we all ate the same formulated and packaged pellets? Some of us might do okay but others would have health problems because they wouldn't be getting enough of one thing while getting too much of something else. Not to mention that it would be completely boring to eat the same thing every day!!

Here are some examples of typical meals for Kira and Chief:

Meat (almost always on the bone) or fish
These might include lamb shanks, lamb necks, chickens or whole fish. I feed mostly chicken and fish with some lamb and beef and very rarely some pork (in fact basically never). Occasionally I will also throw in organs such as chicken and calf livers, lamb, chicken and beef hearts, etc. Chicken might be wings, drumsticks or whole chickens (one whole chicken is too much for a meal - half a small chicken is plenty). Fish are usually whole rainbow trout, whole salmon or large whole sardines or smelts.

Meaty bones (bones with not much meat on them)
These include all the types of bones you would get from a butcher for dogs. There are very hard bones with marrow and soft bones like brisket bones which they completely devour. Chicken carcasses are also excellent. Bones should be very cheap to buy. A big bag of bones should cost approximately USD $1.00. If you are paying a lot more than this then you are getting ripped off. Find yourself a good butcher.

In Sydney, on the North Shore which is an expensive area, you can buy bags of five chicken carcasses for $1 per bag. Our local butcher would sell a bag of mixed bones for $1.20. In Ottawa, I buy a bag of bones for $1.00. The bones I like that make their eyes pop out (at least it did the first few times) are the cow femur bones. I call these dinosaur bones. They are huge and they last for days. I should add that I always feed bones and fish straight from the freezer. As Kira's breeder Lyne Leeson said to me - "Malamutes are sled dogs after all". How true indeed. Many people warm the food to room temperature or even heat it slightly. Kira and Chief certainly prefer the food cold and the colder the better.

Vegetable meals
This is one of the few meals that involves about five minutes of preparation time. The idea is to emulate the vegetables that a dog would get in the wild. Dogs do not eat much in the way of vegetables directly. What happens instead is that they usually get this kind of food in the intestines of any herbivore (such as a sheep) that they kill. Dogs cannot break down the cellulose walls in vegetables and feeding them whole vegetables is pointless since alot of it just passes through their system. To emulate their natural digestion of vegetables, you have to blend the vegetables to break it down for them. So this is what I give them:

• 200 - 300 grams of beef mince, chicken mince, or offal such as chicken livers, calf livers, etc. I get offal from the butcher in frozen blocks. They call it minced ox cheek and it is basically assorted organs mixed with a bit of flour and rice.
• A couple of cups of diced mixed vegetables (the bags of frozen ones from the supermarket) - blended.
• A few cups of blended green vegetables. I use Chinese vegetables (and it has nothing to do with the fact that I am of Chinese ancestry) - Baby Bok Choy. Most leafy green vegetables are just as good. Be careful with too much of the cabbage family as large amounts of raw cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc. can be problematic to proper functioning of the thyroid gland.
• A teaspoon of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
• A teaspoon of a multivitamin and calcium supplement (Keylomin Organic).
• A teaspoon of kelp (Iodine for the thyroid gland)
• A couple of teaspoons of cold-pressed safflower oil (essential fatty acids)
• A teaspoon of apple cider vinegar (makes the skin slightly acidic to keep fleas away)
• A teaspoon of garlic (fleas hate the smell of this stuff on the skin)
• Half a small cup of acidophilus yoghurt (good bacteria)
• A whole egg (with the shell as well)
• Usually I add some cooked brown rice, tofu, low-fat cottage cheese, leftover plain pasta or leftover mashed potatoes

There are a few interesting supplement products on the market. Many of these are composed entirely of natural and often organically-grown ingredients. One example is The Missing Link. Some dogs will see great improvements in health when one of these supplements is added to their diet. I personally don't use anything like that. I'm not against such products but just don't feel they are needed for a dog on a purely raw diet.

I do all my blending with a hand held food processor (the kind that can blend food in a jar or glass without having to pour the food into a processor). It is very convenient. I blend the vegetables separately and put them in the bowl with all the other ingredients and then mix it all up with a spoon (make sure you crush the egg shell). They absolutely love it. There is a lot of good stuff in that meal - most importantly, the fibre that every dog should get. I feed this about once or twice a week.

Milk meals
This is basically a treat and a substitute for a full meal. I don't feed it more than twice a month. We sometimes call this meal a banana smoothie. This is the recipe:

• Two cups of raw goats milk
• One banana with the skin chopped and then mashed
• One teaspoon of raw honey (raw basically just means cold-extracted as opposed to heat-extracted)
• A cup of yoghurt

Mix it up and they got nuts for it!

Leftovers
So that nothing ever goes to waste, I often give Kira and Chief my leftovers. However I am always careful to ensure that the leftovers are OK for them. That means no onions, cooked bones or other things that are bad for them or could kill them (onions make dogs anemic).

Treats
Treats are for doing good things and sometimes when I am cheeky and I spoil them. I use them a lot for training. If I go out with them, I might have a bag of some things and have them ready if they return on recall. Some treats that are fresh food you can really only use at home. These types of treats are also sometimes just thrown in alongside some bones at meal times.

• Sardines (raw and whole - not the puny things you get in the cans)
• Dried liver (this is a good 100% natural treat you can buy - nothing but dried sheeps' liver) - they go absolutely nuts for it
• Fresh fruit (apples, bananas, pears, strawberries, blueberries, watermelon, you name it)
• Tomatoes
• Dried fruit (slices of dried apple, apricots - watch it, these are a good laxative!)
• Bits of left overs (for example bits of meat from a left over roast chicken)

Natural treats are the way to go. Much healthier and why make money for all those companies selling all those disgusting cooked biscuits and other junk? Chief and Kira do get cookies that are made of 100% natural products such as organic wholewheat, drug-free beef liver, etc. However they don't get too many of these as they do contribute cooked grain to the diet.

There are a few things I will just add in here:

You will notice that some of the things I mention above like raw honey, raw goats milk, etc. are not that common. There is nothing so special about these except that they are unprocessed. It's the same for organic fruit and meat (if you can get it). This type of food is readily available at health food stores and it is equally good for humans as it is for dogs. All it means is that you are getting more of what nature intended in the food and less of the artificial junk that humans normally add to it.

Dogs get a lot of their fruit in the wild from the over-ripe fruit that falls off trees. Often it is close to being rotten. What this means is that if you want to save money - go and ask your local fruiterer for a box of this stuff. You can get it cheap - often they will just throw it out anyway. It has to be only just spoiled. You don't food that is moldy or really bad.

It is imperative that you be able to take food away from your dog at any time. This is all part of being the alpha of the pack and you may have to do it one day to save your dog's life. You should practice it every now and then and quickly snuff out any possessiveness if your dog won't let you take a bone away.

Here is a GREAT idea for hot days and especially for dogs with thick coats (like Malamutes) - make big chicken, beef and fish flavoured ice blocks. The way I do this is just to get a plastic container and pour in some pre-made chicken, beef, or fish stock (Campbells and Maggi have these in small cartons) and dilute with some water. Don't dilute too much - you want a good taste in it. Freeze and give to them whenever it is really hot. Great treat, great fun for them and keeps them hydrated (some dogs don't always drink enough water). Sometimes you can buy stock already frozen in containers.

Although I am a fan of the BARF diet, that doesn't mean that I entirely disapprove of processed food. It's just that some people base their dog's entire diet on canned or dried food and that's just as bad as basing your dog's diet entirely on anything else. Variety is the important thing and the best quality protein, carbohydrates, etc. will come from natural sources. Besides which, I guarantee that feeding raw food is cheaper than any reasonable quality processed dog food.