by Skye Martin

Created on: May 10, 2011   Last Updated: May 11, 2011

The BARF diet is a meal plan for dogs that goes back to the roots of your pet’s eating habits. BARF stands for Biologically Appropriate Raw Food and is intended to transition your animal away from commercially processed foods and back to the way nature intended.  The dry food that you buy off a dusty shelf contains more than 50% grains which is one of the biggest sources of allergies in dogs.  And that’s only pawing at the surface of why you should feed your dog a raw food diet!

By nature, dogs are scavengers, they crave raw foods and, if you’ve never noticed, they like bones – a lot.  Raw foods naturally clean your pet’s teeth and eating bones help develop a healthy jaw, neck and shoulder muscles.  This is something that commercially processed dog foods cannot do.  There are countless reasons why you should feed your dog the BARF diet. You can find a plethora of information on the subject, including the book, The BARF Diet, written by its founder, Dr. Ian Billinghurst'.

The purpose here is to describe exactly how to implement the BARF diet once you’ve decided that this is the best choice for you and your pet.

The very first thing to know is that you should purchase raw foods from reputable sources and when possible, buy organic.  You don’t want to be feeding your pet any of the unnecessary supplements often added to human food.  You can talk to your local butcher where you will find fresh meats and ground bone.  You may even be able to pick up some good deals on the butcher’s unwanted scraps!

Some of the raw meat ingredients you can purchase are: beef, turkey, lamb and chicken. Vegetables that you can buy are: broccoli, turnips, celery, carrots, cauliflower, spinach and cabbage.  You can also purchase eggs, meat organs and bone meal.

Keep in mind that the recommended daily serving suggestion for the BARF diet is about one half pound of food for every twenty-five pounds of your pet’s body-weight. This should help you buy an appropriate amount of food.

Preparing the food for your dog is very simple.  First, take all the meat ingredients and blend them in a food processor.  Put that mixture aside and blend together the vegetables. Then, take your eggs –shells and all!—and mix them up in the processor until the shells are finely blended.  At this stage you should have three bowls of mixed ingredients and so now all you have to do is mix everything together with your hands. This is also the point where you should add the bone meal.

As a supplement to this fantastic meal you’ve prepared for your pet, you will also want to feed him raw meaty bones.  This may be alarming to you at first for fear that your pet could choke, but rest assured that cooked bones present the highest risk of choking hazard.  As a precaution, however, you should supervise your pet while he is eating raw bones.  You may also be concerned that feeding your pet raw food may make him more prone to food-borne illnesses.  Again, be assured that practicing basic sanitary habits will prevent your dog from becoming ill as it is in his nature to eat raw food.  In fact, your dog’s stomach acids are much stronger than yours and any bacteria left in his food will be killed during the digestive process.

Once you have your dog on a regular BARF food diet, you are sure to notice an increase in energy and a healthy gloss to his fur coat. Both you and your pet are sure to enjoy the benefits of Biological Appropriate Raw Food eating!

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