BARF - Introducing to older dogs, any advice?

[moosemama]

Hi

Before we moved to our current home, my dogs were all fed on the BARF diet. When we moved here none of the local butchers would supply us (too snobby) and we had nowhere to refrigerate or freeze the raw food.

We are finally in a position to reintroduce it. Our old girl is now 13 and is aytopic, so we are really relieved to finally get her back onto a natural diet to relieve her itching etc, but, our lurcher lad has never been on a raw food diet and is, well, a little daft.

Given that it's years since we last did this and my memory is a little rusty, I will get my Billingshurst books out and do some reading up. I seem to be experiencing all the same anxieties about feeding bones that I did when we first did it. I know I'm being silly though, not least of all because my other dogs were on it for years with nothing but good effects, beautiful clean teeth and lovely glossy coats.

So, does anyone have any advice for introducing BARF to an adult dog who has been on James Wellbeloved for the whole of his life? What I'm wondering about is, how well I can expect a 6 year old, none too bright lurcher lad to take to raw chicken wings and is gentle introduction better than just switching over?

Moosemama, my lurchergirl was 6 when we adopted her. She'd never been fed a BARF diet before and although her reaction was odd at first, she quickly cottoned on (and she's none too bright either). Chicken wings went down really well first time (unlike with our whippet, who looked at them in disgust and decided he'd rather go without), sardines were left the first couple of times they were offered, until I resorted to hand-feeding them to her and now she gulps them down. Her reaction to tripe was rather strange the first few times, where she wouldn't actually put her head in the bowl, but kept bashing her head around the bowl , but once she got used to it, she was fine. Either of mine will touch raw eggs though, but they both love a bit of natural yoghurt.

I'd say he should be fine, but may take some time to get used to the idea. Perhaps you can try a gentle introduction with the Nature's Menu cubes first to get him used to the idea?

Thank you Magrat, that sounds encouraging. He already gets oily fish and rice occasionally, as well as the odd egg, so no worries there - it's more the chicken wings I was wondering about.

To be honest, he's such a binnie pig and will eat almost anything if he can get his snout in the bin when I'm not looking, so I'm hoping he'll take it in his stride.

Can't say I blame your girl for her reaction to tripe. Bleugh! I think that was the worst bit of BARF feeding, especially for a veggie like me.

I am so glad we can go back to a raw diet now. I have been carrying around a lot of guilt about my poor girl's skin and ears while she's been on processed food. Both dogs recently had to go onto fish and rice for a couple of days when the pet shop ran out of their food and she stopped scratching almost overnight.

Dh and I were just discussing how we could organise getting them back onto raw food permanently when, as luck would have it, he bumped into another dog owner who was carrying a big batch of chicken wings and meaty bones. He asked her where she got them and it turned out to be a relatively new shop in our village. Went and had a chat and not only are they happy to supply the raw materials, so to speak, they will also store them in one of their freezers for us and we can pick some up every couple of days! Amazing customer service.

Well, he took the first chicken wing, then spat it out and looked at dh liked either he'd lost the plot or he was up to something sinister!

Then he spied our old girl hot-footing it up the garden with hers possessively wedged in her jaws and realised that perhaps we weren't trying to poison him after all and maybe he should give it a try ..... then it was gone, in two seconds flat!

He's been fine since and seems to be enjoying his new diet.