Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Vet against BARF because most people do it wrong

I had an appointment with the Vet yesterday to get an idea of how bad the allergy actually is. So he has a major allergy to beef, pork and chicken and a minor allergy to lamb. Furthermore he is allergic to dustmites.

The vet said that it is common allergies because you barely can find any food that doesn't come with beef, pork, chicken and lamb. 20 years ago lamb was the allergy food but now that it is mainstream food like all the others dogs become allergic to it too.

When I observed that he is scratching all the time I told my mom. She told me that it could be an anxiety thing because he is in a new environment. After two weeks I knew it wasn't anxiety. He got used to us and already claimed the appartment as his new home...
Photobucket

(he is such a spoiled brat and discovered that the couch is much more comfortable than the carpet soon after he moved in with us. HAHAHA!)

Photobucket

... and my mom told me to change the diet to lamb because he's never had it before but the scratching didn't stop. At one point I decided to take him to the vet. I already knew that it'd probably be house mites and/or food but that he's allergic to all the major dog foods that was a shock.

Anyhow, we've been talking about the different options.

  1. duck&potatoe or salmon and potatoe or rabbit and something else from Hills (which I already feed him)
  2. special food where the proteins are broken down that the dog can't detect it as beef, pork or chicken

And I brought up the third option: BARF (cook it myself)
That's when the Vet said that he is against BARF because most people don't know how to do it. He said that if I know how to do it, it'd be a great thing but most people do it one week and when they realize of how much work it is and end up feeding their dogs a slice of meat and a little bit of rice which works for two or three days but shouldn't be done a longer period of time because of the lack of minerals and vitamins.

So I ordered a big bag of dry food from Hills for $50 and 17 cans of wet food for 30 something Dollars because he told me that I couldn't find these combinations on the economy. He told me that they would keep certain combination from getting mainstream food so they can use it as allergy food.

Later on I went to a German Pet Store called Fressnapf to look at some food that I can feed him in the meanwhile and I found all kind of combinations but they all have either chicken, pork or beef in it. I found a pack of coldpressed dry food from Real Nature. It is Black Angus, Barbary Duck and fish but because of the Black Angus, I can't use it. I kept on looking and found some wet food which is perfect. It's Deer and Noodles from Rinti. It's just that. Deer and Noodles, no other incredients and especially made for dogs that can't eat anything else. But I didn't want to go with just wet food so I got a bag of wholegrain dog cereals with vegetables from Matzinger (which is Purina; interestingly Purina is Nestle).

So I am feeding him wholegrain vegeterian dog cereals and deer with noodles. He loves it. I've never seen him eating food so fast. Usually I had to tell him to eat his food and sometimes it took him all day to eat the lamb diet.

However, I am definitely going to switch to BARF. Mom partially barfed anyway and I grew up with feeding the dogs and cutting the meat for them and I still remember the smell of fresh beef stomach, it sticks on you for days HAHAHA. There are so many great recipes out there and all I have to do is to replace the chicken with duck, the beef with rabbit or deer... so I don't see a problem to slowly change the food. Or to go back to the roots and partially feed him BARF.

Have a great day.





No comments: