I just read one of the Dollar Stretcher newsletters that I get in my mailbox. A contributor said that their vet said they could feed their pets cooked rice with tuna/chicken/turkey. I've been thinking that I wanted to feed my precious pooch better food than the dog food I buy but I've seen some pretty complicated plans for this. This article said that this was similar to IAMS lamb and rice. Could it really be that simple? And would she get what she needs? Also I wonder how much of this to feed a 60 lb. dog? And in what proportions? White or brown rice? What do you all think? I hesitate to ask my vet as I know him well enough for him to think it wouldn't be worth considering as he sure does sell a lot of dog food. Thanks!

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2002

Answers

rice , corn and barley along with bone meal are the main ingreidents of commercial fido feed. I cook my girlsslurry with the grains and meat all the time. Also add pureed veggies, brewers yeast,eggs, garlic and onions. I bone the meat to give them uncooked bones for calcium.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2002

I've recently been rethinking my approach to the dog food as I had cut out leftovers from their diet. I have one dog who will lick a pea clean but not eat it and another that thinks a carrot is a great treat. So I am going back to adding what I have on hand to their meal. There was an interesting discussion on the BARF (B-something A- something Raw Food) diet for dogs on the CS forum. You might want to check their archives for that discussion.

I try to remind myself that for so many of their domesticated years they got whatever was left after people ate, or what they hunted themselves. Now I know we eat richer than ever in the US now, but I don't waste what the kids might leave on a plate, especially now that I don't have chickens to clean up the scraps!

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2002

Yeah, they've had lots of discussions of the BARF (bones and raw food) diet on CS. I pretty much only feed my dogs raw meat/bones and leftovers. They get some 'natural' dry food once in awhile, when I forget to take some meat out of the freezer. It's kept them exceedingly healthy; I dont get em any vaccinations either, except for the required by law rabies.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2002

At work, we get radiographs every day about dogs suffering from ingesting dog bones. The bones chip and the fragments pass (or don't) through the dogs' alimentary tracts with discomfort (!) to the dogs. I don't own a dog, so I can't personally speak to this...however, I have heard from canine loving folks, professional and otherwise, not to feed bones to those four-footed critters.

Other than that, I'm clueless about their food requirements. ??

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2002

I fed my last dog from the recipes in 'Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats'. I had to modify her diet as she was a picky eater, and as she got old, she had kidney problems that meant I had to put her onto the low meat diet, which she didn't appreciate at all. She would snarf up any meat scraps raw as I was cooking and so on.

It took some doing for me to actually give her the first raw bone -- I'd been brainwashed by all those pet food companies too, and had heard all the horror stories about ingested bones. I'm not saying that those stories aren't true, just that giving the bones had been done in the wrong manner.

Since then, I have found one of my most admired Westie breeders out on the east coast has switched her entire kennel to BARF diets (Bones And Appropriate Raw Food), starting the pups on raw chicken necks when they are 3 weeks old. At first they just suck on the bones a while and then mom gets the neck. Later on they start pulling meat off the bones and mom gets to finish it up. By weaning, they are chewing up the soft neck bones with no problems.

I have noticed that the dogs that don't get bones as a regular thing tend to be the ones that won't give it up to you, bolt it down whole, or sneak off and hide because they know you're going to take it. I would give my dogs raw knuckle bones way too big for them to swallow or even TRY and swallow, so they had to gnaw. I would also sit down with them teh while they were gnawing to supervise the situation.

There is a whole section about converting older dogs to raw meat and bones as well in the book and how to go about it safely. I also got 'Give Your Dog A Bone' by Dr. Ian Billinghurst, but I didn't find that that was particularly more helpful than what was in D.r Pitcairn's book, and seemed like it kept repeating the same thing to pad it out. Oh well.

Brown rice is recommend over white rice quite often as it has the bran attached and doesn't need artificial vitamins -- white rice is indicated in some specialty/problem diets. And some dogs just can't tolerate rice too.

Just glossing over things here, I think you need to balance out the dogs diet more than just cooked rice and some cooked meat or you will be getting health problems. Dogs really aren't that far removed from wolves, who are healthy on eating whole dead animals -- bones, brains,lungs, livers,muscle meat, and contents of stomach, which will contain finely chopped vegetable matter. Their teeth show that they are dual purpose, made for both meat AND vegetable eating too. Meat without the bone minerals will set up a deficiency, not to mention that the cooked meat will lack in amino acid activity.

There are a number of recipes in Pitcairn's book for feeding dogs -- Polenta for dogs, Mexi-Dog Casserole, Easy Eggs and Grain, Beans 'n' Millet. All of those sound like if you left out the dog vitamin items that are to be added until the end, you could bake up the whole thing and have it for the family and the dog at the same time (sounds good!) He also gives 3 recipes for growing dogs along with substitution items you may have(how much millet for the bulgur if your dog doesn't tolerate wheat, or oatmeal, if you bought a ton of it at a good price, like that)

His easiest recipe is this;

1 cup brown rice (or 2 1/2 cups cooked)

1 cup (1/2 lb) lean hamburger (or turkey, chicken, lean heart, or lean chuck)

1 cup cooked kidney beans (half of a 15 oz can or cook you own)

1 T. Healthy Powder (will give recipe too)

1 T. Vegetable oil

1 T. Bonemeal (or 1,600 milligrams calcium or 1 scant teaspoon fine crushed eggshell powder)

1 5,000 IU Vitamin A & D capsule

1 teapoon soy sauce or a dash of iodized salt(optional)

1 small clove garlic, crushed or minced

1 10-15 mg. iron capsule

Yield is about 4 1/4 cups,with 348 kilocalories per cup.You can boost protein content by adding an egg or 1 T. nutritional yeast. A large size dog would get that for one day.

Bring 2 C. of water to a boil. Add the rice and simmer for 35-45 minutes. Mix in the other ingredients and serve.

Healthy Powder --

2 Cups nutritional (torula) yeast

1 cup lecithin granules

1/4 cup kelp powder

1/4 cup bonemeal (or 9,000 mg calcium, or 5 teasp. eggshell powder)

1,000 mg Vitamin C (powder) or 1/4 teaspoon sodium ascorbate (optional)

I had a little dog, and I made up BIG batches of food about once every 3 weeks, stored it in freezer containers (in freezer) until I needed one and thawed it out. Worked really well. I added puree'd vegetables too. The book has other easy dog food recipes in it, some even easier than this (Quick Canine Oats and Eggs and Quick Canine Hash). He advocates varying the diet.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002

Another book you may want to look at is "Herbs for Pets" by Mary Wulff-Tilford and Greg Tilford. I heard them speak at HerbFest last year and I liked them quite a bit. Although the book mainly focuses on herbs they do have a chapter on nutrition. They also run a company called Animals Apawthacary which sells herbal tinctures for animals. If I'm remembering correctly they have 2 dogs and 3 cats (might be the other way round) which they feed entirely by BARF, so they really do practice what they preach.

I used to make food for my oldest cat using the formulas in "The New Natural Cat" by Anitra Frasier. Her allergies were so bad that she couldn't eat any sort of commercial food without pulling all of her fur out. Once I stopped taking her in for her yearly vaccinations her allergies went away.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002

Our dogs were always kept on a minimal diet of dry dog food, but the bulk of their diet was leftovers along with liver/kidney/suet/heart from our butchered animals, beef and pork bones (raw) and necks and backs (raw) from the chickens I butchered since I cut my poultry in segments before freezing. And, we do alot of fishing so we would give the dogs the fish guts and heads when cleaning them. Like EM, we never kept up with the yearly vaccinations...once our dogs were out of the "susceptible" puppy months. I always do rabies, though. Other than when I was showing my Malamute and Collie, our dogs were never in contact with other dogs to pick anything up. When we do get another puppy...and we will...I want to keep it's diet as close to natural as possible. And that means lots of raw meat! Oh yeah...there were many times that one or all of our dogs would get into an occasional chicken carcass and eat bones and all. They never had a problem with them, but I always noticed how thoroughly they chewed them up.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002

Forgot them mention that all our dogs have lived to ripe old ages...13+ years. They were all large breed dogs only developing arthritic conditions very late in life. Never had disease problems with them either!

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002

Yes, the chewing bones thing is hard for most people at first I suspect, since we're brainwashed to believe BONES ARE DANGEROUS, without any qualifications, just like we were brainwashed to believe that dry commercial pet food is a complete diet, and we were risking our pets' health to even CONSIDER feeding them regular food.(pretty good marketing strategy I'd say!). Bones have to fed raw or cooked for at least 24 hours till they're fairly soft, depending on the bone. This is what I do when I make soup, when I simmer meat/bones for 24 hours for my broth making, after I remove the meat, I give the dogs the cooked bones and skin. Most of the time their food is raw however. I've been doing this for about 6 years now and have never (knock wood) had a problem with four dogs as far as digesting them goes, and with the exception of my former Pug, who came to me with all kinds of problems (one of the reasons I started the BARF diet), my dogs are extremely healthy. I just love to freak people out who are not familiar with this concept, and especially if they already think I'm weird, by just throwing my big Pyr a whole raw chicken out the door! So funny! They think I'm barbaric, or lazy (YES!) or just plain stupid.

I'm much too lazy to go through all the recipe thing; too time- consuming for me. And the naturalness of throwin em raw meat appeals to me personally. They'll even eat several different raw fruits, although veggies usually hafta be cut up small. I had a poodle who used to love salad as long as it had bleu cheese dressing on it!

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002

Em...that reminds me of a "situation" that happened with me several years ago. I don't know if you all have this where you live, but here we have the occasional Jehovah's Witness folks come knocking on our door. I was out by the chicken coop butchering, and I heard a car coming down the driveway. Looking over my shoulder, I saw several people get out...all dressed in suits. I figured it was either insurance people or the IRS!! Thought I'd give them a little scare. They saw me and walked over...I waited til they were about 20 ft. from me, then picked up my chopping cleaver in one hand and grabbed a handful of chicken guts in the other. I turned around and said...very slowly..."can I help you??" Must have looked like something right out of a Stephen King novel!! One of them said "we're with J.W. but we can come back later when you're not so busy....but they never did!! They were practically tripping over each other to get to the car. What a riot!!! Ahhhh...country life :-)!

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002

Oh Marcia what a great story!! I had those people 'visiting' me at least once a month, even after putting up my door sign indicating they would not be welcome here. Wish I'd thought of THAT!!

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002

Thanks guys! After reading the first few responses I did quite a bit of reading about BARF on the web. I found a few that answered many questions and about how to get started. I even found a few formulas to determine how much of each thing to feed. It seems pretty like a fairly flexible diet. I'm starting today with just raw chix wings and yogurt. If that goes well then I will start with the veggies in a few days. I sure hope my girl knows how to chew. That worries me a bit. I read that dogs who have had nothing but dog food sometimes need to learn to chew rather than inhale. Well, wish us success! OBTW, I'm going to look into that herbal book for pets. I think I am going to discontinue the vaccinations other than rabies.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002

So, I'm dense. Why do dogs have serious alimentary problems from ingesting bones, then? Not soaked or cooked? Or wrong kinds of bones? Or what? Thanks.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002

Sheepish, bones that are apt to cause trouble are ones that have been cooked, like from human food leftovers. They tend to splinter. Bones have to be raw, like they would be in a wild canine's diet, or VERY cooked till they're soft.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2002

In what I have been reading about chicken bones for example, the chickens that are commercially raised these days are butchered so young (no old stewing hens) that their bones are quite soft. I experimented one time with raw chicken bones and a pair of pliers to see what would happen when I crushed them up -- would they splinter, etc. Mainly, they just kind of pulped. Doing the same to cooked (roasted) chicken bones they turn into bone shards.

Also, many dogs that are not used to eating bones frequently overdo it when they finally get ahold of one and if they don't just swallow the thing whole (that's trouble), the pulverized bones all at once can conglomerate into a sort of 'bone cement' that is extremely difficult for the dog to excrete and often painful.

My first dog, poor little soul, seemed to be allergic to bones. Any bone meal in her food or treats and she would get into gastric trouble. I wasn't clued in on BARF at that time, so I don't know if I had done something differently if it would have been a different story. Also, I would think that dogs who swallow things like rocks and christmas tree lights would be bad candidates to give anything other than a cow femur or something of similar size to so they couldn't just scarf the whole thing down. I don't think that their stomach acids are up to breaking down something huge.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2002

Just thought I would give a report. I've fed her 2x yesterday and once today. She knows how to chew the bones! And everything seems to be fine at the other end also. She loved it! And she seems to love me all the more too. I think we'll stay with this and see how it goes.

From my reading what I learned is that raw bones were the key just as the others have said. The goal is to recreate what a wild dog or wolf would ingest. The veggie slur that is served with the raw meat simulates the stomach contents of a prey animal. I also learned that dog food is only about 60 yrs. old and the site I read claimed that dogs lived longer and were healthier with less allergies before dog food. I found this interesting.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2002

Several years ago I got a sheet from my vet that had the recipes for making the prescription Science Diet pet foods for dogs and cats. I was in school at the time and had very little money to buy the prescription diet my kitty needed for her kidneys (She just turned 19 years old this week!!). The easiest thing to do is make a big batch, separate it into small containers and freeze it. If anyone is interested your vet may have this recipe sheet, or e-mail me and I'll do my best to find it. I know its around here somewhere.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2002

Don't know if it's the same recipe, Debra, but when my older cats (now crossed over the Rainbow Bridge) developed kidney problems and were supposed to be on a lower protein diet, I made up the recipes provided. I think they were from Science Diet. Anyway, my cats refused to eat it or even recognize it as food. When I would give them food they didn't want to eat (now or maybe ever), they would make the pawing, covering motions around the food, then leave. With this stuff, they wouldn't even look at it nor make any covering up motions. They apparently thought it bore no closer relationship to food than styrofoam did! LOL!

The recipe I had was high on eggs, particularly the whites. I'm sort of glad that they didn't like it, because it probably wouldn't have agreed with them anyway. Neither one could ever eat eggs and keep them down, so I quit feeding eggs early in their lives. But the good news is that I managed to keep them both alive to old age. Sarah died at 17-1/2 and Molly made it to 21.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2002