Raw Food for Dogs: Defining the goal for the feeding plan

by Mogens Eliasen, an excerpt from Raw Food For Dogs

Let's face it: few people can manage to feed their dog completely naturally. And I would not recommend it, even if you could. Once in a while, yes: give the dog a whole animal, like a chicken or a rabbit. But wolves in nature will not eat whole animals only—they will also eat vegetables of various kinds—when they have no prey available, that is: when they are stressed and very hungry.

We do not need to let our dogs experience the stress a wolf is exposed to for survival. There is a balance between that extreme and letting the pet food manufacturers decide for us.

I know that this balance has to

• make sense; and
• be easy to use.

If not, you won't do it! And you shouldn't. The chances of your doing something wrong are far too great if you have no understanding of your dog's needs. It would not be responsible to try.

We have already discussed in some detail what a wolf would eat. You have a reasonable understanding of what it will be: some whole prey animals, killed by the pack - including meat, guts, bones, and skin. On top of that come the partially digested vegetables in the stomach and intestines of that prey animal. In addition, the wolf will eat fruit and vegetables of all kinds as it can find them - if it is hungry.

We need to make a shopping list out of that - instead of trying to make you a scientist.

The bad news is that many people who "go natural" do so without understanding what they are doing - and the health results for their dogs are miserable.

The good news is that it does not have to be a science. The simply formula I will present to you is so simple to both remember and to use that anyone can do it, once you understand the background.

The even better news is that this has been tested by thousands and thousands of dogs whose owners all report great results, compared to kibble feeding. This is in sharp contrast to the claims you can find almost everywhere from veterinarians and pet food manufacturers, even "holistic" veterinarians! The thing is, though, that if Toyota makes a public report about performance of certain cars, including some of their own, then you pretty much know who comes out the winner of that test, don't you? Well, the test results don't have to be wrong. But they are most definitely "selected carefully".

The same thing goes with dog food. Every single article or post I have seen about "proof" of a raw natural diet being less healthy than a kibble diet suffers from at least one of the following:

• It is unsubstantiated with independent data to back up the claim.
• It is flawed in its own use of data - if not outright drawing mathematically incorrect conclusions.
• It is deliberately deceiving by attacking a "raw meat diet" for not being balanced, assuming that "a raw natural diet" is the same as "a raw meat diet"!

Although opinions can be important, and everybody has a right to have one, then I also have the right to disregard the opinions of people who have a financial interest in making a sale, based on their claim, when their claim cannot be supported by honest data.

Unfortunately, it is easy to manipulate the public by using "scientific data". As I already explained when discussing labelling, it is just too easy to make "scientific data" appear in a way that leads to lay-people making incorrect conclusions.

And, of course, a diet consisting exclusively of raw meat will not be balanced. But that is not what we talk about here. We talk about A fully balanced natural raw diet that comes as close as we practically can come to what a wolf would naturally feed on for optimal health.

So, I want to use an idealised natural meal plan for the wolf as a standard reference. And I want to adjust it for some of the hardships and risks it provides for the wolf, so your dog can obtain as many of the benefits as possible from this plan, without necessarily also suffering from the down-sides.

Yes, I want you to do better for your dog that Mother nature does for the wolf, by using her own principles as near as you can, balancing responsible care for your beloved pal with a fundamental respect for its nature.

Mogens Eliasen was born 1949 in Denmark and immigrated to Canada in 1990. He holds a Ph.D. level degree in Chemistry from Århus University, Denmark and has 30+ years of experience working with dogs, dog owners, dog trainers, and holistic veterinarians as a coach, lecturer, and education system developer.

This is an excerpt from his book, Raw Food For Dogs - the Ultimate Reference for Dog Owners, which is available for immediate download, as a CD, or in print format. If you want to learn just about everything there is to know about feeding the BARF (Biologically Adequate Raw Food) diet for dogs and puppies, have a look at what this book has to teach you!