B.A.R.F. - Bones and Raw Food

On January 15, EquiPro posted a fascinating and informative piece on the BTD forum concerning feeding our cats and dogs bones and raw food. She listed a couple very good and worth reading web sites. The additional comments made by others really has peaked my interest in using this approach to feeding our three dogs and one obese cat. Therefore, never to be one to put off when convinced of a better method, I decided to make the necessary changes.

Muppet, my soon-to-be 14 year old Pomapoo was the first target for improved doggie feeding. He gladly accepted and ate a small portion of premium ground beef. Well, I figured that this was going to be a breeze. I took a frozen whole chicken out of the freezer for the dogs and cat to share after it thaws.

Having nothing suitable (cost-wise, that is) for them to eat for dinner tonight, I headed to the shopping center. Whole chickens $2.49 a pound ($9.49 for 1 chicken) , chicken hearts on sale for $1.79 a pound, and chicken gizzards @ $1.19 a pound. I decided to check out the bones. Ninety-nine percent meat-free bones were only $1.29 a pound! By then I was becoming discouraged. I talked to the butcher and was told they only bring up pre-sectioned beef and have no left-over bones!

Well, I came home with a small package of gizzards, a small container of chicken hearts, and two beef-less bones for a total of $5.46. At least it is a start.

Katie Cat took one sniff of the gizzard and chicken heart, looked at me as though I was trying to poison her, puffed up and walked off. She’s always refused to eat anything but Friskies Ocean Flavored dry cat food and apparently doesn’t think chicken gizzards and heart measure up to that delicacy. We’ll just keep on trying.

As Muppet had been quite happy with the beef earlier today, I was sure he would be pleased to eat a gizzard and heart. Wrong. He looked at me rather disgustingly, came over and tried begging for my dinner which wasn’t gizzards or hearts. Oh well!

Cassie and Tucker enjoyed their goose egg coated dried dog food and a nice chunk of beef bone to chew on tonight. They are always happy to get a change in food. Tomorrow is another day and we will continue introducing our dogs and cat to the foods that are for their type and maybe some day they will all agree that the change was worth it.