September-October201.. - Dogs Naturally Magazine

y: Dana ScottI am a reformed kibble feeder. I admit that many years ago Iused to love going to the pet supply store where I would poreover food bags, sagely pontificating on the confounding andlengthy list of ingredients on the labels. I would stroll throughthe aisles, taking in the beautifully packaged bags that smuglybeckoned me with sexy promises such as ‘nutritionally complete’,‘holistic’ and ‘performance’ and I would take in the picturesof winning show dogs and plates of meats and vegetablesand then wisely pick my winner. I would take my prize tothe check-out counter thinking ‘what lucky dogs I have’ as Ilaid my money down for the best kibble I could buy.I can’t remember just why I moved away from kibble, but I didall the same. It might have been the fact that I did not eatfoods that came in bags and boxes and it just seemed logicalthat my dogs shouldn’t either. I tend to not do things halfway,so I researched alternative diets for my dogs as much as Icould before jumping in but decided that feeding chickenwings to dogs was a frightening leap of faith that I was not yetready for. So I decided that I would cook for my dogs. I did sopartly because I was not yet ready to trust that bones weresuitable foodstuffs for dogs, and because it was most like thecomfortable ‘nutritionally complete’ kibbles I had now swornoff of. I began filling my cupboards with quinoa, brown rice,oats, brewers yeast and ground meats. I would spend hourscooking these concoctions on my stove, feeling just as warmand fuzzy as the oat and hamburger blend I began feeding mydogs. It was a labour of love and I justified the time investmentwith the knowledge that fresh, whole foods were betterthan processed and extruded foods.I had been home cooking for about a year when I first learnedof Dr. Ian Billinghurst, shortly after his first book was published.I had attended a Patty Ruzzo obedience seminar andPatty was very infectious and very much in love with her dogs.Patty advocated Dr. Billinghurst’s diet and her dogs seemed toglow with energy and good health. At this point, I was desperatelytired of cooking complicated dog concoctions and I’mreally not sure whether it was the relative ease of feeding orthe common sense approach that made me want to try rawfeeding. It just seemed ‘right’ and I bought Dr. Billinghurst’sbook and read it cover to cover three times.Anyone who has been feeding raw for a number of years willbe familiar with how it has evolved with time. When Ian Billinghurstpublished his first book, he advocated a lot of bones:a lot. I had a new puppy at the time I made the switch to hisBARF (the aptly named Bones and Raw Food) diet and fed himan alarmingly large amount of chicken wings and legs. Hefought epiphysitis as a puppy but went on to pass his hip andelbow clearances although he became noticeably unsound atfour years of age with terrible elbow dysplasia. I don’t know ifit was the high bone content that led to his ailment or just thebad luck of poor genetics: I suppose I will never know for certainbut I suspect that feeding a growing dog 85% raw meatybones was not the wisest thing I could have done.As a breeder, I was launched into an accelerated learning programand over the years I watched my puppies and adult dogsgrow and thrive, tweaking my raw feeding here and there toreflect recently garnered information or unwelcome changesin my dogs. Over the last nearly fifteen years, I have changedmy dogs’ diets numerous times and may finally have settled ona feeding plan that I feel quite comfortable with.I still remember the anxiety and terror I had when I firstswitched over from kibble as I did not have much support orguidance from other breeders: so I was forced to learn theDogs...Naturally! September/October 2010