Mind doing a quick write-up on what the raw food diet entails, preferably with a MMM context? I'm not opposed to changing up to something unconventional, provided it doesn't add considerably more to my already over-flowing plate. I can't be spending hours a week preparing dog food, as much as I love my pup.
There seems to be two basic approaches to homemade diets:
1) duplicating commercial pet food with fresh ingredients. This diet still include lots of grain (though better ones like oatmeal, barley, etc.) instead of corn and wheat. (The Volhard diet is one of these.)
2) Looking at what wild canids eat, and mimicking that with readily available raw ingredients. (BARF diet and similar)
I found the Volhard diet to be much more work than the BARF diet since you don't cook anything in the latter.
I fed raw chicken backs and wings, ground beef, offal (calves' liver, gizzards, heart, etc.), raw eggs with shell in the morning. At night I fed a veggie mix, mostly consisting of blenderized greens but also things like carrot, broccoli, etc. Sometimes I included yogurt for the probiotics. Also a few supplements (C, E, B-complex, etc.), apple cider vinegar (the real kind with the "mother"). Dogs cannot digest plant materials well at all, so these either have to be cooked, or completely ground up into a soupy mix (think herbivore stomach contents) - but they are an essential part of the diet. I never had any trouble getting any of my dogs to eat the veggies, but Goldens generally will eat anything that's not nailed down anyway. Some people did find they had to mix in some ground meat to get their dogs to eat their "soup".
People that choose to duplicate commercial dog food have to cook the grains. If you have several dogs, as I did when I tried Volhard, it meant cooking up a big stock pot of oatmeal several times a week. I just found that to be a real PITA. Having said that however, I'd still encourage anyone interested in feeding raw to learn more about the diet. Wendy was very meticulous in formulating it and you'll learn a lot about the whole homemade diet philosophy as a result. You can find an overview
here, but a much more in-depth discussion appears in the book cited at the end.
FWIW, it appears that you can now
buy the raw BARF diet in bags (presumably frozen) but in looking at the prices, I can assure you it's much cheaper to make it yourself. Visiting the website, it's hard to tell how this convenience food evolved -
I didn't see anything about Ian Billinghurst, the Australian vet that started it all** and the mention of grinding bones in the video is actually diametrically opposed to the original BARF philosophy of "raw meaty bones" for dental health. So, as usual, buyer beware.
One of the most interesting observations my vet and I have made, after having several dogs spend their entire lives on a BARF-type diet is that at some point - usually around the age of 14-15 - at least some dogs start to require more concentrated carbs for energy. IOW, it appears that the mechanism that converts protein and fat to energy starts to become less efficient in elderly dogs and they will start to lose considerable weight unless carbs are added back in to the diet. This does not negate the philosophy of feeding a paleo-type diet (the same thing might happen to wild canids if they survive the rigors of the wild to such a ripe old age), but would certainly be an interesting topic for further scientific study. However, as I said, the pet food industry does its own studies and has little interest in looking further. Their aim is to formulate their products, not to find the absolute optimal diet for dogs.
(As an aside, if the medical profession decided that you should
only eat a diet consisting 100% of a cooked, dried cereal product with a list of ingredients as long as your arm - and nothing else for your entire life - I'm sure you'd consider that to be less than optimal.)
What that means is that my 16 year old now gets a 50/50 mix of Bil-Jac Adult or preferably Large Breed Adult + Innova Adult Dry (Red Meat), plus an assortment of the following: raw eggs (no shell since commercial foods are
loaded with calcium), whey (by-product of my homemade Greek yogurt and an excellent source of protein and probiotics), sometimes ricotta cheese. I am toying with adding back small amounts of raw ground beef and the veggie mix because it bothers me that her diet is now mostly dead food.
I never really found the BARF diet to be more work - it necessitates a change in thinking and routine. You have to remember to include the dog's shopping list with your own groceries instead of just picking up a bag of kibble and throwing some in a bowl a couple times a day. Once it becomes habit, however, feeding raw is very little extra work. There is a considerable learning curve, however, since you are taking responsibility for your dog's entire diet instead of leaving it in the hands of some company that sources ingredients from who knows where. (In the case of the melamine contamination mentioned in the other post, the contaminated ingredient came from China if memory serves, and a number of brands were recalled, not just those made by Diamond.)
The pet food industry would have you believe that feed a dog or cat (and cats have some very specific requirements that are different from dogs, so the two diets are not interchangeable) is far beyond the capability of mere mortals. Nothing could be further from the truth, but you
do have to do your homework.
**Billinghurst's page on the BARF world site is
here.