Stitches Out

Just another quick pic of the Birthday boy, Haggis.

I mentionned "birthday cake" the other day. Regular readers will know that this comes in the form of raw pork ribs with plenty of meat still on. These are seen as "safe" bones - they do not shatter into sharp bits and we dogs spend happy minutes gnawing and grinding, slurping and chewing them up. Ever wondered where that chalky white dog poo you used to see everywhere comes from?

When Mum and Dad first had Meg and the H, there was much talked about on the net, a system of feeding dogs called (S)ARF, which meant (Species-) Appropriate Raw Food diet. It might still be "out there" - we'll have to google it. These people reckonned that modern tinned foods and mixes are full of in-appropriate cereal, rusk, veg's and other rubbish, that a wild dog would never get hold of. Not sure how purely true this is, as certainly the foxes round here eat blackberries and other fruit.

The ARF types advocated feeding the dog entirely on raw meat from species appropriate to the dog's size - for example a Westie might have raw chicken, rabbit and so on. I hasten to say that we are never given any "long bones" of poultry, but we are commonly given "chicken-backs" - Dad spatchcock's the chook cutting alongside the spine either side with kitchen scissors, so we get from parson's nose to neck, taking in pelvis, lumbar and thoracic spine, neatly lopped into 3 thirds, one for each of us. The ARF people seemed to be getting hold of regular supplies of "chicken backs" in bulk from their suppliers, but the specific ones we talked to were American - not sure how possible that is "over here".

ARF advocates swear that after a few days and weeks of feeding only raw food their dogs are in superb condition, good immunity, glossy coats, healthy guts and their poo that hard chalky white. The theory further goes that ARF dogs never get that problem (nor do we, thankfully) of impacted anal glands - the straining to push out the more solid "waste" self-strips the oily fluid from them, emptying them at each "evacuation".

Read all about it and make your own mind up.

Meanwhile, I'm over to the vets today to have my spay stitches out, and I'm a very brave girl, and do not utter a single squeak.

Deefer (Arf arf)