There’s a whole new movement in pet feeding over the last few years that has completely passed me by – the raw food diet.
I’ve had to bone up ( ! ) on it quickly since getting our spoodle a month ago. She came on a diet of expensive kibble, dog roll, and chicken necks, but the expectation from the breeder was that she would move onto a fully raw diet when she got older. I was encouraged to join a Facebook group about it, to learn more. Boy, it’s a whole new world out there! Some people are absolutely devoted to raw feeding. It can take up as much of your time, energy, and money as you want it to. Which is fine – I love dogs as much as the next person – but some of these devotees can be pretty extreme. Here is a photo one person posted:
This is fabulous, but on a more sinister note, what do you think of this post, with comments?
Do you know what these people sound like? Antivaxxers. I wonder what sort of overlap they have? It seems kibble has been forced on us for fifty years by Big Dogfood, according to the book I downloaded on kindle (complete with a suite of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors).
The raw diet is also known as BARF (biologically appropriate raw food), and it’s basically paleo for dogs. The idea is that our domestic canines are still wolves on the inside, who clearly had access to delicious platters such as the ones shown above, back in the day. In fact, I imagine wolves, like cavemen, had to eat all sorts of questionable rubbish to stave off starvation – carrion (roadkill before cars), dodgy plants, unripe fruit – but I digress. I think what I’m going to do is ask my vet for advice during Maggie’s next vaccination visit, taking the risk that they may have been brainwashed in their training as I have obviously been during my medical studies. (You know, about science being a useful guide in life).