Gosh how did I miss this thread

All I will say is this :

Dogs are not Carnivores, they are Omnivores, and scientific research shows they need a certain amount of veg in their diet not only as it produced vits/mins that bones don't, but also aids in digestive juices (or something, I dont know, I'm making it up )

*Runs away to hide in the pretty box with swirly paper on it*

I apologise to Lara for those emoticons I put in my last posting to her waving goodbye. That was cheap and childish and nasty, Lara, if you read this, I am truly sorry, I will PM you. :smt010 And if I have to be truthful, I LOVED your remark about my husband's manhood - if only it were true !! Ooops, now I'm being bitchy again, stoppit Nikki !

Hi mse2: I picked up on that piece of research about the maned wolf too. I only read the abstract like you, as although the maned wolf is a canid because it was a distant relative of Canis lupus, and therefore may have evolved a slightly different dietary requirement, I didn't delve further. Do post it though, or shall I if you're busy on your run up to returning to acadaemia? I'm only a boring old housewife at the moment, so have all the time in the world (I wish!)!!

Many people who feed BARF, do include raw fruit as well. Tawneywolf feeds her girls (the famous Norties !!) on bananas, melons I think, but I did find with my Hal it gave him the most awful squitters. Doubtless in time if I had pursued it, he would have got used to eating fruit because certainly it is a small part of the wild wolf's diet.

I am sure apart from TW there are others on here who feed fruits and will describe their experiences.

Welcome to BARFing !!

Tawneywolf - not PHD, BSC no less !! Even bigger !!

Malady: scientific research does indeed show that wolves and dogs need a small amount of vegetable matter in their diet. However, delving, via my husband's large appendage known as his credit card, into the wild and woolly t'internet, I have discovered that wolves are classified as being mainly carniverous, which means that are dogs are too.

I had to eat humble pie - God it tasted foul ! - so it's your turn now! If you just google Canis lupus carnivore, or something like that, you'll find the info very easily.

Where've you been? I missed you !

during their first summer my 2 loved all fruit and would eagerly attack melons, apples, oranges, squash, pumpkin, in fact they never ever left anything. This summer just gone I was amazed to find that they were totally disinterested in melons or any other fruit. They still love bananas though. when I am pureeing their veg I always put a couple of apples in, they usually have a mix of broccoli, cauli and carrots along with a tin of tomatoes. I chop up the leaves stalks and everything for them, and eat the main bit of veg myself just giving them any bits that are left over.
Interestingly enough at the Shaun Eliss lecture that I attended along with Gnasher and several NI and Ute people he did say that the lower down the pack pecking order a wolf was the more veg he would eat and that because of this the lower ranking members smelt different because of their diet and were defined by this. Also you could tell the eventual pack position of a pup by the place it fed when suckling from the mother because that would be the place it would feed on a kill.

Oh well done TW, this was simmering away in the back of my mind, but I just couldn't remember what Shaun had said other than confirming that wolves do eat the stomach contents of their prey ... you clever old thing !

My brain is complete mush at the moment because of all the alcohol I consumed over xmas! Am now on a very strict, alcohol free, diet.

Just upset and confused Gnasher.....in all the years we have known each other you never once mentioned OH's PHD or the fact that he also had a BSC!!!! Just think he was lounging on my couch only last summer and never once did the subject pop up!!!!
Getting back to the subject now.....the lady who bred my 2 has always raw fed and she has a day a week when she only feeds veg to her dogs. I, personally, have never done this, but my 2 get a desertspoonful of pureed veg with every meal and that is what they eat first - always!!!

Oh gosh I don't like yucky stuff either Consider it done

Aaw hun, I was hiding in the pretty box, it's safer in there

None of us know, as there isn't the research to prove it either way.
Wolves are wolves, dogs are dogs - there is less than 1% dna difference between monkeys and us too, it doesn't work like that, we can't look to monkeys for what we eat (or how we raise our kids for that matter) in fact raw meat they do well on but we don't (or if we do not many of us eat raw meat).

Jess: the difference between dogs and wolves is only 0.02%, and that tiny fraction of a percent is purely behavioural. I didnot know that the % difference between us and our closest relative, the chimpanzee, is less than 1% (will have to ask Mr Big Boy !!), like us, of course, they are omnivorous, not the herbivores once thought. As you say, they eat raw meat. I watched a really quite upsetting wildlife documentary a few years ago showing a troop of wild chimps hunting down, killing and eating another ape - I can't remember the type, but it was a smaller animal than a chimp. It was very shocking - just like watching us hunting, say, a sheep, killing it with our bare hands and then tearing it apart and eating it. Underneath our skin, is Wild Man, just as underneath our dog's skin is Wild Wolf.

I believe we COULD look to chimps for our diet ... an omniverous raw diet of nuts, seeds, insects, occasional raw meat, fruits. Billinghurst in his book mentions the interesting fact that we, like our dogs, would benefit from eating RAW meat. Fire was accidentally "discovered" by man only a few thousand years ago. We have the teeth to eat raw meat, we have the digestion to digest raw meat, particularly organ meat, we have the teeth to grind raw fruits, nuts, seeds, vegetables, and indeed one interesting scientific paper I read said that one of the vital ingredients missing from the western diet is raw insects, especially those with a hard keratinous shell, like woodlice.

I would hate the thought of having to eat everything raw, but, if you look to the diet of the hunter gatherer and before the discovery of fire, this would be the best diet for us. Like the dog, we have not evolved in terms of dietary requirement at all from our recent "wild" past. A diet consisting mainly of refined carbohydrate, or even unrefined, is unhealthy and unbalanced, just like it is for our dogs.

An interesting thought - I for one would HATE to eat raw meat, I like my meat very rare, but at least partially cooked, so I hope I never have to, but I am sure it would be much healthier for me, as it would be not to drink alcohol, but that's unlikely to happen too !

TW: you are a rascal - I had no idea you were looking !

Malady: I've just noticed from your profile you have Mal's !! My fave pedigree - I'm off to see if you have any piccies or a website !