Nurturing By Nature

General information

Sales Counter in Upton Poole.
Monday - Friday
09.00 - 17.00
Unit 3, Ventura Centre
Upton Industrial Estate
Poole, BH16 5SW

Have you heard of the "BARF" diet for dogs and cats?
(biologically Appropriate Raw Food)

Dogs have been eating processed food for about 100 years and for the previous 300,000 they were eating a natural diet involving raw bones, meat, fruit and vegetables. Dogs have evolved to eat this diet, so why feed them anything else?
They are more healthy and suffer less from common modern diseases such as chronic colitis, atropy and peridontal disease on this diet.

NEVER EVER FEED COOKED BONES!

The Beginning

At the age of seven, Fred, my big red boxer, developed a cancerous skin tumour (Mast Cell) which was surgically removed. The following year a needle aspiration on another lump confirmed that he had another Mast Cell Tumour which had infiltrated a large fatty lump on the inside of his hind leg. The surgery required to remove this one proved much more difficult. We were very lucky to have two excellent veterinary surgeons who worked together and successfully removed the tumour but they were unfortunately not able to leave a safe margin on one side. He faced a long recovery .The wound could not be stitched closed due to the vast area of skin that had been lost. It would have to granulate over.

Prior to the second tumour I had become increasingly aware of the bad effects some refined carbohydrates and sugars could have in a dogs' diet, possibly causing cancers and supporting their growth. A couple of leading dog food manufacturers had produced cancer patient support diets which were low carbohydrate and high protein. For the period of his recovery I put Fred on one of them.

Nearly three months later and Fred had completed his difficult convalescence but he had become an old man. My tigger had lost his bounce. He needed help getting into the car. He didn't run - he plodded. He didn't want to play, thank you.

I was unable to find a viable alternative so kept Fred on the same diet. I had become terrified of the possible consequences of carbohydrates.

My other dogs showed no signs of Fred's problem so they were still having a good quality kibble. I did not know what else to do.

I worked as a receptionist and assistant at a veterinary practice during this time. (for a total of nine years)

The following year we had another locum vet join us but he proved to be a bit out of the ordinary.

He was into complementary "stuff"!

One of the things that he recommended to a number of his patients, almost ( it seemed) regardless of their problem was a raw food diet.

In my ignorance I found this faintly amusing, ( I had never heard of this before) but as time went on and his patients made good recoveries, I became more interested and eventually asked him to explain his 'raw diet' to me.

Basically

1/3rd meat

1/3rd vegetable

1/3rd oat

But most important of all as far as I was concerned - carbohydrates were not essential, I could leave the oats out if I wanted too.

One month later, I introduced raw food to my dogs.