Every athlete needs to have good food to be able to compete at their highest level; an agility dog is no different.
Wrigley began a BARF (Bones And Raw Foods) diet in preparation for his agility training. We will be posting information on feeding raw and pet nutrition. (These posts will probably not be from Wrigley, he’d just write ‘yum-yum’.)
When researching the key elements for feeding a Dalmatian a raw diet, at first the information seems overwhelming. Everyone has a different way of doing things and different things they think are most important. After wading through lots of information, we discovered two main things that seem to be the most important when switching to a raw diet.
The first is that Dalmatians are somewhat of a special case. Because they are prone to kidney stones, their diets need to be low in purines. This means that they can not have the organ meats that are so prevalent in general raw diets. The main sources of protein for Dalmatians are chicken and turkey with a limited amount of beef thrown in. We get most of our raw meat from a local distributor for Blue Ridge Beef but we also buy chicken from the grocery store when it is on sale, portion it out and freeze it. You can keep track of your Dalmatian’s purine levels be keeping track of the acidity of his urine using pH test strips (you can also test by rubbing his ‘or her’ gums first thing in the am with the pH test strip).
The second important thing we learned when switching Wrigley to a raw diet was to relax. The information available can seem overwhelming, and we love him so much and want him to have the best available, that it was easy to get super stressed and frozen in indecision. One thing we read that really helped us was that Wrigley’s diet did not need to be 100% perfect at every meal. As long as he is getting all the nutrients he need in the span of 10-14 days he will be healthy. So, we don’t try to be perfect at each meal, keep a log of what he eats and make sure that he is happy.
Below are some links that are helpful resources when getting started on a BARF diet for your Dalmatian.
http://www.dalmatians.us/feeding.htm
http://home.att.net/~hattrick-dals/Diet.html
http://www.kingdomdals.com/health_diet.html
http://www.humangradedogfood.net/2009/09/08/human-grade-dog-food-barf-diet/
Yahoo Group (connect with other Dalmatian owners that feed a raw diet) – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rawdiet4dals/summary
