ARF4Westies – Two Years Later

Understanding the Best Diet for Westies

By Wendell Marumoto, Christine Swingle and Jane Fink

ARF4Westies is an email discussion List, which was designed so that Westie owners could exchange information about "how to practice" and "benefit from" a species-specific appropriate raw food (ARF) diet based upon raw poultry and animal meat and bones. At that time, such diet was just “coming out of the closet,” and we believed that a discussion List on the Internet could give those interested in providing optimum nutrition for their Westies the best opportunity to exchange such information.

We reported our experiences during ARF4Westies’ first year in an article in the Summer 2000 Imprint entitled, ARF4Westies – One Year Later.

ARF4Westies has become a very active discussion group with almost 200 participants among whom newcomers’ questions about how to practice ARF are answered by more experienced participants, and daily reports are made by those whose Westies are benefiting from ARF.

More and more pet owners are becoming aware that kibbles, which constitute a HUGE profit center for major conglomerates that manufacture them, are not the nutritionally wholesome product that their unrelenting public relations campaign is designed to convince dog fanciers that they are. Once any thinking fancier becomes aware that the main ingredient of kibble is grain, a food entirely foreign to the species, the alarms go off.

This questioning of the kibble manufacturers’ claims is not a recent phenomenon, but one that has not been publicized. We found the following observation in Pet Allergies - Remedies for an Epidemic (1985) by Alfred Plechner, DVM:

"After a study of pet foods in the 1970's, Dr. Paul M. Newberne of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had this to say: 'Much of the information ... on how best to feed your pet ... is misleading and primarily designed to sell a product ... often with very little, if any, supporting evidence to back the claims made by the manufacturer. The pet owning public and in many cases the veterinary profession has thus been at the mercy of the mass media advertising, often to the detriment of the health of the animal and increased cost to the client.'"

If you are wondering how this relates to the deterioration of health of our canine companions, we call your attention to the following excerpt from the Introduction of Martin Goldstein, DVM, to his best-selling The Nature of Animal Healing, where he writes:

"I see the results of bad diet and misguided conventional medicine every day.....Why are so many dying before their time? .....

Though I certainly see healthy pets, many of the animals I treat have.....some form of severe, premature degeneration: arthritis, kidney or liver failure, hyperthyroidism, or, most frequently, some form of cancer.

If I were just seeing a small, steady trickle of extreme cases, year in, year out, you could stop reading right now.....Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

Twenty-five years ago when I started out in practice, the pets I saw with these diseases were old. Their conditions seemed to be age-related and slow-growing enough to be accepted. Of the cases I see now, many are young and don't live past the age of five.

If the age of these patients is troubling, so too is the rate at which their diseases now grow.....

The assault begins with those processed and packaged foods that most of us give our pets."

A growing awareness of this connection has led more and more pet owners to look into a “raw, or natural diet” and to try it. In the two years that ARF4Westies has existed, we have learned several things about how the uninitiated public perceives a “raw diet,” some of we would like to share with you.

One thing we have learned is that many people think that a raw diet simply entails throwing together meals in which the ingredients are just raw and natural. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. But neither is it difficult, as you will see.

Dogs have somewhat specific needs for certain nutrients, with a most crucial balance being the calcium/phosphorus ratio. There is also a critical need for certain levels of vitamins and minerals to allow the body to assimilate those nutrients. If that ratio is not right, a dog may leech calcium from its bones, creating a condition that can be fatal. So, how do you get that ratio “right”? That solution is simple. Just feed what Nature meant to be fed dogs – raw meaty bones!

Feeding raw meat (with its high phosphorus content) without bones (or an appropriate calcium supplement, such as bonemeal or egg shells) can be a nutritional disaster for dogs. Most people do not understand the need to feed correct proportions of meat to bones or bonemeal, and their reliance on recommendations made by those who themselves don't know what they are doing makes the problem worse.

This is probably the reason that vets tell us that feeding scraps is a no-no. It is not that scraps have no nutritional value, but rather the vets are concerned with problems people can cause their dogs if the nutritional balance is out of kilter. A homemade diet can be the best or the worst thing you can feed your pet.

A cooked diet can create other problems, because cooking changes the molecular structure of nutrients and destroys enzymes, so that those elements must be added back to the diet by supplementation.

While the ARF diet is not that complicated, some common sense must be utilized. In feeding our pets, we have become spoiled by the convenience of just pouring out a cup or so of some kibble into a bowl and presenting it to MacDuff as his daily meal. Many then mindlessly continue to accept the kibble manufacturers’ claim that kibbles are the “complete and balanced” food for our pets.

So, one of our first tasks in getting people to try ARF is to get them to understand that balancing each meal is not important. What is important is to balance the diet over time. In Part 2, Christine shows us how easy it is to do this.

Other obstacles to getting started on ARF include overcoming the many urban legends that exist about ARF, based on fear and prejudice developed from surrendering one’s right to exercise common sense to the easier path of simply “following the crowd.” A couple of major concerns that seem to always crop up, in addition to “balancing” each meal, are, “Aren’t you concerned about e-coli and salmonella?” and “Aren’t bones dangerous?”

Yes, we are, but not to the extent that the question implies. Be aware that e-coli and salmonella are ubiquitous and are just about always found in raw chicken. If you cook chicken for your family at home, you handle raw chicken. If you handle raw chicken, it would be impossible not to be handling both of these bacteria. However, you undoubtedly have antibodies in your body to protect you from these bacteria, as do your dogs. Nature designed dogs to be scavengers. So she made their immune systems more than able to handle these bacteria, and since we know that Nature takes care of her own, dogs actually thrive on bacteria-ridden food in their natural state. If dogs were susceptible of developing e-coli or salmonella from the bacteria proliferating in rancid meat or feces, wouldn’t we be seeing our streets and backyards strewn with the bodies of dead and dying dogs?

Yes, they can be, but mostly when they are cooked. When cooked, smaller poultry bones become brittle and capable of splintering. They then become more likely to get caught in the mouth, puncture intestines, etc. In short, don’t feed cooked bones. Raw meaty bones from young chickens are soft and pliable.

More importantly, Dr. Ian Billinghurst, the Australian vet credited with reintroducing the ARF/BARF diet to the dog world with the publication of his classic, Give Your Dog A Bone, in 1993, wrote:

“I found that most dogs could eat practically one hundred percent raw meaty bones, and remain in perfect health…

In other words, as incredible as it sounds, raw meaty bones appeared to be a complete food for a dog. If not totally complete, then pretty close.”

Simple enough, but too many people do not seem to fully trust Mother Nature, and often add minerals, vitamins, and enzymes that they did to a kibble diet that Nature has already provided in a raw diet, thereby running the risk of unbalancing the diet on which canids have thrived for ages.

To better understand ARF/BARF, one should go to the ARF4Westies website at www.arf4westies.info and read some of the linked articles and a suggested book or two, like Billinghurst’s Give Your Dog A Bone, or The Ultimate Diet, by Kymythy Schulze.

In the meantime, take a look at Christine’s presentation of a typical ARF weekly menu, and Jane’s presentation of scientific evidence that shows how ARF works for her.

So, what exactly do I feed and how much? This is the typical question of many people who are switching their dogs over to a species-Appropriate Raw Food diet (ARF). Even after reading the suggested primer, The Ultimate Diet, by Kymythy Schultze, and Dr. Ian Billinghurst’s Give Your Dog A Bone, people are still unsure. Rightly so. I was, too. The routine of dumping a cup of processed kibble into a bowl, meal after meal, day after day, year after year, was just way too easy and that is exactly what the pet food industry caters to – convenience. So, it is understandable that when switching to feeding raw, one has to learn to give some thought to that which nature intended for our dogs to eat and thrive on for long term good health and well-being. Once you master that, it’s a piece of cake!

Therefore, one must look to the past, before processed dog food came on the market for the answers in order to go forward and regain good health in our dogs. The important thing to remember is there is a baseline menu and proportions of raw foods that should be fed over each week. I will present some starting amounts of those foods but then each person must adjust those amounts, according the dog being fed. The best way to know if you’re feeding enough is to look at and feel your dog for substance, muscle and sound condition. Also, be observant of its overall activity levels and general outward health. As Dr. Billinghurst says in his book, Give Your Dog A Bone, if your dog is too thin, increase the foods and if too heavy, decrease the foods. That’s pretty simple!

Feeding ARF takes less time than fixing your own evening’s meal. It doesn’t take a degree in nutrition to know what and how much raw foods to feed. It just takes some education, belief, commitment, common sense and practice.

Before we get to the “meat” of the menu, in the April 2001 GAZETTE, I was very excited to finally find an article on feeding raw. I personally had written letters to the GAZETTE, encouraging and even challenging them to present the raw side of feeding. What I expected was a fair and unbiased article. Sadly, what was published was just the opposite, one-sided and biased. The title alone, The Raw Deal, already set the tone of the article. When feeding raw it is extremely important to understand some pertinent points, which the article’s authors failed to mention. For one thing, not everyone is feeding a proper raw food diet. ARFers understand why each meal does NOT need to be balanced. This is a difficult concept for many people to understand, since the pet food industry and most veterinarians have done a masterful job of getting us to believe that each meal must be balanced. After all, scientists are better than nature to create such foods and the pet food industry is better than nature to provide those foods. Right? I say, phooey! How the heck did canids survive for so many millions of years before processed dog food?

Is every meal you eat balanced? If you never ate another processed food, do you think you would get all your nutrients in fresh, raw vegetables, fruits, and good old home cooking? Well, nature provides a cornucopia of foods to supply life with all the nutrients it needs to thrive, whether man or beast! People have become too busy and, I dare to say, they’ve also become very lazy. Just look at all the processed foods that are available for our fast paced lives. Who cooks a good home cooked meal? ARFers forget about percentages and instead, opt for VARIETY! Over the week, if you feed a variety of basic foods, it all balances out.

Repeat after me. I am feeding Canis lupus, or, our domesticated wolf – the dog. Think what the meal would be if our dogs were allowed to hunt and catch their own food. With this prey animal in mind, we can go forward to putting the proper foods into the food dish, and the VARIETY of raw foods you feed will supply all the beautiful nutrients, vitamins and minerals. One note about protein quality, which many people are concerned about and I’ll quote from Dr. Ian Billinghurst.

“Protein quality is governed by two factors. The presence or absence 0f essential amino acids, and the ability of that particular protein to be digested and absorbed.

Thus a poor quality protein can be deficient in two areas. It. can be poor quality because it lacks one or more of the essential amino acids, and it can be poor quality because your dog is unable to digest and absorb it easily.

A common example of a poor quality protein, deficient in both ways is the protein present in a dry dog food or any diet constructed mainly from cereals.

A lot of commercial dog foods contain protein that has low levels of certain essential amino acids and is not easily digested. Manufacturers get around this by supplying excessively high quantities of this poor quality protein in the product mix.”

Dogs are mainly carnivores (just look at their teeth) but they also eat some plant and grains. However, their short digestive system is not designed to exist and thrive on cooked cereals and grains. Their digestive system is designed to eat and digest raw meat and raw meaty bones. Vegetables must be broken down to a pre-digested like state in order for the nutrients to become available for digestion, and thus useful to our dog. So, when we build that meal we need to keep in mind that the diet needs to consist of some basic raw foods in proper proportions.

When feeding a raw food diet, you must include all of the following, over a week’s time.

A) Raw Muscle Meats: Any raw meat is acceptable to feed. Beef, veal, lamb, turkey, chicken, venison, rabbit, and even pork. No, I don’t worry about E.coli or salmonella because I know my dogs have strong and healthy digestive systems and can handle these things should they appear. Also, they aren’t human. E.coli has been found in processed dog food so what’s the point? Each dog is different so pay attention to how your dog does with the foods you feed. The diet should consist of approximately 60% of a VARIETY of raw meat.

Again, an all meat diet is a totally incorrect diet for a dog. It is high in phosphorus and protein and a dog fed only meat will be seriously deficient in calcium. Meat is also deficient in iodine, copper, vitamin A, Vitamin E and D. Where one food is deficient in a nutrient, we make up for it in other foods. Dr. Billinghurst states that commercial dog food has its excesses, too, namely salt, calcium and phosphorus.

B) Edible Raw Meaty Bones: These are RMBs that smaller dogs, like Westies, can completely consume. They include chicken necks, wings and backs. The ratio of meat to bone in chicken necks and wings is perfect. Also edible are lamb riblets, venison ribs and oxtails. Some people feed turkey necks but because these are rather large, I smash them first or grind them. Bone is a wonderful source of calcium and phosphorus and these two minerals are present in appropriate percentages for those who still need the reassurance of “balance.” Dogs being fed raw meat must receive bone. Natural bone sources are far better than bonemeal since you don’t know its source and it, too, is processed. The diet consists of approximately 40% RMB’s.

C) Organ Meats: A VARIETY of organ meats (approximately 2-4 oz.) should be fed at least twice a week. These are organs such as calves heart, kidney, tongue, and liver or chicken or turkey giblets (heart, liver or gizzard), etc. Organ meats provide essential concentrated nutrients including many vitamins and minerals. Liver is an excellent source of vitamins including all the B vitamins. It is also a good source of both omega 3 and omega 6 essential fatty acids, however, do not feed it every day.

D) Vegetables: A good VARIETY of any kind of vegetable can be fed. It is important to provide both above and below ground vegetables, leafy green vegetables and anything else your Westie will eat. However, fresh, whole, raw vegetables must be properly prepared so the nutrients in the vegetables become available for digestion, and beneficial to the dog. You can grate them, put them in a food processor, Vita-Mix®, grinder or juicer (use pulp and juice, too). Raw vegetables provide carbohydrates and a wealth of vitamins and minerals, soluble and insoluble fiber, some starch and simple sugars. You only need to add a tablespoon to each meal. Fresh, crushed garlic can be added 2-3 times a week. Give 1/8 tsp. You can add one, two or three veggies to each “batch” but again, VARIETY.

E) Supplements: Because many of our foods are grown in topsoil sorely depleted of good nutrients, we are pretty sure those foods, except organic, don’t have all the wonderful nutrients we need. We also live in a polluted, stressful world. Millions of people take supplements to make up for these deficiencies in our foods and so should our dogs. I won’t go into the overall benefits (you can read Give Your Dog A Bone for that) but I add the following to my Westies diet: natural, not synthetic Vitamin E (one-100iu daily), Vitamin C (500 mg. twice daily); a quality kelp product (I especially like NR Seaweed Mineral Food from Ambrican, Ltd.), and a nice rotation of a VARIETY of oils such as flaxseed, cod liver and olive (1/2 tsp. to one meal).

F) Recreational Raw Meaty Bones: While not part of the edible foods, recreational bones are very important to the raw diet. These bones consist of the harder bones that our little dogs can’t consume, lambshanks, beef or pork ribs, marrow and venison leg bones. These bones are “nature’s toothbrush” and when there is meat on the bone, they provide a great calisthenics workout and keep the teeth free of tartar (no dental cleanings needed) and the gums healthy. I give my Westies one or two a week.

G) Other and Snacks: Add 1 raw organic or free-range egg and shell (crushed) twice a week. Snacks can be raw veggies, fruits, nuts, etc.

Now that we know what we need to feed, to give you an idea of how much, the following is a week’s sample menu. Just remember the secret to a good raw diet – VARIETY! Some people feed once a day and others feed twice. It is a personal preference. I have some dogs that need two meals and others that do fine on one. These are “starting amounts” for a 18 lb. Westie:

Monday

Wednesday

Thursday

Saturday
I feed two light meals, getting the Westies ready for their Sunday fast.

Sunday
Sunday is fast day for my Westies. They are fasted for 24 hours and get plenty of playtime and exercise, which is important all the time.

As you can see, while one raw meal may not be “balanced”, over a week’s time a vast abundance of nutrients are provided to give our dogs exactly what they need. How can I be so sure? For the last five years since raising my Westies the “natural rearing way” and feeding ARF, I see the glowing and robust health of my puppies and adult dogs. My 11 and 14-year old Westies act like they are 2 years old. I am equally proud of my Best of Breed and Group winner, Ch. Bonnie Brier Sittin' Pretty, and her son, Bonnie Brier King O' Cowboys, both who were raw weaned and are raw fed. Goes to prove good health and winning are attainable. Also, blood work that is done for record keeping is right on target! Stool exams are always negative and I just never see gastrointestinal upsets

Today, I always hear, where are the studies, where is the documentation! The long-term effect of feeding raw to dogs is unknown? I find this very strange and illogical thinking considering today, with so many dogs being feed processed dog food, in my opinion disease and ill health is epidemic! Westies are dying younger than 30 years ago when the “average” age was 15 -18+ years! For me it is very simple to understand. To bring back good health and longevity, a good start is going back to feeding dogs what they are designed by nature to eat. What puzzles me about the doubters is why don’t more “professionals” or “researchers” jump at the chance to do the studies they say are lacking? Could they be fearful that ARFers are right? It seems to me that our dogs’ ancestors, who luckily did not have the opportunity to eat processed dog food, did just fine on raw foods for the millions of years BP, before processed. And to proof it, Canis lupus – the dog – is NOT extinct! Now, that has to tell you something, and Jane has something more to tell you.

When it was suggested that the ARF4Westies trio (Wendell, Christine and I) write an article for the Summer 2001 Imprint, I was excited. We have written an article on raw feeding for the past two Summer issues of the Imprint and each year I am more and more convinced that raw feeding is the way to go for my animals, so I like to share my enthusiasm.

In our first article, I wrote of my experience losing several cats and dogs to cancer and how, after researching the raw diet, decided it was something I had to try, to restore the health of my remaining animals. This year I am happy to report that things are better than ever. It would be easy for me to tell you again how much my animals love their food and how the raw diet has turned my aging dogs into lean, muscular, youthful acting creatures, but after a while even good news can be dull. As we know, looks can be deceiving, and animals can appear healthy when they really aren't, so I decided to delve a little deeper to find out just exactly how well (or not so well) my dogs were doing after two solid years of total raw feeding. So, in March I decided to have a complete diagnostic serum chemistry profile done on three of my nine animals: feline, Shetland Sheepdog and my oldest Westie.

Chaucer, the seven-year old cat, came through with flying colors. The vet who performed the profile was shocked, as she is not a supporter of raw feeding and fully expected the tests to turn up some horrible deficiency. My eight-year old Sheltie was the next to be tested. I decided to take him to Atlanta to well known holistic veterinarian, Dr. Susan Wynn. Dr. Wynn is conducting research on the effects of raw feeding in regard to the serum chemistry profile, comparing results from raw fed dogs with kibble fed dogs. So far, raw fed dogs are showing excellent results. My Sheltie's profile was superb.

For Kelsey's profile, I decided to visit a local vet friend of mine who just opened her own practice and who also feeds raw. Kelsey is my twelve-year old Westie who has suffered from chronic pancreatitis for eleven years, so there was no guessing which Westie to test.

Serum chemistry is a panel of tests, a profile to make sure the organs are functioning properly and to evaluate the overall health of the animal. It is a simple blood test that is also used to check for diseases such as diabetes, pancreatitis, renal failure, liver problems and cancer. The range of normal values tends to vary slightly depending on the lab and/or equipment but any value out of range is cause for investigation and concern. Kelsey's profile was done in-house, unlike the ones for Chaucer and Tip, which went to Antech Diagnostics in New York . Even though Kelsey's profile was not a complete serum chemistry, it was a diagnostic with CBC, enough to let us know if something was out of kilter. This is the result of her profile:

Test	Organ affected	Acceptable Range	Results
Albumin	Liver	2.5 - 4.4	3.5
Alkaline Phosphatase	Liver	20 - 150	33
Alanine aminotransferase	Liver	10 - 118	33
Amylase	Pancreas	200 - 1200	416
Total Bilirubin	Liver	0.1 - 0.6	0.5
Blood Urea Nitrogen (BUN)	Kidney	7 - 25	25
Calcium	Kidney	8.6 - 11.8	9.6
Cholesterol	Kidney	125 - 270	241
Creatinine		0.3 - 1.3	0.8
Glucose		60 - 110	94
K+		3.7 - 5.8	3.7
Total Protein		5.4 - 8.2	5.8
Globulins		2.3 - 5.2	2.4

a.m.	2 chicken necks
p.m.	5 oz. lamb meat, 3 chicken necks, 2 oz. muscle meats (calves liver/kidney), 1 tablespoon carrots/kale; 1 raw organic egg; ½ tsp. flaxseed oil, Vit. E, C, and NR Seaweed Mineral Food

a.m.	1 cup ground up chicken necks or backs
p.m.	6 oz. beef; 2 chicken wings cut at the joints; 1 tbsp. Carrots/broccoli; ½ tsp. cod liver oil, Vit. E, C and NR Seaweed Mineral Food

a.m.	2 chicken necks
p.m.	5 oz. turkey meat; half a chicken back cut in strips; 1 tbsp. Sweet potato/pepper; 1/8 tsp. fresh, crushed garlic; ½ tsp. olive oil; Vit. E, C, NR Seaweed Mineral Food

a.m.	3 chicken necks
p.m.	5 oz. veal; 2 chicken necks and 1 lamb riblet; 1 tbsp. Celery/zucchini/parsley; ½ tsp. flaxseed oil; Vit. E, C, NR Seaweed Mineral Food

a.m.	1 cup ground up turkey necks or backs.
p.m.	5 oz. beef; 3 oz. organ meats (calves heart, chicken giblets/liver); 1 raw organic egg and shell; 1/8 tsp. fresh, crushed garlic; 1 tbsp. cilantro/butternut squash; Vit. E, C, NR Seaweed Mineral Food; ½ tsp. flaxseed oil

a.m.	a.m. 1 lambshank bone
p.m.	½ cup ground chicken backs or necks or wings; 1 heaping tablespoon of veggies.

a.m.	1 cup homemade beef, chicken or turkey broth
p.m.	Coming out of the fast, 1 cup yogurt; 1 tablespoon of ground carrots and parsley; Prozyme®. A digestive enzyme, Prozyme® is always added to any foods that are not raw because natural enzymes are destroyed in any food that is processed or cooked.