Volhard "Natural Diet"

[TheCasa]

It's so interesting once you start looking into raw and homemade diets for your dogs isn't it?

Has anyone had any experience with Wendy Volhard's "Natural Diet" plan? I have some friends that show Bull Terriers for conformance and swear by the diet after seeing one of their dogs bounce back from the brink of death when switched to this diet.

I have a few concerns with it myself, first being the abundance of grain in the "breakfast" meals as well as cottage cheese. I know that many raw purists feed only meat without any veggies or grains and I'm ok with that. I tend to feed Guinness carrots, apples, etc and he loves them, so I plan to continue offering them to him in small amounts. When it comes to grains however, his first allergy test came back with a minor allergy to wheat and a minor, although higher than wheat, allergy to rice, both of which are in her diet. I should be getting the results back of the extended panel which includes oat, which is a big time ingredient in that breakfast meal.

If the raw diet is supposed to take a dog back to his natural state of feeding, where would a dog naturally receive his kelp or cod liver oil? It just seems a bit complex of a diet, not that that's a bad thing.

 

[dogsarebetter]

I used it with my sheltie. I only stopped because I could not keep weight on him. I hated giving my dog so many suppliments.

 

[TheCasa]

that's my other issue. I would think that the nutrients they need would come from the variety of foods that we feed. I think the necessity for suplementation in her diet may be due to it being almost entirely beef based unless a dog is sick? ie, feeding a variety of meats and a few veggies would provide the nutrients needed.

Do you feed still raw Rabbit?

 

[dogsarebetter]

nope. I cant keep weight on Ruckus feeding the natural diet, or just a raw diet. so I took him off of it.

now i just started feeding Taste of the Wild.

 

[chanda]

i havent tried it... but some friends told me that's its good...