INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH

     Why feed your pets a raw diet? Especially in a breed like Irish Water Spaniels where we have a VERY small gene pool, it is extremely important to try to keep these dogs as healthy as possible. Back in the mid-nineteenth century, Justin McCarthy's dog Boatswain, who is considered to be the "father" of the breed, is said to have lived to the ripe old age of eighteen when McCarthy put him down (not due to the dog's ill health). Such longevity is unfortunately unheard of today. With that in mind, many of today's IWS breeders have been reexamining the issues of health & diet & have concluded that feeding a biologically appropriate raw food diet (BARF), & giving fewer or no inoculations (more later on this), is in the best interests of our dogs.

     Glowing health is an extremely important virtue that we seek for our companion animals & ourselves. Unfortunately, it's also something that we seem to see less & less in this day of "modern miracles." Why? The obvious answers, or the answers that we've accepted as obvious, are the stresses & pollution of life in the early twenty-first century. We hear of genetically modified crops, & too often live on diets of fast foods. We see overcrowding, & the proliferation of diseases like AIDS, autism & cancer. We seem to have become a race of workaholics who never seem to stop. Why & what to do?

     The answers are simple, basic, & sometimes a bit intimidating. For a start, we know that eating a diet of McDonalds's day-in, day-out isn't healthy. It's mostly artificial, overcooked, loaded with fats & sugars, greasy, & lacking in usable protein or nutrition. It's kind of like eating processed, perfumed cardboard. Why then do we assume that feeding our pets extruded heat-processed kibble would be any healthier? The answer is that most kibble isn't very healthy. You may ask about all the print & TV ads promoting these foods. The answer is that we've been sold a very expensive bill of goods by the multimillion dollar pet food industry & by a bunch of veterinarians who've never even studied nutrition.

     Go to a zoo at feeding time. I promise that you won't see the lions fed Lion Chow! It will be fresh, raw meat on the bone - a diet that is appropriate for their species! When was the last time that you heard of a wild animal like a coyote walking around with a little hibachi on its back? They eat critters raw just the way that Mother Nature intended them to. Why should we expect that anything less is natural or appropriate for our pets?

     Like their wild brethren, dogs & cats have the dentition (tooth) & jaw structure that defines them as primarily carnivores - meat-eaters. Sure they eat some grasses, veggies & fruits, but what they mostly crave is meat. Yes, they can sort of digest the heated-processed foods day-in, day-out but at what price to their health?

     Western man has been feeding this type of processed, grain-based diet to companion animals for less than 100 years - far less than that in many countries. Even then, that processed, supposedly complete, diet used to be supplemented with fresh meats, veggies, fruits & table-scraps. Feeding tests conducted as far back as the 1930s (Pottenger et al) show the negative effects of feeding a processed diet. Rather than seeing improved longevity, we unfortunately see the opposite, not to mention all the chronic problems that never existed before.

     Yes, switching to & feeding your dog/pup a raw diet can seem a bit intimidating & overwhelming at first, but it really isn't. This is just feeding a dog, not rocket science. The plan is to feed a varied diet -- a diet that is balanced over time, not in each individual meal. For those times when there just isn't any time, there are some acceptable premixed frozen raw diets available commercially. But -- doing it yourself provides the best control & the healthiest options for you & your dog. This is extremely important for IWSs, as dietary allergies are not unheard of.