Customer Reviews

Grow Your Pups with Bones: The BARF Program For breeding Healthy Dogs And Eliminating Skeletal Disease

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Billinghursts STYLE of writing is fun and exciting, but the book itself is long and tiresome, and very, very repetitive. There are some big flaws in this book as well, for starters it suggests feeding grapes or saltanas to dogs, which are TOXIC to dogs! Also, it really pushes on feeding flax oil, when fish oil is clearly a better option for dogs.

I bought this book after buying "Give Your Dog A Bone" for my sister, who read it and passed it on. It had quite a bit of interesting information between the covers, however, this book is plain and simple boring in comparison. I expected a lot more, it spends 405 pages discussing what could be said in about 20, and most of it isn't relevant to the average person bringing up a pup.

There is a fair bit of interesting information in this book, but the majority of it is simply not worth reading, and not once does he back up his claims with solid, scientific studies.

I would suggest, if you can, borrow a copy, flip though and perhaps read the first chapter, then give it back. If you must buy a book, go with his first book, Give Your Dog a Bone, or even The Barf Diet (everything in the other two books only without the extra rubbish!). Also, there is a LOT of information on the web, do the research and draw your own conclusions.

Billinghurst works hard to help people understand the nutritional needs of dogs in the wild. I have been following his nutrition for my Shiba Inu pups since they came to me, and I can attest to the following:

- glossy, shiny coats with no skin conditions to speak of
- healthy teeth
- outstanding energy
- right weight, no obesity/fattiness to my dogs
- sweet breath even after they're a year old
- smell great, very few baths needed
- no impacted teeth - all came loose naturally
- love chilling out with their bones
- healthy, hard stools (no anal gland draining needed, ever)
- no waste of meat scraps/veggies around the house (we use after juicing pulp and mix it in)

If people ate as well as my dogs do (thanks to Billinghurst) I know that we would have a healthier country!!! While it may seem like a little more work, the health and well being of my babies makes it well worth the effort. His style is enthusiastic and he really drives all of his points home.

Okay, I know Billinghurst is considered the raw feeding guru, but this book is seriously over-long and over-done. So many people want to make raw feeding seem difficult and complex, but truly, it isn't! Books like this that are overblown only feed that myth. This book is twice as long as it needs to be because the author repeats himself over and over, that is, when he's not dispensing some truly terrible (and dangerous) advice (grapes? really??).

A much, much better book in my opinion is Raw Dog Food by Carina Beth MacDonald. Her book is concise, witty and incredibly helpful to the raw diet beginner. She gives you everything you need to know to begin and maintain your dog on a healthy raw diet.

Here's the thing to always remember about raw feeding and the one thing that I believe is the biggest stumbling block to many a raw food feeding wanna-be's: YOU don't get every single vitamin and mineral every single day, in every single meal. Your dog doesn't need this either. So relax. Some days he'll get more meat, some days more bones, other days a bit more veggies, or types of veggies, etc. You just want to be able to say at the end of the week, that overall, he got a good variety and it all balanced out over the week. See? Not so bad when you understand it this way. :-)

excellent material I can't leave without it, my dogs are healthier than ever I recommend it 100%, used book in excellent conditions, love it