Discovering BARF

At that time, I believed the years studying Agricultural Science and teaching had been an enormous waste. In hindsight, the knowledge gained in that first degree, the teaching experience and the studies in education all helped shape my unique approach to things veterinary, particularly regarding nutrition and disease. That early education fostered an understanding of the fundamental role that sound nutrition - translated today as evolutionary nutrition - plays in health. This concept dominates my writing, lecturing and research as well as my day-to-day veterinary practice.

Since 1976, I have worked full time as a veterinary surgeon. Although city born, my reason for becoming a vet was to work with cattle and horses. However, fate, God or the universe had other plans. Shortly after graduating, I abandoned my dream of being a large animal practitioner. Family responsibilities pushed me to the Southern suburbs of Sydney where I established a small animal practice. Since that time, events have kept me treating mostly cats and dogs and I must admit, a surprising number of horses. Right now, I am in general veterinary practice in Bathurst, New South Wales Australia. I still treat mostly cats and dogs, some horses and the occasional bovine and budgie.

After being in practice for about six years, I decided to heed the advice of my veterinary training and feed my own pets, as I was advising my clients at the time, a scientifically formulated complete and balanced commercial product. I wanted to make sure my dogs stayed in the best of health. This was mainly because as a family, we had started to breed and show dogs. I knew they had to have the very best. I was determined that from now on, I would do things properly.

My veterinary training had taught me that a diet based on raw meaty bones and household scraps was a very poor way to feed pet cats and dogs. We had been taught that commercial pet food was the ultimate in pet nutrition. I selected the very best brands of commercial pet food, and I looked forward to fantastic results. How wrong you can be!

Over the next four to six months, my own animals - who were supremely healthy - began for the first time ever to develop the same range of problems that my clients' pets were suffering. However, the sad truth is, I failed to notice. It was only in retrospect that I put this picture together. It took two years of watching my pets' health deteriorate before I realized something was wrong. And that realization did not hit me until AFTER I stopped feeding commercial pet food and witnessed an incredible transformation.

At that time (1984), I had begun to study acupuncture and was being introduced to a broad range of complementary healing practices including whole food nutrition. This led me to read a book on pet nutrition by Juliette de Bairacli Levy. Her book was an inspiration. I did not agree with everything she had to say, but her words made me realise that my old method of feeding, using bones and food scraps was probably much closer to an ideal diet for pets than the approved veterinary method of relying on commercial pet food. A glut of lamb on the market at that time made it easy for me to make the switch. For the next few years, my pets were fed mainly lamb - together with general household food scraps. However, we did not have to wait years to see results. The change in our pets was immediate and dramatic. We were amazed. Like most people experiencing this incredible improvement in health, we had not realized the extent to which our pets' health had deteriorated on commercial pet food. And there was another pleasant surprise. Apart from being simple and easy, we discovered this method of feeding was also very cheap compared to commercial products.

By now, it had become clear to me that commercial pet foods, not only did not promote good health, they produced positively bad health. This dismal failure of commercial pet foods to keep my pets healthy forced me to read what ever I could find on the topic of nutrition. I needed to understand nutrition both at a fundamental level and also at a very practical level. I was also looking for answers to the question - "Why does commercially produced pet food cause health problems?" I eagerly devoured books by Pat Lazarus, Dr's Pitcairn and Belfield together with numerous others on human nutrition. Eventually I realized a very simple truth. Raw meaty bones and vegetable scraps - which had never produced the ill health I had seen in my pets fed commercial food - were very close to the evolutionary diet of cats and dogs. No cooking or processing to remove the "unwanted" or "unnecessary" bits. No adulteration with chemicals. No massive amounts of cooked grains. The evolutionary approach to nutrition was obvious and common sense. It was also good science.

Clearly, small animal nutrition was one area where my veterinary training had let me down. I had to re-think the way I answered the question, "What should we feed our cat/dog?" This is the most common question vets are asked.