I love this thread.

I've got two dogs at home - Bobby, a 17kg spitz mix (considered mongrel) and Brandy, an 8kg shih tzu. Both are fed a diet of high quality kibble (Evo) and HCF.

Two days ago, I noticed Brandy scooting on her rear end. Immediately I suspected something was wrong with her anal glands and sent her to the vet. It turned out that her left anal gland was badly impacted. According to the vet, Brandy was probably raised on a diet of pure kibble since she was a puppy and she didn't drink enough water. So over a period of time, her digestive tract could not handle her hard poo and so it affected her anal glands. Note that I have no idea about Brandy's past because she's runaway/stray which we recently adopted. The vet told me to switch Brandy from kibble to wet dog food.

Now, I do not want to raise my dog on canned food. IMHO, if dry kibble is bad enough, imagine the amount of preservatives needed to keep wet food fresh. Probably more than dry food.

I'm thinking of switching my dog to a prey model diet which is similar to BARF, but minus the fruits and veges. According to information which I gathered from the Net, the prey model is based around providing nutrition through raw meaty bones, offal etc alone because dogs generally cannot digest vegetables and fruits unless mashed into pulp.

I got most of my info from here:

http://www.rawfed.com/

http://www.rawfeddogs.net/

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...13150731AA04RUc

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Added on January 14, 2009, 3:07 pmI'm not against BARF, just that I fear I do not have the time to pulp fruits and veges. Still I think that any form of raw feeding, be it BARF or prey model will always be more superior to feeding processed food.