yes, Yes, YES!!!!!  A paleo diet is every bit as important for our
furry friends is it is for us!!!

> I, myself, only eat RAF - Raw
> Meat and Organs - and feed the same to my Cats and so we basically eat
> together and the same

The acronym for feeding Bones And Raw Foods to cats and dogs is
*BARF*!  I switched my black lab to a BARF diet in January.  The
basis for Eclipse's diet is in a book called "Give Your Dog A Bone"
written by Ian Billinghurst, an Australian veterinarian.  This book
is essentially a canine version of Neanderthin, and much of the
information seems commonplace to me now.  (so why didn't I change
Eclipse's diet sooner???)

Eclipse gets 1/3 cup of pulped veggies each morning, mixed with meat
and a combination of olive, borage, cod liver, and vitamin E oils.
(Cats would get a smaller proportion of veggies than would a dog.)
The rest of her diet consists of raw meaty bones.  She gets chicken
wings, backs, and necks; turkey backs and necks; pork neck bones,
lamb shanks, beef knuckles and feet, chicken feet...a good variety
of meaty bones.  Since I have an older dog, I am concerned about
feeding easily digestible bones (she can't handle turkey wings or
beef ribs yet, they upset her system).  As long as the bones are fed
RAW, they will not splinter and cause problems.  When you cook a
bone, it becomes brittle and can easily splinter.  Dogs' systems are
naturally designed to digest bones, and even when my pooch inhales
her chicken wings, no bones come out the other end.  Eclipse also
gets organ meat for dinner once a week or mixed in with her veggies
for a couple days.  Think of it as a natural multivitamin!

Her veggies are run thru a blender or juicer (with the pulp and juice
recombined) because a dog has a short intestinal length (shorter than
humans) and cannot digest veggies completely, just like humans cannot
digest grains.  In nature, a main source of vegetable matter for
canines and felines is the stomach contents of prey animals, who do
the breaking down of the cell walls *for* the dogs and cats.
Pulverizing the veggies simulates nature.

>  I think if you really love your Pets and consider them Fellow
> Beings and Members of the Family, I think that you should buy them the
> best too just like you do for yourself.  Remember just by being here on
> this List you're not the Average Person when it comes to your Diet so I
> would hope you would show the same concern for your Pets' Diet as you
> seem to show your own and, like I already said, give them the best too.

I have learned much about feeding animals this way from the Wellpet
mailing list.  Unfortunately, those folks don't seem interested in
making the connection between their pets' diets and their own.  But
that's okay.  I'm just out to be the healthiest person I can be, not
convert everyone I meet.  So I can keep pet diet issues on my pet
lists, and my own diet issues onhuman lists.

>  The one thing I haven't added to their Diet yet is ground Bone
> Meal because I want to find what Balance is good for them and I need to
> get something to grind the bones.

Let your dog do the grinding!  Just feed raw meaty bones to your
dog, and the balance will be automatic.  Don't feed commercially
produced bone meal to your animals.  It is a cooked (steamed)
product that is often made from the bones of old and/or diseased
animals.

Lisa in Alaska