At Crestwood Mastiffs we feed our kids a natural diet known as "BARF."  BARF is an acronym for either "biologically appropriate raw food" or "bones and raw food." This type of diet is based on the writings of Dr. Ian Billinghurst (an Australian veterinarian) in his books, Give Your Dog a Bone, and Grow Your Pups With Bones, and more recently, THE BARF DIET: Raw Feeding Using
Evolutionary Principles.

We highly recommend this method of feeding as it has contributed greatly to the quality and length life for many dogs.

The following sections are not yet available. For information on BARF, visit the Gold Coast section on Raw Diet. Links are below the picture.

This is truly Mother Nature at work. Solitaire is a 4-1/2 week old puppy at Gold Coast Mastiffs working on a whole beef heart that her dam, Lorena, brought to her after finishing her own meal. No, she didn't finish, but spent about thirty minutes on it before falling asleep.

This puppy started working on pieces of "raw meaty bones" at the tender age of 20 days, provided by Mom. Lorena was also weaned on the BARF diet and her dam, Tegwen, began eating a BARF diet at the age of four. See Gold Coast Mastiffs raw diet page for more information while we work on our own page.