Dog Health Questions With a Common Answer

As a homeopath, I understand what we call ‘maintaining causes’ of disease. In other words health problems can not only be caused by an event such as an accident or be hereditary in origin, but it can also be caused by something you’re doing every day.

Let me give you some examples. If you smoke regularly, it’s widely known that you’ll probably eventually get lung problems. If you’ve had a job which entails handling and cutting asbestos, you’ll probably have lung problems later on. If you regularly drink a lot of alcohol, you know your liver will eventually be affected.

Diet plays a crucial part in health. Most people realise that they need to look to healthy food to keep them in the peak of condition.

You are what you eat.

It’s not the only factor which can contribute to ill health, but by virtue of its daily consumption, food plays an enormous role in your overall health.

And it’s no less true for dogs.

What you feed your dog will reflect how healthy he is and how healthy he remains.

I have found, in my practise, that an enormous number of common dog health questions can be answered, simply by taking the dog off commercial dog food.

When I was feeding my pets commercial pet food, many years ago, I read of a remarkable life changing experience for a young dog.

She was only about three years old, but had developed such severe arthritis, that the vet recommended euthanasia.

The dog’s people were not happy with this recommendation and decided to look elsewhere. They searched extensively and eventually come across the notion that the food they were feeding her could be the problem.

So they stopped feeding her commercial pet food.

One day, a friend dropped by. One who knew the dog and the prognosis. As he crossed the yard to the house, he noticed an agile dog playing and frolicking about, as only young dogs can.

Assuming the worse, he started to give his condolences.

He was gobsmacked when he was told that this was the very same dog.

That’s when I decided to stop feeding my pets commercial pet food.

It really doesn’t matter what dog health questions you have. It could be anything. The first thing you really need to try is stopping the commercial dog food.

If you’re a bit unsure, try it for a month. After an initial worsening of symptoms (signally a clearing), especially in older dogs, your dog will start to bloom.

What have you got to lose?

It’s really pointless going for a medication or other form of treatment if the food your dog is given is the problem.

So lets have a look at some common dog health questions, which may all be addressed by stopping the commercial pet food.

My dog

• has a terrible skin or an itchy skin
• has arthritis
• is overweight
• has heart problems
• has spinal myelopathy
• is infertile
• regularly gives birth to dead puppies, or the puppies die soon after birth
• has kidney stones
• has hip dysplasia
• has tumours
• has cystitis

Holistic veterinarians has all been able to address the above dog health questions with a change of diet off commercial pet food.

Alternative Medicine For Dogs - Using Homeopathy at Home

Alternative medicine is enjoying a boom as people start to take control of their own lives. As an alternative medical practitioner, a homeopath, I am very excited about this. When people take control of their own lives, there is no limit to what becomes possible. The limitations occur when you hand over that control to others. No one else but you, has your own best interests so much to heart.

Once you start taking control of your own life, you start to question what’s best for your family, including your pets.

You might now be asking yourself what could be the best alternative medicine for dogs.

There are many different alternative medicine modalities about and you need to do a bit of research to decide what is most appropriate. There’s homeopathy, reiki, naturopathy, Chinese medicine, osteopathy, chiropractic, flower essences, herbs, acupuncture or pressure, massage, Bowen therapy, to mention just a few. Many of these modalities will only be able to work in a limited way. For instance (and I’m no masseuse, so could be wrong), massage will probably only be good for strained muscles. And, although some can act on a deep level, they can be slow to show results, such as flower essences.

And alternative medicine for dogs, really starts with their diet. If you’re feeding your dog an unhealthy diet, it doesn’t really matter what modality of health care you use - it’s not going to bear fruit. “You are what you eat.”

Commercial dog food have few regulations and even fewer which are enforced. From the poor quality ‘meat’ by-products, to the nutritionless filler, to the dangerous preservatives, your dog is slowly being poisoned. Label claims of ‘preservative free’ or ‘natural’ are largely meaningless.

Once you start feeding your dog a wholesome and REALLY natural food, you will see huge improvements in health. Sometimes, that’s all you need.

But sometimes, you need to do more. Then you need to scour what’s available in alternative medicine for dogs.

As a homeopath, you could say I’m biased (I agree!), but out of them all, the alternative medicine for dogs I consider has the greatest breadth and depth of real healing, is homeopathy.

Homeopathy has the potential to deal with ailments as diverse as ligament damage, to heart disease, from an embedded grass seed to depression. The only areas where I consider medical services are required is the setting of a broken bone and the stitching up of extensive wounds.

I don’t know of any other alternative medicine for dogs, where all this is possible. And homeopathy addresses the cause, rather than the effect.

Lets look at that for a minute. Imagine a woman has just given birth, and has since developed haemorrhoids, or piles. Now there is a common homeopathic remedy for piles called Hamamelis. And this may well help. But it’s unlikely to cure. So you might have to keep taking it for a long time.

There’s another common homeopathic remedy called Pulsatilla. And this helps with many ailments that develop from childbirth, including piles. Taking Pulsatilla is more likely to cure them for good.

So if you can treat the cause, expect outstanding results. A permanent cure is the aim.

One of the things I love about treating animals is their desire to help in the choosing of the right remedy. Most dogs are pretty outgoing and will make it very clear when you’ve selected the right remedy - they’ll lick the bottle, their lips or your hand, they’ll sit expectantly and wag their tail, they’ll look interested and attentive.

If, on the other hand, you selected the wrong remedy, they’ll turn their head away, walk off, perhaps even snarl at you if you persist.

To me, their body language is very clear. You really don’t need to be an animal communicator.

Once you have gained a bit of an understanding of what’s available, choosing an holistic vet, for the more difficult ailments, who practices alternative medicine for dogs becomes easier, and you become involved with your dog’s treatment.

I am passionate about your right of freedom to choose. But to choose, you have to know something about the subjects you want to choose between. So you need to listen to both, or all, sides of every aspect of every junction in your life that offers you that choice. Alternative medicine for dogs gives you plenty of choice!

Dog Vomiting and the Role Commercial Pet Food Plays

Someone says ‘dog food’ and the image of dry kibble pops into your head. As a society, for over fifty years, commercially manufactured bagged kibble and canned ‘wet’ food has been synonymous with those simple words.

Although the first processed dog ‘biscuit’ was first invented by James Spratt of Cincinnati, Ohio in 1860, it was World War II that spurred commercial manufacturers to first start pushing the ease of kibble and canned food onto the already stretched family unit. It was convenient, affordable and no one considered the quality of the food or the ingredients that went into this new time saver because it had to be better then the table scraps that domestic animals enjoyed at the time, right?

Wrong!

In fact, early commercial dog food manufacturers agreed that feeding dogs meat, vegetables and some grains was better for the dogs than the processed kibble they were making from meat scraps, meat- by-products, and factory waste, such as saw dust and grain husk. Convenient? Absolutely! Cheap - not in the long run. Healthy? You can excuse the early adopters but, generations later, dog diseases are near epidemic levels. In spite of the evidence that something is wrong, millions of people continue to give their dogs manufactured dog food.

For everyone involved, the commercial pet food industry was a win-win operation! Farmers sold off both grain and vegetable crops that were unfit for human consumption and slaughterhouses had a market for body parts they would normally have to pay to have taken to the dump. The manufacturers quickly worked out how best to market their products to unwary pet owners and Purina even developed a way to expand or ‘fluff up’ the kibble before drying called extrusion so consumers felt they were getting more for their money.

In 1964, without scientific basis, the Pet Food Institute began their massive media campaign against table scraps. Veterinarians throughout the world jumped on the bandwagon and by the early 1960’s, few people were feeding their four-legged family members anything but this wondrous, convenient and readily available food.

Commercial Dog Food: Buyer Beware
Forty years after the campaign to remove table scraps from your pet’s diet, pet stores, some breeders, and most veterinarians (who peddle the AVMA approved brand- as supposedly being “better”), continue to extol the virtues of manufactured dog foods in spite of the evidence. People who think outside the box are often demonized for feeding their dogs a more natural diet.

Nothing is ever that black or white.

In a society that lives on fast food and prepackaged meals, it’s no wonder their cats and dogs are being fed the equivalent. Everything must be fast, convenient and palatable, even if what makes the food ‘easy’ and ‘tasty’ is also slowly killing us. If this wasn’t bad enough, starting in the late1990s recycled restaurant grease (reused for days at carcinogenic temperatures) is sprayed on kibble! Why? Just to give this otherwise tasteless “dog food” some flavor!

The incidence of cancer, heart conditions and strokes are all steadily rising. Diet related illnesses, such as diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, colitis, Crohn’s disease and obesity are at the minimum common place, and some are epidemic.

Why should our animals be any different? If we cannot feed ourselves properly, what makes you think their pets are being fed responsibly?

Processed foods are slowly killing North Americans and their pets. Proof of this fact is the preponderance of people (and their pets) under medical care and medication. Some people might argue that humans and animals are living longer, but what about quality of life? People and their dogs are not only on more meds than ever, millions are on multiple meds!

Meds are akin to magic; they do not heal, they simply make the symptoms disappear from view by overriding your pets’ immune defense systems. Taken long enough, your pets’ immune defense systems eventually shut down, relegating the user to a lifetime of meds, and a lower quality of life.

Pet food manufacturers wrote the book on how to manipulate nutritional content; lists of ingredients and marketing to best highlight the ‘good’ while entirely avoiding the ‘bad’. Do you really expect a forty-pound bag of dog food that costs $12.98 to have any nutritional value? Consider this: Forty-pounds of human-grade corn meal (commonly used empty calorie filler linked to diabetes) used in commercial pet foods, costs nearly $120!

Can you imagine what is in your dog’s food if the human-grade ‘filler’ costs nearly ten times that of the entire bag of food? You do not want to know.

Commercial Dog Food and Vomiting in Dogs
Commercial dog food is the equivalent of McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s Popeye’s, Churches… but for dogs. Eye catching packaging, combined with multi-billion dollar Madison Avenue advertising specifically designed to appeal to the masses, does not change the fact that manufactured dog food should only be used during emergencies.

Have you ever seen Lemmings following each other off a cliff? None ask “Why?” they just follow the others! And the “others” have been bombarded with slick advertising campaigns for over 50 years! Just because your mother and her mother and her mother before her bought manufactured pet food doesn’t mean it was ever the right choice.

The cost to your dog’s overall health and well-being is not just expensive, it is heart wrenching. Today, it is all too common to find “older dogs” (dogs over 10 years of age) in poor health and on multiple meds, shells of their former selves.

The documentary ‘Super Size Me’ is based on what happens to the human body when eating nothing but McDonalds 24/7 for thirty days. Independent filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock, was curious to know whether or not a diet based solely on fast- food is bad for you. He put himself on the McDonalds 24/7 diet. Doctors specializing in internal medicine carefully monitored him. He gained over 24 pounds in the thirty-day span – nearly an extra pound a day! He also suffered from mood swings, depression, lethargy, sexual dysfunction and potentially irreversible liver damage. He vomited on only the second day of this experiment and by the third week, was suffering from heart palpitations! The decline in his health was so rapid, that his doctors urged him to end the experiment after just two weeks.

How can this be? If you believe that the fast-food industry cares about your health, you are sadly mistaken! They are in the business of making money for their stockholders. It is your responsibility to learn what is healthy and what is not. Fast foods should only be eaten occasionally, if at all.

A steady diet of poorly balanced and over processed diets leads to an unhealthy digestive system, and is the leading cause of chronic illnesses and disease. ‘Super Size Me’ is proof of it in the human world; a day at the vet hospital proves it in the animal world. If you have wondered why obesity, diabetes and cancer are on the rise in dogs, you only need to look so far as the bag of dog food in the pantry.

The Royal Society of Medicine Great Britain states “Fully 90% of all chronic disease is caused by an unhealthy digestive system”. This is proof positive that we are what we eat. Your dog is at your mercy as to what choices you make for them.

You can read more of Robert Hart's pet health articles at www.vitalityscience.com

What is An All Natural Dog Food?

What’s on your mind when you consider an all natural dog food? Could it be a commercial dog food which has the word ‘natural’ on the packet? Could it be you think of cooking your own dog food from scratch? Do you consider table scraps to be the ideal diet?

Wrong! None of the above will address your dog’s health, Why not?

Well, the commercial dog food starts off with very low grade meat, mostly meat by-products (the better quality going for the higher priced human food), high fat and sometimes euthanased animals, which contain the chemical sodium pentobarbital. Then, to bulk out the already cheap ‘meat’, a non-nutritional filler is added. That can be sugar, as there’s a world glut of it at the moment, or melamine if you live in China.

Then, to keep the product indefinitely at room temperature a preservative is added.

When you see a packet of dried dog food in the shop, with the slogan ‘preservative free’ ask yourself this question - how can dried ‘meat’ be kept indefinitely at room temperature without preservatives? Do you think you wouldn’t have heard of a new way to do this, if there was?

So either there is no ‘meat’ or there is preservative present. Trouble is, the preservatives used are very strong, cause huge health problems and aren’t allowed in human food.

So commercial dog food can be crossed off as an all natural dog food!.

I see quite a lot of ‘dog experts’ on the internet advocating you cook your own dog food. Whilst that is hugely better than commercial pet food, it’s still missing the nutrients that are lost in cooking. Typically these are vitamins and enzymes, both essential for a healthy dog. But other nutrients are altered by cooking. Fat changes during the cooking process from a beneficial food to a harmful one.

So you can cross though this one too, as an all natural dog food.

What about table scraps? That depends so much on the table scraps. If the human food is a good, natural one of lots of raw fruit and veg, with lightly cooked meat, then these table scraps have the potential of being the best dog food out of all three options, as long as there is enough left over to satisfy your dog’s nutritional needs.

If, however, your diet is typically fast food with a lot of processed food, then these table scraps will be little better than the commercial dog food.

Yet another cross through.

There is only one all natural dog food and that’s the one dogs evolved on. Nothing that mankind has done has improved one iota on that. And considerable decline has occurred.

Dogs have evolved over millions of years on an all natural dog food and it keeps them happy and healthy.

Once you get to grips with the idea of how dogs evolved, duplicating that diet within the constraints of what is available and the limits on your time, is not that difficult. However, there are a few important things you need to know such as:

• what food should not be given more than once a week
• should bones be given
• what carbohydrates are the best ones and how much
• are there any fruit or vegetables that shouldn’t be given
• what amino acid is essential to a dog’s healthy skin
• should you supplement the diet
• how do you convert the diet of an elderly or sick dog safely

When you change the diet of your dog from a commercial pet food to an all natural dog food, there may initially be a de-toxing period. This is normal and natural, but can seem a bit scary to you if you don’t understand why it’s happening and the symptoms. It should be of short duration, depending on your dog’s age and level of health.

Dogs digestion is robust. They have evolved on eating raw meat and carrion. They can’t cope with preservatives, fillers, high fat or low grade protein, none of which occurs (at least in high proportions) in nature.

Once you have your dog on an all natural dog food, you’ll find fewer and fewer health problems. I’m sure you’d be as happy as anyone, to cut your dog’s professional health fees.

What is the Best Dog Food?

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind. Without question, the best dog food is one which is based on a wild dog’s diet. Dogs have evolved on this. It’s raw meat. There are no cookers in nature.

People are reluctant to believe this for a variety of reasons. So lets look at some of them, and dispel your fears.

Firstly, you may be worried about the presence os parasites and worms in raw meat. It’s been drummed into you that meat needs to be cooked to kill them off.

I can assure you, that dogs digestion is robust. They have no trouble with worms and parasites in raw meat. They have evolved to deal with this. What they haven’t evolved to deal with is cooked food, high fat content, preservatives, pathogens in cooked food, poor quality filler and the low grade food which passes for dog food.

Secondly, you may be concerned about bones perforating an internal organ.

Dogs evolved by crunching up on raw bones. They have absolutely no problem with raw bones, as long as they are raw and they gnaw them. If you have more than one dog and they gobble the bone down to ensure the other doesn’t get it, they may suffer some discomfort while the bone passes through their digestive system, but it won’t do more than cause them discomfort. So ensure your dog gnaws the bone in peace.

The other problem is with cooked bones. These can perforate your dog’s internal organs. Cooked bones are a definite no-no when working out the ingredients for the best dog food.

Thirdly, you may think feeding your dog a raw food diet is expensive. After all, the connotation ‘best dog food’ looks expensive.

It depends on what you take into consideration. If you are feeding your dog the cheapest brand of dog food from the supermarket, and don’t have any ailments treated, then you may be right. If you do, I doubt you’re reading this. So lets suppose you feed your dog a medium priced commercial dog food and do use the services of a veterinarian or other health professional, for ailments your dog may suffer.

Raw dog food is nutrient dense. Commercial dog food is nutrient poor. So you need to feed much more commercial dog food to come anywhere near (and it never comes close) to providing the decent diet that raw meat does. Which means you need much less volume of raw food compared with commercial dog food.

Then, if you include the fees you spend on health care, there’s no comparison. Commercial pet food keeps veterinarians wealthy. They hardly see the healthy dogs fed on raw meat, nature’s best dog food.

Fourthly, you may think that the purchase and preparation of the best dog food there is, is too much like hard work. You think it may be too big a hassle.

I’ve taken the hassle out of it, by telling you how to do it without making the mistakes I did.

Fifthly, you may think you dog doesn’t like raw food.

Have you ever tried? With decent food, I mean? I can assure you, there is no dog alive who doesn’t recognise the raw food as the best dog food. If you’re overfeeding your dog, he may refuse it initially. And if you leave food out all day, that’s likely. Keep in mind too, many commercial dog food manufacturers add appetite stimulants to the food. This may cause a short term problem, while he adapts.

Lastly, you may be concerned that you don’t know enough to be able to get the nutritional needs of your dog correct. After all, that’s what's pushed by veterinarians and commercial dog food manufacturers - you don’t know enough. Just because the packet tells you this brand is ‘recommended by top vets’ or that brand is ‘scientific’, doesn’t mean they are selling the best dog food. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I can tell you from experience, it’s not as difficult as they make out. You do need to know some important facts, but once you’ve opened your mind to allowing your own inner wisdom to emerge, and by following certain natural laws, you’ll have no problem working it out.

If everyone started feeding their dog raw meat, many, many veterinarians would go out of business.

What are you waiting for?

Feeding This Diabetic Dog Food Could Cure Your Dog’s Diabetes

Diabetes is no fun for humans or animals, with the desire for sweet things, the copious urine output and the huge thirst, to mention just a few of the common symptoms.

And it’s on the increase in humans as well as dogs and cats. Why should this be happening now?

Leaving the human cause aside for the purposes of this article, lets look at a typical diet for dogs in the western world, those who are not fed a quality diabetic dog food, that is.

Most people feed their dog a commercial brand of pet food. You’re lured by the manufacturers claims, which are mostly untrue, and by smiling vets and dog breeders on the colourful packets.

Health depends hugely on diet. Arguably, it could be considered the major cause of ill health in all animals, you included.

I want you to imagine, for a moment, that you are the owner of a dog food manufacturing business. You have to pay

• rent on the premises
• services to the premises - electricity, telephone
• equipment purchase and upkeep
• wages for your workers, including tax, health, sick and holiday pay
• packaging for the end product
• storage for the end product
• advertising and marketing the end product

All this costs money. And you haven’t even bought in the raw ingredients, the food, yet.

Would you be a bit tempted to buy in low quality, low cost raw ingredients? After all, with the price of meat going up all the time, you have to consider whether your potential customers would pay the higher price your product would be? There’s plenty of competition about and customers are generally lured by low prices.

And they probably say - it’s only for dogs.

(I don’t know about you, but my dogs aren’t ‘only’.)

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want you to sympathise with the commercial pet food manufacturers. But if you can understand where they’re coming from, you’ll understand why it would be a good idea to make your own diabetic dog food.

I’m not suggesting all commercial pet food manufacturers are the same. But they do all face the same problems.

So not only is the meat low quality, it’s also bulked out with a filler.

Fillers can be anything from sawdust, to melamine (remember Chinese pet food?), to a market glut of any carbohydrate.

For the past few decades, the production of sugar has soared with its huge demand. This has resulted in a world glut.

Now, whenever there’s a world glut, the price drops. So buying sugar for bulking out commercial pet food is cheap.

I’m sure you’ve now made the connection between your dog getting diabetes and feeding him a commercial pet food. After all, no dog evolved eating processed sugar even in small amounts, let alone the huge amounts that go into pet food.

So the best diabetic dog food is to make it yourself. Then you know what goes into it.

I am offering you the chance to make a huge impact on the health of your beloved dog, simply by switching to the diabetic dog food I recommend.

It’s easy, it’s quick, you probably have most of the ingredients already. And it won’t cost you any more.

Are you ready to make a commitment, to feed your dog my diabetic dog food, to see his health change almost overnight?

Feeding a Raw Food Diet for Dogs While Juggling Work, Family and a Bit of You Time

Most people who have dogs in their lives, reach for the easy option of commercial dog food. There is little thought that goes into it.

Or perhaps they feel their veterinarian knows best and they buy what they offer.

Either way, the health of your dog will suffer.

But you know that already, or you wouldn’t be here.

As you’re considering feeding a raw food diet for dogs, you’ve come a long way and first up, need congratulating!

I find that the most difficult part of changing anything in my life, is the initial reluctance to change my mind. It’s no mean feat. But now that you’ve done that, the rest is easy.

Or comparatively!

A raw food diet for dogs is what they evolved. on. You can’t beat or better nature. Nature has had a long time perfecting herself. Puny man and his pseudo ideas are no match!

But I’m sure you still have questions. For a start, what should you feed your dog, and how much?

Are there any foods to avoid or limit?

Should bones be a part of the raw food diet for dogs?

And lastly, how can you fit it into your busy schedule of juggling work, family and hopefully a bit of time for you?

Well, lets answer the last question first. Buying raw food is no less difficult or time consuming than buying commercial dog food. Putting meat instead of a packet into your trolly takes the same energy!

The other questions on what and what not to feed dogs have already been discovered by others who have gone before you. So you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. It’s already been done. Just follow in someone else’s footsteps.

It does take a little bit of time to get used to what to feed and how much, but once you have the hang of it, it becomes second nature.

Feeding a raw food diet for dogs is really the start of other things too. Such as listening to your dog. He will tell you what he likes to eat and what he doesn’t. He’ll also tell you what medicines he’s happy to take and what he doesn’t like and would prefer you not to insist.

It’s a whole new world, and one I can’t recommend enough!