Back in 2005, after many years of living without any pets, a strong hankering began to arise in me for some companionship. Little did I know at the time that this journey would be such a profound catalyst for so much learning and discovery, particularly in the area of how to make the best homemade dog food and cat chow!
Right after I brought my two new kittens home I made a trip to the store to purchase some kitty litter, as well as a collection of various types of canned cat food, along with a bag of that ubiquitous and seemingly obligatory kibble. However, I soon began to embark upon what was to become a transformational journey into exploring and gaining as much knowledge as possible on how and why to feed my new furry friends a diet of raw food and care for them holistically.
Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I ditched the canned food and kibble, as I began to educate myself in earnest about why it was best not to feed my pets that stuff, and as I learned how and why to feed them a diet of real foods — the kind of deeply nourishing, wholesome, unprocessed raw foods their carnivorous bodies were inherently, naturally and originally designed to eat.
What I found as I progressed further and further along on this path of investigation was that the more information I uncovered, the more it was all starting to blow my mind!
Our Pets Are Victims of Denatured and Devitalized Foods Too!
I began to realize that for virtually my entire life I, along with the majority of people living in the western world, had been nothing less that powerfully duped, misled, deceived and misinformed – dare I say brainwashed – when it comes to how, why and what we should be feeding our cats and dogs, and how we should be caring for their health.
What became increasingly clear to me was a set of dynamics that uncannily parallels the way in which the “diet dictocrats” (as Sally Fallon Morell has so aptly dubbed the misleading and erroneous corporate, commercial, political, economic, and governmental influences that have dominated conventional dietary recommendations during the past decades) have conditioned virtually our entire society into wrongly believing that it’s all well and good for us to eat a diet loaded with nutrient sparse, poor quality junk food.
Similarly, over the course of time a number of mega-corporate pet food diet dictocrats have poured billions upon billions of dollars into creating and widely disseminating powerfully persuasive ad campaigns. These advertisements, with which most of us have grown up and are intimately familiar, are very cleverly designed to convince Joe Public that a steady diet of highly processed, low quality, industrially produced, commodity based, pet food “products” manufactured in factories are what we should be feeding our pets.
Chronic Degenerative Diseases Increasing in Pets
And the correlations between people and pets don’t end there. What is perhaps even more disturbingly evident is that many of the very same kinds of chronic degenerative diseases from which we modern humans are now suffering in ever increasing numbers, are also directly affecting our pets. Just as in people, there has been a growing, veritable pandemic among the domestic pet population of debilitating and even deadly afflictions such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, periodontal disease, digestive dysfunctions, arthritis, renal issues, allergies and skin rashes, as well as endocrinological and immunological malfunctions, among others.
Just as the average poor quality SAD (standard American diet) is clearly implicated in the dramatic decline our our collective human health, so too are the substandard junk pet food diets fed to our pet populations undoubtedly a significant factor in the drastic deterioration of their collective health.
The Pharmaceutical Paradigm Dominates Conventional Veterinary Medicine
To take the comparison even a step further, it’s revealing to note that just as there is a massive financial collusion between Big Pharma and the conventional allopathic medical industry, so is there a corresponding connection between Big Junk Pet Food (which by the way, is all tangled and connected up with some of the biggest, most influential manufacturers of industrialized, toxic junk food made for people) and the veterinary industry.
For instance, in the same way that drug companies contribute massive funding to medical schools, pet food companies too make large financial contributions to veterinary schools. In fact, pet food companies often heavily influence the curriculum content at vet schools, and their fallacious dogma is regularly promulgated through various courses on pet nutrition which they teach and/or otherwise oversee, direct or facilitate.
And just as large pharmaceutical firms woo medical students with perks and gifts, pet food companies also provide very similar incentives to vet students to encourage them to come into the fold. As a result of all this, just as most allopathic medical physicians become salespeople for the drug industry, so too do most all veterinarians end up being shills for the junk pet food industry.
Because we’ve been so powerfully and incessantly conditioned by the media not to think too much for ourselves, or to use the power of our minds and discernment to think critically, the vast majority of people simply accept the status quo as it stands. Most rarely ever wonder too terribly seriously about why things are the way they are, and fewer still are much interested at all in attempting to wake up to the larger, more sobering and revelatory truths of this world.
Well I for one have started to wonder mightily, and very much aspire to awaken! And I’ve found many kindred spirits among those who are knowledgeable about Weston A.Price’s teachings and who are active in the Foundation. Therefore like many of you, I feel called to help pull back the curtain, so to speak, so as to shed some light and allow us all to see with clearer eyes what’s really going on. Ironically, my explorations into learning about the health and diets of our beloved animal companions have been instrumental in compelling me on my ever-deepening and ongoing investigations into our own human diets and health.
Our furry friends are so innocent, trusting and so utterly reliant upon us to properly care for and feed them. They give of themselves to us so selflessly and generously, and surely they deserve all the best we can provide for them in return!
Sources and More Information
Choose Another Pet Food if Yours Has These Ingredients
I tried really hard to transition my
Cat to a Raw diet. Mixed it with wet food, etc and he just turned his nose up at it for weeks
He got scary thin. I now buying him a grain free beef liver canned cat food and mix it with raw yolks, occaisional puréed raw mackerel heads (boy do those stink,) or chicken offal. He refuses to go totally raw, though and he tends on the skinny side already so I don’t push it. I totally agree with this author, though and whenever my cat passes on I’ll probably start our next kitten on a home made diet right off the bat.
As a side note, he used to suffer from constant UTI’s and stomach problems. The UTI’s have totally disappeared without medication, an he rarely spits up anymore. His coat is very shiny and lush. People are surprised when I tell them he’s almost 10 years old. He looks like
a 3 or 4 year old cat. No weight problems either. I never have to feed him
On a schedule.
Ashley, So glad your diet change helped your kitty’s health problems. Did you ever try sprinkling kibble dust (crushed up kibble pieces) onto the raw food? That was the trick that worked for one of my very picky cats who wasn’t accepting of a food change. I read once that cats learn what is appropriate to eat in their first couple of months of life. So, it is a challenge to convince them otherwise when they are older. I know it took me a few months to get everyone used to it. And, still, I sometimes need to stir in just a tad of canned food into their raw mix to keep them happy.
Great tip, Charry!
Transitioning some cats to raw (especially those that are older and/or that are very addicted to the carbs in kibble and can be particularly stubborn when asked to give up their ‘fix’) can take some time and dedication. But if their human is determined, has a good strategy and perseveres, it can most definitely be done!
Part of the solution is figuring out how to outwit those wily cats!
There are even more hints, tips, tricks, along a comprehensive strategy for switching cats to raw, included in my step by step “Practical Guide” on how to transition your cat to a raw diet. It’s free for the reading here: http://www.rawfedcats.org/practicalguide.htm
There’s also a fantastic online forum where you can get advice and support from thousands of experienced raw feeders. The archives contain a treasure trove of useful information, and the list itself is very active, both with newbies asking questions, as well as veterans generously sharing their time, experience and expertise.
Here’s the link:
Our cat thrives on Royal Canin dry food. He gets cooked fish and meat from our plates regularly, and he loves it. He doesn’t really like raw meat, though I’m sure he would enjoy chewing on a bird’s head if he can catch one. He is an indoor cat though, so that probably won’t happen.
Sourcing this food is hard. I have known this for a few years, but finding reasonably priced healthy cat food ingredients is difficult. I have asked my farmer and butchers before. For awhile I bought the “best” dry cat food (sourced carefully to avoid animal byproducts and really bad stuff) but it didn’t make any difference vs. the cheap stuff. I know, I get it. I working on a better solution because I can see it’s not good for them and they’re not satisfied. One of my cats would eat and eat until he weighed 16 lbs., which is NOT a healthy weight for him! (He has a small frame and 9 – 10 is about right.) The vet’s no help, of course. Someday I will solve this…maybe my new butcher can help.
I’ve ordered from Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow several times and have been happy with their selection and prices.
hare-today.com
Here are links to some online forums where you may be able to locate and connect with buying groups and/or others in your area to combine your buying power and purchase raw pet food in bulk at a discount:
As much as I love our pets, Love love love them, we barely have enough to feed ourselves. There is no way I could afford to feed animals this way. It actually bothers me deeply to watch the BLUE commercials where the animals are basically put at the same level of humans in there care and food quality. I’m sorry, animals are so precious, but they cannot be put at the same level as a human being. I would rather not have animals if this is what it’s going to come to…
Rosalinda, I hope I can express that I do disagree with you and keep it as a respectful dialogue. I know I am guilty of putting my pets at my level. But they ARE my kids in my eyes. We can’t have children so my pets fill that void beautifully. I don’t feel they deserve to be cared for any less than any other creature. So, I care for them as best as I can in a budget. For 15 years, I raised cats eating Science Diet kibble. The food was affordable but the vet bills were not. That food led my cats to have diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, kidney failure, and thyroid disease. Not all in one cat…but a different disease for each. None lived healthy to an older age. Switching to raw, I now have 10 year old cats that my vet says are as healthy as a 3-4 yr old. Raw does cost more but not as much as many “premium foods”. But I save so much on medical bills. When it comes to diet, I don’t see it as putting them on a human level. But, rather, feeding them a species appropriate diet. I know it takes time and I know raw isn’t for everyone. I at least recommend pet owners feeding grain free. I think we all, humans and animals, should be eating as close to what our bodies were intended to consume. I wasn’t designed for processed foods and my cats and dogs weren’t designed for processed foods.
I couldn’t disagree with you more, and I feel so saddened by your comments. Being good caretakers of our pets is a responsibility we sign on for when we agree to take in a pet. If we are not physically and financially able to care for them properly, we should not be pet owners. Animals in the wild are able to forage for the food that they were biologically created to need for proper nutrition and health. If we are domesticating animals and keeping them from their natural predatory habits, it is absolutely cruel and inhumane to not provide them with the best nutrition possible to keep them healthy. It has nothing to do with putting them on a human level; it’s just basic human decency to care properly for a living creature that we’ve brought into our lives. They didn’t choose to live with us; we chose that for them. Therefore, we should do everything in our power to ensure their optimum health and safety, including feeding them proper nutrition and keeping them away from harmful chemicals. And as Charry pointed out, in the long run it saves us a lot of money in vet bills. I haven’t yet been able to switch my pets to raw food, but we did switch to a much higher-quality commercial food that contains NO GRAIN (which cats and dogs are not biologically designed to digest AT ALL, so Blue isn’t even an appropriate brand) and has real meat as its main ingredients. It definitely costs me more, but only 2 of my 5 pets have even needed to see a vet once in the past 3 years!
Its so annoying when people say that if you can’t afford to properly care for your pet then you shouldn’t have them. You have no idea what Rosalinda’s financial situation is. In my own case, my husband and I were doing quite well when we adopted our 2 dogs. Eighteen months later my husband was in a head-on car collision that left him disabled for a year. When he went back to work, he found out he had been replaced and had no job. As an animal lover, what should we have done? Should we have gotten rid of the animals we came to love and cherish simply because we could barely feed ourselves? Or what about my cancer-stricken friend who lives alone with her cat? Her medical bills are eating her alive, but I would never suggest she shouldn’t keep her cat. He is her only companion on many nights when she is sick, alone and scared. She has told me on many occasions that her cat is the only reason she gets out of bed anymore because she knows he likes to go outside. Please don’t be so quick to judge people’s financial situations. These past few years have been tough on many!
I agree with you wholeheartedly RosalindaL. Our society holds pets way too high, too often high above children which is a shame. I did feed our dogs raw for about 6 months, but it was too expensive for our budget. I do what I can, but its hard to justify feeding animals that live 10 years better than my children which have a soul and a bigger future.
My pets absolutely have souls and I will give them the best I can–and they give me so much more in return. I think feeding them a species appropriate diet is the right thing to do nutritionally and not at all connected with the fact that they exist on this planet for less than 20 years. Although, a better diet does generally mean they will thrive longer, just like with humans.
Wow. I sometimes forget there are people like you out there. Thanks for the reminder.
Since most readers of this blog are familiar with the Weston Price view on nutrition, we all know that Dr. Price came to his conclusions studying people who, basically, ate from the land. They didn’t go to a store to buy their food. At least from what I know in America, many Native American tribes viewed many animals also not as equal to human beings. Actually, they viewed many animals as HIGHER/GREATER than humans, not less than. So when a Native American (or First Nation in Canada) took the life of a deer, there was tremendous respect and gratitude for the animal.
Also to keep in mind, food isn’t everything. You can feed a dog the best raw meat diet but starve him of love and I’ll bet the farm that dog is going to end up with all sorts of diseases. The movie, “Like Water for Chocolate” is a good story about this (about people, not dogs).
For years we had fed our animals typical (even natural, “healthy”) store bought dry and canned pet food. When we switched to the raw food for both our cat and dog the change was remarkable. The 17 year old cat came back from the dead (I swore he had only a couple months left in him, he’s almost 20 now and he’s still kicking) and our dog lost weight. Even the grain-free dog kibble was making her fat. Our cat howls for his food now, several times a day, something he NEVER did before. He used to love fresh fruits and veggies (I’m guessing he was missing some nutrition in his kibble and wet food) and he turns his nose up at them now, he only eats the raw chicken/salmon oil/catnip.
I actually spend less money feeding raw than kibble! I do not spend over $1.50/lb on meat as an average. Yes some of it is the not so good chicken and pork from the grocery store but it is far better than the kibble or canned. I am also part of a buying group that gets great deals. This is just in food costs, not the vet bills, drugs or the other things that go along with feeding a kibble diet. And I get the knowledge that I am doing what I can for my carnivores.
RosalindL may not be able to afford a raw diet for her pets, so you all bash her??? Would you rather her pets live in a shelter (where they will be fed dry kibble as well) or euthanized?
VERY good addition and a BIG thank you to Miss Linda!
This is a topic I can really sink my (canines) in to. It is a topic near and dear for 25 years. Our business is built with Optimum canine nutrition as its base. It all starts with nutrition, Fitness is a VERY close second. We try to spend as much time as the customer allows us speaking to nutritional needs. We build aerobic conditioning dog carts and handle a part of the dogs fitness needs that way, but it can be done in myriad ways.
We have always said that attending to nutritional and fitness needs for your dog will, in general, keep more of your coin in your pocket vs. your vets boat or the addition to his house.
This is a GREAT topic, Thank you Paula and Linda.
Bb
CanineCarriages.com
Please understand that all carnivorous animals are designed to eat their food RAW.
If we stop to think about it, it becomes immediately obvious that there are no canines or felines on earth created by mother nature that make fires to cook their food, or were ever meant to consume cooked food.
It’s particularly important to understand that raw bones are completely different, molecular-ly speaking, from cooked bones.
Raw meaty bones (aka RMBs) have a slight flexibility to them, and it is these raw bones that carnivorous animals such as canines and felines are specifically designed to eat. You can see this flexibility for yourself by taking a raw chicken rib and trying to break it with your hands. What you’ll find is that the bone is rather soft and will bend rather than breaking and snapping.
However cooking bones radically changes their molecular structure, rendering them very hard and brittle indeed, and extremely prone to splintering.
Therefore it’s not ever a good idea to feed cooked bones to our pets because they can splinter when consumed, creating sharp shads which can damage them internally.
Clarification on raw. I would say meat and bones a definite yes. no question. When it comes to vegetables and vegetable matter, cooked is required for the animal to recieve the naturally occurring vitamins and minerals. In “general” the classification of carnivore has more to do with the shape of the teeth as opposed to the content of the diet as a whole. Carnivores lack the gut enzyme to break down vegetable matter. Without this enzyme nutrition extraction is severely limited. This needed nutrition is not bio-available to the animal and it pretty well comes out the way it went down with little nutritional gain realized by the animal. In the wild the prey animals gut does this service for the carnivore. In a domestic setting we accomplish the task by cooking the vegetables and especially crucifoerous ones as they will mess with thyroid levels.
Very good point on bones! When raw, they crumble. when cooked they splinter as there is a chemical/molecular change that occurs with cooking them
Wow good stuff!.
Personally, I think its perfectly okay to put animals and humans on the same level. Afterall, we humans domesticated them so now we have a responsibility to care for them. My cats can feel pain and suffering and I could never live with myself if I ever knew for a second that they were in pain. Besides pets have their own special way of showing how they appreciate you by sitting in your lap or making purring noises. Truly its a lovely experience I would never miss.
Would you want to eat processed junkfood? No way! So why feed it to pets who can also become sick from eating processed pseudo-food?
This is a very important topic. We need to feed our pets proper nutrition just like ourselves. I actually came around to feeding my pets better in 2007, before I did for my human family. They have been on a raw diet for 5 years. There are so many resources online on how to feed raw correctly, how to transition your pets, and even co-ops to save money…so I hope others look into it. Please know that cats and dogs have different requirements and raw diets MUST be balanced or you will do more harm than good. Pets need meat and bones along with organ meats. Put time into your research and you will soon have your pets on a road to a very healthy life!
Good post! (and don’t forget that pets are vaccinated too, and while important it can cause a very deadly form of cancer)
Anyone who wants more info on feline nutrition you can check out http://www.catinfo.org a website run by a vet who studies feline nutrition. Or http://www.feline-nutrition.org or you can check out the book “Your Cat” by Elizabeth Hodgkins DVM.
With respect to your opinion on the importance of vaccinations, personally my opinion is that vaccines are NOT important, but rather that they should be avoided at all costs because they do more harm than good.
As you point out, there is clear evidence of a condition commonly known as vaccine induced sarcoma, which is a cancerous lesion that has been shown to develop in cats at injection sites.
As a result of this devastating form of vaccinosis, (vaccine damage) many vets started jabbing cats in their extremities instead of their torsos so that if a sarcoma did occur, it could be surgically removed via amputation of the affected limb!
What insanity…!!
For more on my perspectives concerning the use of vaccines for pets, please see my page called Vaccinosis: How Vaccines Damage Your Pet’s Health here: http://www.rawfedcats.org/vaccinosis.htm There are also a number of relevant links on this subject about halfway down the page in the links section of my website here: http://www.rawfedcats.org/links.htm
I’d also like to point out that the links you provide above for learning about feeding cats raw food contain recommendations for feeding cats GROUND raw food. Although this is a very popular option for many people, feeding cats a steady diet of mushy ground raw food is most definitely not in the best interests of these animals health-wise.
To understand more about the reasoning behind this idea of feeding our carnivorous pets minimally processed WHOLE raw foods, as opposed to more highly processed, ground raw foods, please check out the section on my site called No Grinders! here: http://www.rawfedcats.org/nogrinders.htm
Linda, glad to have someone with your expertise join this conversation. I agree with all you say about the vaccines and eating whole raw, not just ground. I am one of those who feeds mostly ground. I started my cats on it later in life and their minds were already imprinted with the idea of what they should and shouldn’t eat. I tried so many ways to convince them to eat bones but we just didn’t have any success. Now, I do cut up chicken and quail necks into small bites and a couple of my cats will eat them as a chewy snack each day. But not the others. I wish they took to it as easily as my dogs. But, I’m happy to at least have them on raw and off processed foods, even if it is ground. I do have one who lost his teeth from genetic causes. Bless his heart because he actually wants to eat the neck pieces and can’t.
Charry, try smashing raw meaty bones like necks with a mallet or hammer before feeding them. This makes them much easier for newbie or reluctant-to-eat-RMB kitties to tackle, so they may be more willing to eat them more often. The more practice they get eating RMBs, the more they’ll begin to increase their jaw strength and develop their techniques for eating these vital foods. As their jaws get stronger and they learn to better maneuver their RMBs for consumption, in time this may well encourage your cats to try eating other RMBs too, such as things like ribs, wings, or even whole quail.
Tried that mallet trick SOOOO many times. I researched this diet for over a year to make sure I knew what I was doing, doing it right, and learning all the strategies. Hard to convince a cat sometimes.
Linda,
I also respect the work you do, but as someone in the trenches of unwanted kitties (I’ve been fostering for my local shelter for 10 years, and been volunteering there for almost 20 now), I can say vaccines are important and in many communitie the law. I also believe are cats are over vaccinated and as someone who went through VAS with my kitty Ollie, I can’t stress the importance of owners evaluating the risk their cats have and making decisions from there vs just blindly following someone’s advice to vaccinate or not. I think people need to think about it, read about it, and make their own decisions – which is why vaccines are important. Even if they decide not to give them.. it is important.
Whole raw foods are wonderful, but A) not all cats will eat them especially if they grew up on dry or canned, B) some people are fearful of feeding their pets bones because they have /can / do /could cause harm. Cats who gulp their food down with out properly chewing it can have issues. While I know full well cats were designed (or evolved depending on your world view) to eat rodents and birds that they catch and live in the desert and thus have a very low thirst drive, every cat is different and their humans need to make the decisions on their behalf based on their health, the ideal, and what the pet will or won’t eat and what it can eat. I currently have foster kittens who can’t eat many different things that I’m sure you would consider ideal (including mouse). Just about everything but the raw premade beef I bought them has given them diarrhea, including game hen and chicken. Their mom had a blast eating the entire hen and would occasionally leave me a sliver of chicken bone.
Your site is very informative, but I would like people to know there are other options for feeding their pets a food superior to commercial highly processed cooked foods. One of the major problems with the real food movement is it can be horribly overwhelming. The same can be said for transitioning a cat to raw food. To expect a cat to eat “WHOLE raw foods” who has been eating dry or canned all it’s life can be exceptionally stressful for the owners and make them feel like a failure when the cat fails to recognize that ‘whole food’ as food. Heck, I’ve seen grown sensible women reduced to tears when their cats wouldn’t even eat canned food (Ive seen too many diabetic cat owners try to change too much at once and the cat’s simply rebel) (I have had one cat become diabetic and two develop struvite crystals while being fed a “premium” commercial diet)
I offered those websites as MORE reading options, MORE information is never a bad thing. And if a cat ends up on ground whole raw food or even ground frankenprey raw food, even you have to admit that is far superior to any kibble and canned foods.
Connie,
My perspectives on vaccines are laid out in some detail on my website on this page:
http://www.rawfedcats.org/vaccinosis.htm
As I said in a previous comment response, in my view vaccines do more harm than good, and as such, should be avoided.
When I say that I don’t think vaccines are important, what I mean is that the majority of people have been conditioned throughout the course of their lives to believe that it is “important” for themselves, their children and their pets to be vaccinated in order for them to be healthy and resistant to disease. And in my opinion this is absolutely not the case.
So since you wrote that vaccines are important, I feel compelled to point out that despite all the propaganda and advertising being disseminated to the masses these days touting the importance of vaccinations in maintaining and ensuring human and pet health, this whole idea of vaccinating to prevent disease is simply a massive marketing campaign whose only real purpose is to profit the pharmaceutical industry, and in truth being vaccinated has nothing whatsoever to do with promoting the good health of either animals or people.
The fact is that good health and resistance to disease come from a well functioning immune system — NOT from vaccines.
I’m not saying that the ISSUE of vaccinations is not important, or that people should not do their homework in order to make informed decisions about whether or not to vaccinate themselves, their children or their pets. Rather my point is that vaccines’ importance in terms of the need for them to be administered to insure good health is completely unfounded and utterly fallacious.
Regarding switching cats to raw, despite what you say to the contrary, my best understanding is that all cats, no matter how old or how addicted they might be to junk pet food, CAN indeed be transitioned to a diet of whole raw foods. Now that being said, depending on the cat, such a process very well may take some time, patience and perseverance on the part of the cat’s people. But I’m here to tell you that it can indeed be done.
This is why I spent so much time writing and designing the Practical Guide section of my website, so as to provide a comprehensive, doable, step by step strategy for transitioning cats to a diet of whole raw foods, and helping them to make the switch at their own pace.
As for peoples’ fears about feeding their pets raw meaty bones, the truth is that I had these very same fears when I was first learning to feed my young kittens a diet of whole raw foods! So I can tell you, both from hindsight as well as first hand experience, that such fears are simply the result of our own human ignorance.
Dispelling such ignorance is one of the main reasons why I created my website to begin with. It was designed be an ignorance-buster, and to empower people with information to help them make better, more informed choices on behalf of their animal companions.
If your current foster kittens get diarrhea from the food they’re eating and you wish to transition them to a diet of whole raw foods, I’d be more than happy to help you help them. Please feel free to contact me via my website.
And as for feeding cats the way that’s recommended on those sites you posted, with pre-fab ground, manufactured patty-type raw pet foods or home prepared ground raw recipes, the point I’d like to make here is that ultimately, these options are not in the best interest of the animals. Rather they are for the convenience of people.
Please understand here, I know all too well that my work and advocacy of feeding our carnivorous companions a diet of whole raw foods draws an unusually hard line. I’m also well aware that wrapping one’s head around the concepts I promote – much less putting them into practice – can seem overwhelming for some people. Regardless of all this, what’s most important in my mind is that the fundamentals of my work are built on the premise of taking a stand for and on behalf of the animals themselves, and doing what is best for them — not necessarily what’s easiest or most convenient for us humans.
My work and my stand on raw feeding are uncompromising, yes it’s true, I know. Nevertheless, the truth is that what some might see as my extreme stand serves a purpose. One aspect of that purpose is to provide a radical counterpoint to the travesty that is unfolding in this day and age as a result of our human failing, due to our own ignorance, to ensure the good health and wellbeing of the pet population as a whole.
Because we have en mass been erroneously led to feed and care for our pets in ways that have been easy and convenient for us, but lacking in awareness of THEIR true dietary needs, what we have on our hands today in terms of their collective health (and what we ourselves have unwittingly been a party to) is an altogether deplorable abomination.
It is primarily for these reasons that I have chosen to take a stand on behalf of these innocent animals.
I hold the hard line for these creatures – creatures that cannot communicate for themselves to tell us the truth about how Mother Nature designed them to be fed. And I will continue to hold the hard line for them, because someone needs to do it, and because precious few are willing.
It’s not a particularly popular perspective. Believe me, I know! I’ve been attacked and argued with time and time again over the years for taking this stand I do.
And yet despite the unpopularity of this unconventional stand I take, I see the continuing need to do so.
Because it helps to raise consciousness and awaken people.
And because in the long run, holding the hard line and standing up for our pets’ needs plants the kind of seeds of awakening in the hearts and minds of people that eventually foster shifts in their actions, which ultimately benefit the animals.
After all they’ve done for us, awakening ourselves and endeavoring to do the right thing by these animals feels like the least we can do on their behalf.
I recently started making my own dog food- its cheaper than buying the most “healthy” wet or dry dog – if there is such thing.
How do you make yours, and what’s in it?
Yes, please tell.
I’ve often wondered about my cat food. I try to buy the healthiest I can find but one of my cats has a recurring skin issue that keeps cropping up and it always takes prednisone to clear it up. Look forward to learning more.
This is why we feed our German Shepherd RAW!
I did, too!! She absolutely thrived! Sadly, she passed a couple years back from bloat (even with a raw diet I could not avoid it). If/when I have other animals (I keep trying to convince DH that I want a cat – he’s a dog person) I will definitely do my best to feed raw!!
We also feed our 3 dogs prey model raw food. We started in 2009 and our Cocker Spaniel, Desiree, who had teeth issues and horrible yeast overgrowth (yucky ears!) had such great results we resolved to only feed our dogs raw from then on (we are working on the 4 cats). Desi’s ears cleared up totally and she never needed medication for yeast in her ears again, and I rarely had to clean them (it was bad!) and her teeth became white and her gums stopped bleeding! The end of her life she had so much more energy, was a healthy weight and was comfortable. The night she died (in her sleep) she played harder than I had ever seen her play! Raw, whole, healthy, species appropriate, live foods is best for everyone!
Have a peaceful day!
SamB
Thanks for this article and I’m looking forward to future ones, too. I’ve been looking into pet food ingredients for awhile because I think it may explain my cat’s health problems (allergies, rashes, losing fur, sores, foul stool). It can’t be coincidence that disease rates are going up amongst pets as well as humans.