Years ago I bought a book on homemade dog and cat food but couldn’t convince my parents we should feed our dogs natural food. I was very interested in it though. The recipes in that book are cooked, but I also became interested in raw food diets for animals. After all, who cooks their food in the wild?
Before I moved out with my friend, I had worked in a vet clinic for four years and also in a pet store for a couple of years. At the pet store, I had the opportunity to work directly with pet food suppliers and reps. I found this extremely interesting. I loved learning about animal digestive systems and how they use the food they eat. I started doing more research on dog food and raw diets. When my then-boyfriend (now-husband/D2) moved out to where I was finally and I moved in with him, we got a dog. She came from a breeder but was actually a rescue. I mentioned to the breeder that we were considering a raw diet, but otherwise would choose a good kibble. The breeder steered us away from the raw diet, and it seemed like it would be too much work anyway.
Our dog was skin and bones when we got her. She threw up a lot. We switched her to a good kibble and she filled out a little. Then she stopped eating. We tried a different food and she would eat that for a few days or even a week and then stop again. We started having to switch her food every few days or she would starve herself, literally. She could go over a week having only a tiny bite of food a day, and she was losing weight. Considering she was only about eight or nine months at this point, we were pretty concerned about that. I brought her to the vet, who did blood tests and found out that she had a damaged liver. It was causing her to starve herself, which was making it worse, and was also causing all the puking. She suggested a veterinary diet, telling me it wouldn’t reverse the problem (it was irreversible), but might slow it down or even stop it. My experience with dog food came into play here. I looked at the ingredients and knew there was no way that food could be better for her than what we were feeding her. I also knew my dog wouldn’t eat it anyway.
I started doing some research again. I read that feeding dogs liver can help their livers regenerate. It sounded a bit too easy to me, but I felt like I had nothing to lose. I found this site which had some great info on raw diets, and made me realize that they don’t involve cutting up vegetables or adding tons of supplements. I was shocked by some of the information I learned, like about the AAFCO feeding trials. Here’s a summary from that site:
AAFCO feeding trials consist of at least eight dogs being fed the same diet for a mere 26 weeks (approximately six months). During this time, 25% of the dogs (so, two animals) can be removed from the test and the dogs eating the food can lose up to 15% of their weight and condition; the food will still pass the test and be labeled “complete and balanced.” But extrapolate these figures to the number of animals eating this food for much longer than 26 weeks and you will have much more of a problem! If a food caused dogs to start losing condition over the 26 week period yet still passed, imagine how many animals would fail to thrive in real life while being fed this food for years?
When they say 2 dogs can be “removed,” it means two dogs can die, or lose half their body weight, or pretty much anything, and the food could still pass as long as the other 6 “only” lose 15% or less of their weight. Scary stuff. I used to wonder how some foods even got on the market. I don’t wonder any more; they don’t actually have to be nutritional.
So anyway, we switched her to a raw diet, and suddenly she was eating again. Every day! And she was gaining weight. Her coat was filling out. She has a balance problem, and even her balance was improving. Anyone who saw her would comment first thing on how much better she looked. Three months later we brought her to the vet and her irreversible liver problem was gone. The vet thought it must be coincidence, or a mistake in the original tests. But I had learned even the really good kibbles are still processed and hard to digest.
I mentioned to a chef where I worked how much better she was doing, and he pointed out that raw diets and unprocessed foods are good for people too. I thought, “Of course they are!”. We ate pretty well already, but Hamburger Helper used to be a staple. I don’t think we’ve had any since that time. We started really watching our own diet, buying organic when we could afford it, and trying to make food from scratch as much as possible. It’s been a slow process, but every little step helps and makes us both feel better. The IBS that used to be a daily battle for me has all but disappeared.
Doing research into a raw diet is what led me to discover the vaccine debate. I’m a pretty open-minded person, so though I was a bit shocked that a vaccine debate even existed, I was interested and started looking into that too. We had both noticed after she got her shots on her first birthday that her balance got a lot worse again for a while, but hadn’t thought it had to do with the vaccines. After doing some reading though, I started to wonder. Our dog hasn’t been vaccinated since her first birthday and our cat was vaccinated as a kitten once before we got him. One day I’d love to write in more detail about vaccinations and vaccine information, but that’ll have to wait.
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