Holistic Guide for a Healthy Dog

Preface

Our dogs are in trouble. Life spans are getting shorter and disease states are becoming more prevalent; unless something changes, the future looks bleak indeed. Four reasons contribute to this trend:

Breed selection has progressed from function (the ability to perfom the job for which the dog was bred) to form (appearance) and is producing genetically weak individuals subject to debilitating diseases and a poor quality of life.

Environmentally created stress on the animal’s immune system, principally the result of pollution, has further reduced the dog’s vital forces.

A rising number of vaccinations, from two in the first 6 months of life in the early 1970s, up to as many as 45 today, has added to the attack on a puppy’s immature immune system.

Diet that is insufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the dog have contributed to an inability of the immune system to ward off and cope with disease. A frightening increase in autoimmune diseases and a virtual epidemic of cancer have been the result.

This book addresses what you can do about your dog’s health, longevity and quality of life. In each of the three parts, we discuss different aspects of helping your dog. The material is presented in such a way so as to give you options that fit into your lifestyle and comfort zone.

Part One, Your Dog’s Diet & Health, deals with nutrition and health, and focuses on the facts that have led us to our conclusions. After years of being effectively ignored, the influence nutrition has on health and behavior is finally being recognized. Did you know that the most common causes for allergies are nutritional deficiencies? More serious and sometimes life-threatening diseases can also be caused and corrected by diet. Your pet’s behavior is also affected by what you feed him. Depending on the seriousness of the condition, improvement may be achieved simply by selecting a commercial dog food that is right for your dog and adding a few supplements. Other options range from adding some raw ingredients to completely making your own dog food. None of the options included in this book are based on guesswork or speculation, but have undergone rigorous clinical testing for almost 30 years.

Part Two, Medicine, Tests, Therapies & Your Dog, explores standard and complementary diagnostic and treatment modalities. We also tackle the controversial subject of vaccinations, which is finally getting the attention it deserves. For years we have maintained that more is not better, and that the onslaught of multiple vaccinations weakens rather than strengthens a puppy’s immune system, and has resulted in a multiplicity of disease states. Here, too, we provide you with the information you need to make an intelligent decision about what is best for your dog and is compatible with your comfort zone.

The chapter on Thyroid and Adrenal glands, out of necessity, is admittedly technical. Thyroid disease is becoming more prevalent in dogs. Behavioral changes, such as aggression, are frequently thyroid-related. We have included this information because recognizing the symptoms is becoming increasingly important. It is estimated that the majority of dogs today show clinical signs of thyroid dysfunction, which is not picked up on routine blood tests.

Kinesiology or muscle testing, a standard technique among homeopathic veterinarians, is a diagnostic tool gaining in popularity among conventional veterinarians. We introduce you to this concept and almost anyone can learn to use it. When we teach kinesiology at our seminars and Camps, our favorite human subjects are the skeptics (the dogs never have a problem accepting it).

Homeopathy has been around for 200 years and is used extensively in Europe, by both conventional and holistic physicians. It is gaining in acceptance, and provides invaluable therapies for chronic and acute physical conditions, as well as behavioral abnormalities. We have provided you with a practical list of remedies and the conditions for which they are used.

Chiropractic adjustment of dogs has become a regular part of maintaining their good health. Although you can’t do it yourself, we have included this chapter to make you aware of its benefits.

We know there are no panaceas and that no one modality will work every time. While our preference lies with a holistic approach, we are also realistic and use conventional treatments, including antibiotics and steroids when necessary—whatever works for the dog but keep in mind that all dogs are individuals.

In Part Three, The Five-Element Theory, we introduce you to the Five-Element Theory, an integral part of traditional Chinese medicine, and a powerful diagnostic and healing concept. The Five-Element Theory divides the year into its four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. By looking at the calendar, you will be able to predict with uncanny accuracy your dog’s behavior and his health needs.

Acupuncture is one of the mainstays of traditional Chinese medicine, but beyond the scope of this book. Even so, you can use it without the needles and we have included the acupressure points for more common ailments. While acupressure is not the same as the real thing, it is almost as effective and best of all, you can do it yourself.

Lastly, we don’t want to be accused of being politically incorrect. Throughout this book we refer to the dog as he as a matter of convenience. The he or she, him or her format is awkward and we don’t like s/he. We prefer the colloquial—dogs are he and cats are she. We also refer to the dog as a dog and not as a nonhuman animal companion.

Part 1

Your Dog’s Diet & Health

1

Diet, Allergies & Health

FOOD—WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

Your dog’s behavior, happiness, health, longevity and overall well-being are inextricably intertwined with what you feed him. Dogs, just like everyone else, have specific nutritional needs. And, to complicate matters, the needs of individual dogs vary. For example, even though your first dog may have done wonderfully well on Barfo Special Blend, it may be completely wrong for the dog you have now. We are not trying to turn you into an expert on canine nutrition, but you do need to know some basic concepts.

The most common and most visible symptoms of nutritionally caused deficiencies are allergies of one kind or another. In his best-selling book, Pet Allergies: Remedies for an Epidemic, Alfred Plechner, D.V.M., paints a dismal picture for the future of our pets.

Because many commercial foods are woefully deficient in key nutrients, the long-term effect of feeding such foods makes the dog hypersensitive to its environment. …[I]t’s a dinosaur effect. Animals are being programmed for disaster, for extinction. Many of them are biochemical cripples with defective adrenal glands unable to manufacture adequate cortisol, a hormone vital for health and resistance to disease.

Allergies can be, and often are, unrecognized deficiency diseases. Recognizing nutritional deficiencies will save you a great deal of frustration and allow you to make the necessary adjustments in your dog’s diet.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT FOOD

Not all dog foods are alike and there are enormous quality differences. The cliché garbage in, garbage out applies with terrifying validity. There are so many choices available today that trying to make an informed decision can become an overwhelming task. We are going to tackle the job by the process of elimination. Three commonly used criteria immediately come to mind: advertising, ingredients and price.

The proper diet will ensure that your dog looks and feels his best.

Forget about what the ad says about how good their brand of food is. You have to look at what’s in it.

Forget about price. This works both ways. Just because it costs more doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better than a less expensive variety.

Following is a quick checklist to determine if your dog is getting what he needs:

He doesn’t want to eat the food.

He has large, voluminous stools that smell awful.

He has gas.

His teeth get dirty and brown.

His breath smells.

He burps a lot.

He constantly sheds.

He has a dull coat.

He smells like a dog.

He is prone to ear and skin infections.

He has no energy or is hyperactive.

He picks up fleas easily.

He picks up worms easily and has to be wormed frequently.

He frequently gets infections and his immune system becomes impaired.

All of these can happen with any dog, but only occasionally. When one or more of them occur frequently, or continuously, it’s time to find out why.

A CARNIVORE NEEDS MEAT

Your dog is a carnivore, not a vegetarian. He needs meat. Unlike a human’s, his teeth are made for ripping and tearing meat—they do not have flat surfaces for grinding up grains; his digestive process begins in his stomach, not in his mouth; all of the enzymes in his system are geared toward breaking down meat and raw foods. Clearly, there can be no doubt: Your dog is a carnivore.

Your dog’s body is made up of cells, a lot of them. Each cell needs 45 nutrients to function properly. Cells need:

Protein, consisting of 9 to 12 essential amino acids

Carbohydrates

Fat

Vitamins

Minerals

Water

All of these nutrients need to be in the correct proportion for the necessary chemical reactions of digestion, absorption, transportation and elimination to occur. If the cells are going to continue to live, the exact composition of the body fluids that bathe the outside of the cells needs to be controlled from moment to moment, day to day, with no more than a few percentage points of variation. When these nutrients are not provided, cells die, and this contributes to premature aging.

These nutrients are the fuel, which converts into energy. Energy produces heat and how much heat is produced determines the ability of your dog to control his body temperature, critical to a healthy life. Everything your dog does, from running and playing, to working, and living a long and healthy life, is determined by the fuel you provide and the energy it produces.

The term calorie is used to indicate the amount of energy in food. The food you feed your dog must provide sufficient calories so his body can:

Produce energy to grow correctly.

Maintain health during adulthood.

Reproduce.

Live to enjoy a quality old age.

A DOG’S STAFF OF LIFE—PROTEIN

Dog food packages tell you how much protein is in the food. Protein content is important, but even more important is its source.

The manufacturer chooses the kind of protein to put into the food. Generally, the percentage of protein in the food is a combination of proteins found in less expensive plants or grains, such as corn, wheat, soy, or rice, plus a more expensive animal protein, such as chicken, beef, or lamb.

By law, the ingredient in the greatest quantity is listed first. By looking at the list of ingredients on the package, you can easily see the origin of the protein in the food. For example, if the first five ingredients consist of four grains, it tells you that the majority of the protein in that food comes from grains. The more grains in dog food, the cheaper it is to produce.

We wonder what your dog thinks of such food.

ANIMAL PROTEIN DEFICIENCIES

When your dog does not get enough animal protein as part of his diet, or there is an imbalance of his nutrients, one or more of the following may occur:

Chronic skin and/or ear infections

Compromised reproductive system, heart, kidney, liver, bladder, thyroid and adrenal glands

Epilepsy or some kinds of cancers

Spinning or tail chasing

Aggression

Timidity

Lack of pigmentation

Excessive shedding

Crooked whiskers

Gastrointestinal upsets, vomiting or diarrhea

Poor appetite

Impaired ability to heal from wounds or surgery

Weakened immune system that cannot handle vaccines and may even contract the disease

This is only a short list of the more common symptoms associated with protein deficiency.

It has been our experience that the majority of the working breeds, sporting breeds, toys and terriers need extra animal protein in their diets. Dogs that lead a couch-potato existence can survive on food with more plant than animal protein.

AMINO ACIDS

One more thing you need to know about protein—amino acids are the building blocks of protein. When they are heated they are partially destroyed. All dry and canned commercial dog food is heated in the manufacturing process. So, commercial food contains protein that is somewhat deficient or destroyed through heating. To compensate for this loss, besides meat, you need to include an amino acid complex tablet in your dog’s diet.

THE CRITICAL TIME OF GROWTH

During the first 7 months of your dog’s life, he will increase his birth weight anywhere from 15 to 40 times, depending upon his breed. By 1 year of age, his birth weight will increase 60 times and his skeletal development will be almost complete. For everything to go well, he needs the right food. He also needs double the amount of food as an adult dog needs while he is growing, especially during growth spurts. Nutritional deficiencies now, even for short periods, can cause problems later on.

It is essential to feed your dog the best diet for his stage of life.

The most critical period for a puppy is between 4 and 7 months—the time of maximum growth. His little body is being severely stressed as his baby teeth drop out and his adult teeth come in. He is growing like a weed, and at the same time his body is being assaulted with vaccines, exposure to new viruses and parasites. The right food is critical at this time to ensure that his immune system can cope with all these demands and onslaughts.

To find out how you can protect him as much as possible, you need to take a look at several different dog foods to determine which ones will best meet the criteria for your young dog’s growth.

PUPPY FOODS & READING THE LABELS

Many dog food manufacturers make food for different life stages of the dog, and packages are clearly labeled. Puppy foods do contain more protein than adult or maintenance foods. Manufacturers know that puppies need more protein during growth and many of these foods provide up to 33% protein. Still, you need to know the source of the protein, that is, animal or plant.

What you are looking for is a puppy food that has two animal proteins in the first three ingredients, or better yet, one that lists animal protein as its first two ingredients. Avoid foods that do not meet these criteria.

CARBOHYDRATES—SPARINGLY, PLEASE!

Once you have selected a food on the basis of its protein percentage, your job isn’t quite done. You have to check a few other items.

Your dog also needs carbohydrates. He doesn’t need many carbohydrates to be healthy, but he does require some grains and vegetables for energy, proper digestion, stool formation and the correct functioning of the thyroid gland.

Oats, wheat, barley and brown rice are whole grains that contain a lot of vitamins and minerals as well as protein and fat. Corn is a popular grain found in commercial dog foods primarily because of its price. Soy is another carbohydrate that is found in some foods. Soy admittedly is high in protein, but it binds up other nutrients and makes them unavailable for absorption. Stay away from dog foods that contain soy—it’s best fed to those animals that have four stomachs or birds with gizzards to digest it.

Carbohydrates have to be broken down for a dog to be able to digest them. Dog food companies use a heat process to do this and therein lies the problem. The heat process destroys many of the vitamins and minerals contained in grains.

A question that comes immediately to mind is, Where do dogs in the wild get the grains and vegetables they need? The answer is, from the intestines of their prey, all neatly predigested, and the dog can utilize them.

A diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein is an ideal diet for your dog. Diets high in carbohydrates take a long time to digest, produce voluminous, smelly stools and gas. They also build up tartar on your dog’s teeth, making his gums sore and his breath smell.

NOT ALL FATS ARE CREATED EQUAL

Fat is either saturated or polyunsaturated and your dog needs both. Together these fats supply the essential fatty acids (EFAs) necessary to maintain a dog’s good health. Saturated fat comes from animal sources and is used for energy. For dogs that get a great deal of exercise or participate in competitive events, the food has to be high in animal (saturated) fat.

Dogs do not suffer from heart disease caused by higher levels of animal fat, or from fatty deposits in blood vessels. However, moderation is the key. The diet needs to have some animal fat but not too much, and anything between 15% to 18% is okay.

Not enough animal fat in the diet can create:

Lack of energy

Heart problems

Growth deficits

Dry skin

Cell damage

Too much animal fat in the diet creates:

Obesity

Some kinds of cancer

Polyunsaturated fat comes from vegetable sources, such as flax seed oil, safflower oil, wheat germ oil, olive oil and corn oil. Your dog needs polyunsaturated fat for healthy skin and coat. If your dog has a dry coat, you may need to add some oil to his food.

Linoleic acid is one of the three essential fatty acids found in polyunsaturated fats that has to be provided daily in your dog’s food. Cold-pressed safflower and flax seed oil provide the best source of linoleic acid and are the least allergenic. They are better than corn oil that contains only a tiny amount of linoleic acid. Note: Flax seed oil can be difficult for some dogs to digest.

Lack of polyunsaturated fat can cause:

Coarse dry hair coat

Improper growth

Skin lesions on belly, inside the back legs, and between the shoulder blades

Thickened areas of skin

Horny skin growths

Skin ulcerations and infections

Poor blood clotting

Extreme itching and scratching

Be aware that in the manufacturing process of most dog foods, fat is sprayed on as the last ingredient. Fat makes the food palatable, like potato chips and French fries. Look for a food that has both animal fat and vegetable oils in it. Some less expensive foods do not list individual fats and oils. They only say the percentage of fat in the food. Better foods do list them individually.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE?

The manufacturer chooses how to preserve the fat in dog food to prevent it from becoming rancid. He can use the chemicals BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin or propylgallate. If a fat is preserved with these chemicals, it will have a long shelf life and be generally unaffected by heat and light. Even so, many of us prefer not to feed these preservatives to our dogs, especially ethoxyquin.

Manufacturers can also choose natural preservatives, such as vitamins C and E. Vitamin E is usually listed as tocopherol. The down side to these preservatives is a shorter shelf life—no more than six months.

WHAT IS MISSING?

Your dog’s food needs vitamins to release the nutrients and enzymes in it so his body can absorb and use them. When we were researching the first edition of this book, we called manufacturers to ask them about how they protected the vitamins from destruction during the heat process. Their responses were astonishing. They acknowledged awareness of the problem posed by the heat process and to overcome it, added more vitamins to the food to make up the difference. Of course, this is nonsense. If vitamins are destroyed by heat, it doesn’t make any difference how much you put in the food—they will still be destroyed.

We also learned that the finished product was not tested by more than 99% of the manufacturers. In other words, a substantial quantity of vitamins and minerals go into the food, but what quantity actually reaches your dog seems as much a mystery to the manufacturer as it is to us.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF VITAMINS

There are two types of vitamins—water-soluble and fat-soluble. Vitamins B and C are water-soluble. Any excess is filtered through the kidneys and urinated out four to eight hours after ingestion. For this reason, they have to be present in each meal. Vitamins A, D, E and K are fat-soluble and are stored in the fatty tissues of the body and in the liver. Your dog needs both types.

Vitamins are not only lost in the manufacturing process of dog food, but begin to deteriorate as soon as you open up the dog food bag and expose the food to light and air. Particularly sensitive are vitamins B and C.

Vitamin C is needed for healthy teeth and gums. In the old days, sailors often suffered from vitamin C deficiency due to the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables while at sea. Called scurvy, this deficiency manifests itself in weakness, anemia, spongy and inflamed gums, and dirty teeth. The same thing happens to the vitamin C deficient dog.

A fairly common misconception is that dogs don’t need extra vitamin C because they produce their own. While it is true that they produce their own, it is not enough to maintain good health, especially in our polluted environment.

Your dog needs sufficient vitamin C to break down the animal protein in his diet, strengthen his immune system, speed wound healing, help the function of his musculoskeletal system, and whenever he gets wormed, is given drugs of any kind or put under any kind of stress. A lack of vitamin C in the diet commonly results in urinary tract infections, cystitis and limping in the front or rear legs.

The same holds true with vitamin B, which is made up of a number of individual parts called, commonly, B complex. A fragile, water-soluble vitamin, vitamin B is needed for energy, breaking down protein and promoting biochemical reactions in the body which work with enzymes to change the carbohydrates into glucose. Since not enough of either vitamin B complex or C is contained in any processed dog food to meet our criteria for raising a puppy, you have to add both of these to his diet.

MINERALS—A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY

Minerals make up less than 2% of any formulated diet, and yet they are the most critical of nutrients. Although a dog can manufacture some vitamins on his own, he is not able to make minerals. They are needed for:

The correct composition of body fluids

Proper formation of blood and bones

Promotion of a healthy nervous system

Co-enzyme function together with vitamins

Since 50% to 80% of minerals are lost in the manufacturing process, we recommend that you add extra minerals to your dog’s food.

Stay with us—we’re almost through covering the things you need to know to make intelligent decisions about what to feed your dog. We will give