The Why,What and How of the Best Nutrition for the Health of Westies by Wendell Marumoto, Christine Swingle and Jane Fink ~ Part 2 ~ The Answers: Giving Our Westies the Health To Which They Are Entitled by Christine Swingle "The strength of your pet's immune system, its resistance to disease and its quality of life all depend on the type and quality of food that it eats." Kymythy Schultze, A.H.I., author of Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats: The Ultimate Diet (formerly published as The Ultimate Diet). In my opinion, truer words have never been spoken and I'm sorry it took me so long to wake up! Westies have been a part of my life since 1964 and for eighteen of those years, I was a veterinary technician. I took pride in myself for practicing preventative health care and feeding the best "dog food" to my Westies. I was a dutiful guardian, believed everything my veterinarian told me, vaccinated my Westies faithfully every year, used chemical flea/tick and heartworm products and fed the "best" kibbles available. Then, a tragedy forced me to think for myself until finally this new liberation found me on a path to greater wellness for my Westies. In 1995, my beloved Westie, Summer, was misdiagnosed and, two weeks later, died at the young age of only 13. This was a total shock, as she had been in reasonably good health with no illness or disease. Not getting the help from my regular veterinarians, I took Summer to a specialty hospital in Boston and gave them carte blanche. After three thousand dollars and all the modern diagnostics, drugs and specialists available, nothing helped her, nor did I ever get a hint at a diagnosis. Back home, one veterinarian had been our vet for almost thirty years and the other was a recent veterinary graduate from a top notch New England university. The experience of many years, teamed with the education of a new generation failed Summer. I know nothing in life is guaranteed, but one thing was certain. The apathy towards Summer and her phantom illness was mutually shared by both vets. I will never forget that feeling of betrayal and that bleakest of nights, when I brought my precious Summer's little body home for cremation. I vowed that from that day forward, I would never give anyone but ME the responsibility to make the decisions for my Westies' health. For a few years, I was also seeing problems in the whelping box. Nearly each litter produced a puppy that was either undersized, an ineffectual nurser or stillborn. One pup had to be euthanized at day 8 without any definitive diagnosis as to why she failed to thrive. I had never had this happen before. I was now seeing a pattern and it caused me great concern. I needed answers and I was not getting them from the allopathic community. Fate led me to Marina Zacharias in Oregon, http://www.naturalrearing.com, and she introduced me to the writings of Juliette de Baïracli Levy, the "mother" of natural rearing. All of a sudden my mind and eyes were opened. When my journey began, it naturally started by addressing nutrition. Today, disease and illness in dogs are epidemic, in my opinion. Not only are we addressing our own breed's congenital and heritable disorders (nearly 50 at last count) including the skin problems that plague them, but also, according to the veterinary community, cancer is now the leading cause of death in dogs and cats. Diseases we see "common" today, such as allergies, cancer and immune-mediated diseases, were uncommon when I started in Westies. Why? Many factors are involved, including over-vaccinating, using chemicals for flea/tick/heartworm preventatives and the over-use of antibiotics and steroids, to name a few. However, the principal culprit, and one that we can all readily address, appears to be what we feed our Westies. "You are what you eat"-- this is just as true for our animals. Actually, it is more important because they rely on US, their guardians, to feed them. Food plays a major role in the health of our dogs' immune systems. When the immune system is in a weakened state, that is when disease and illness occur. I truly believe that Westies should be living well into their late teens and not dying at 9, 12 or even 14 years of age. Let me share some basic facts that made perfect sense to me. Evolution: Trust Nature - She Does Know Best For 120 million years, the evolutionary process has done its job of designing the perfect digestive system for dogs. In fact, we can trace our dogs' ancestors' back to a predecessor of the dog, Cynodictis, a carnivore that lived 40 million years ago. In 1993, scientists officially designated the wolf and dog as the same species, Canis lupus, and by their physiology, dogs are primarily carnivores. This is a key word to remember because carnivore means flesh eating. And when you think of a flesh eating animal, you don't conjure up a picture of a wolf eating a bowl of cereal or cooking its prey over an open campfire! Like their ancestors and cousins in the wild today, our dogs' digestive system has evolved over millions of years to get their nutrients from species-Appropriate Raw Foods (ARF), including raw meat and bones. Yes, you read it correctly, so pick yourself up off the floor and think about it. This is not a new discovery, just a very old one that got lost. Despite all that we have been led to believe over decades, dogs CAN and indeed DO digest RAW meat and bones. In fact, it is cooked bones you don't ever want to feed. Cooking changes the molecular structure, pulls out the moisture, and makes the bone splinter and difficult to digest. Perhaps this is how the myth got started. Raw meaty bones, however, provide nutritious amino acids/protein, essential fatty acids, marrow, fiber, enzymes, antioxidants and a vast variety of minerals and vitamins. I preached for 32 years not to feed bones. Today, after a better education, I know how wrong I was. Digestive systems of dogs are short, full of wonderful bacteria and powerful digestive "juices," all of which enables food to be digested quickly. If you are concerned about the bacteria in raw meat, just remember what species you are feeding. In a "healthy and strong" digestive tract, the abundance of beneficial bacteria makes it difficult for harmful bacteria to survive. Wendell put it so well when he said, "while most people anthropormorphize their dogs' dietary requirements, their digestive systems clearly have different needs and capabilities from ours". Yes, our Westies are part of our families, and many of us consider them as our "children". However, they are not little human beings, but dogs! That is not a stigma but a fact, and a fact that we must understand and accept if we are to address our dogs' long-term wellness. Dogs are scavengers by nature and we all know the gross things they delight in getting themselves into without lasting harm. Do not be misled, however. Being a carnivore does not mean feeding an all-meat diet. Raw vegetables, fruits and other supplements are also part of the diet. Variety is essential. Nature has evolved carnivores to obtain needed nutrients by eating other animals, including their muscle meat, organs and stomach contents. Quite a perfect balance, actually. Does this mean we should toss our Westies a live rabbit at dinnertime? To their disappointment, no, but the concept of feeding raw foods can be met just the same in a homemade diet. The fact that DOGS are domesticated (and have been for at least 14,000 years or longer) does not mean that their digestive systems or nutritional needs have changed, although I suspect the majority of dogs being fed kibbles over the years have developed "weaker" digestive systems. The good news is - it is possible to get a healthy and strong digestive system back. While the outward appearance of dogs has been altered by human intervention, the "inside" is still what nature designed. It's nice to know there are some things we can't mess up right away! So, What About Kibbles. Why Are They So Wrong To Feed? In Ann Martin's eye-opening book, Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food, she writes that the pet food industry has been in existence for more than one-hundred years, but has only gained real success since the 1950's. America's food giants found a lucrative market for disposal of their by-products. These commercial dog food products have become the fancy's standard. Why? I personally suspect convenience for the consumer and profits for the dog food manufacturer. So, where does the benefit to our dogs come into the equation? Think about it. Dogs have been thriving for millions of years on a species-appropriate raw food diet, including raw meaty bones, and then some human comes along and says, hey, let's change the diet of dogs and start feeding them cooked grains and cereals. Throw in a little animal protein, fillers, chemicals and presto.. ..the "new" diet for dogs. How logical is that? What about this scenario? Tomorrow some individual will say, hey, because it will be very convenient for all the busy people, and, it will be quite profitable, too, we're going to market freeze-dried, processed people food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and snacks in ready to serve containers. O.K. you don't like it dry or cold? Add a little tap water and nuke it in the microwave and presto - the new diet for Homo sapiens. You will no longer eat a variety of fresh veggies or fruits. Forget that cheesecake or apple pie, and fried chicken is a thing of the past. From now on, convenient, pre-packaged, chemical preserved processed foods (with a shelf life of 6 months of more) will be how you get your nutrition. And, please don't worry. The nutritionists, scientists, medical doctors and people food processing companies have worked hard to be sure all the necessary percentages of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats are included in these "100% balanced" foods, and for all stages of your life. Far fetched? Look at your dog and tell him or her that! Not much difference except the species. Chances are this won't happen to us, so why do we let it happen to the pets we love so much and at a heavy cost to their long-term health? Are processed pet food products convenient? Absolutely. Can they sustain life? Sure, but not very well and at what cost? Not only are they composed of chemicals and inferior, poor grade and questionable ingredients but primarily they are not raw "live" foods that carnivores (our little Westies) require for optimum health. And, they are cooked! So, what's wrong with that? Many things. We know that cooking not only changes the molecular structure of food, but heat binds food molecules tighter together, making them more difficult to digest and thus, longer to digest which requires more of the animal's energy. Heat also destroys vital enzymes, heat-sensitive vitamins, trace elements, amino acids (building blocks of protein and necessary to life), and deforms protein. The destruction of enzymes forces the pancreas to work harder. This is why processed foods are appropriately called, "dead food" and why it is beneficial to add an enzyme supplement if feeding cooked foods. It is reported today that many veterinarians are seeing illnesses that they recognize as diet-related. How can this be if processed dog food products are so good? In Pet Allergies, Alfred Plechner, DVM, states his belief that commercial pet foods are a primary cause of allergies and can contribute to a host of health problems. Some of these are periodontal and gum disease (regular tartar buildup), digestive problems, cancer, pancreatitis, arthritis, obesity and heart and kidney disease. Pottenger's Cats A fascinating experiment of feeding cooked food diets vs. raw food diets was conducted from 1932 - 1942 by Francis Pottenger, Jr. MD. Dr. Pottenger served as President of the Los Angeles County Medical Association, the American Academy of Applied Nutrition, and the American Therapeutic Society. His strictly controlled study involved 900 cats and was conducted with the most rigorous scientific standards of the day. Dr. Pottenger observed a startling contrast in health between cats fed a cooked food diet and cats fed a raw food diet. The group fed a cooked diet deteriorated in health and by the third generation, they could no longer reproduce. These cats suffered from allergies, skin problems, behavior problems, parasites, skeletal deformities, organ malfunctions (including those of the heart, thyroid, kidney, liver, etc.) and inflammation of the nervous system. Contrast to the cats fed a diet of raw foods. They not only thrived in good health but they reproduced easily, and the kittens were uniform in size and vigorous. For a brief article about Dr. Pottenger's research, go to http://www.westielovers.com/arf4westies, scroll down to Informative Articles, Websites and FAQs and click on Pottenger's Cats - A Study in Nutrition, or you can purchase the book of the same title for the full text. Digestive Leukocytosis In CJ Poutinen's excellent book, The Encyclopedia of Natural Pet Care, she writes of a fascinating phenomenon. In the 1930s, the French chemist Paul Kouchakoff discovered that as soon as cooked or processed food is tasted, white blood cells rush to the intestines. This phenomenon, called digestive leukocytosis, disrupts the immune system; and the body regards cooked food as a pathogen (invader) and works hard to destroy it. When raw food is eaten first, the white blood cells remain in place. The implications of leukocytosis are that every time white blood cells flock to the intestines to deal with cooked food, the rest of the body is left undefended. This continual assault meal after meal, day after day, year after year, put considerable strain on the immune system. Raw foods leave the white bloods cells free for other tasks, thus saving the body considerable effort while strengthening its resistance to disease. Since the body responds to the first bite of food, it's sensible to begin every meal with a taste of something raw. This is good advice for us, as well as our pets. Therefore, if you feed cooked foods, give your pet a raw food first, such as a piece of carrot or fruit. Come On ... Dog Food Can't Be That Bad. From the leading brands with all their big-budget advertising, to the cheap-o brands, the ingredients in dog food products and where they come from have caused a new revolt to emerge among informed dog owners. Questions are being asked, but the pet food industry is not answering them. Do YOU really know what goes into processed dog foods? Unfortunately, the majority of consumers are not privy to these horrific facts. Many veterinarians are just as uneducated and no bureaucratic agency cares. Why is it the media has not blown the lid off the pet food industry? The bottom-line - because of the billions of dollars in profit at stake and the pet food industry is pretty much self-regulated. Do pet food manufacturers really care about the health of your pet? In my opinion, they don't. Why would they? But our veterinarians recommend these foods! It is a known fact that dog food companies provide many scholarships to veterinary students and are high profile sponsors of many AKC events, contributing handsomely to various programs and research. It is also a known fact that little is taught to veterinary students about nutrition. In Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food, author Ann Martin queried a number of veterinary colleges and found that they provide a short course in nutrition, usually a week or two, over the four or five years a student attends veterinary school. Most of these nutrition courses are taught by a nutritionist from a pet food company! Veterinary colleges also receive grants from the pet food industry. What's A Rendering Plant? Is It Pretty Like A Daisy? Again, do you really know what goes into kibble? Remember the saying, "what you don't know won't hurt you"? Well, it may not be hurting you directly, but you can bet it is hurting your pet. Each year in the United States, 286 rendering plants quietly dispose of more than 12.5 million tons of dead animals, fat and meat wastes. The majority of the public remains blissfully unaware of their existence. Rendering is the process of cooking raw animal material to remove the moisture and fat. What comes from this process in the way of fats and meat and bone meal, are sold as livestock feed and go to pet food companies to be made into kibble and canned foods. Rendering plants' process: decomposing animal carcasses condemned parts and animals rejected for human consumption, including "4-D" animals: dead, diseased, dying and disabled. bones, blood, pus, intestines, bowels, ligaments, subcutaneous fat, hooves, horns, beaks, and cancerous material cut away from the carcass, styrofoam packaging containing spoiled meat from supermarkets (my cousin, a meat cutter in supermarkets for over 20 years, confirms this). The meats and fish that are spoiled or not sold are thrown into a receptacle, and a rendering company is paid to come and haul it away. In Earth Island Journal, it is reported that the styrofoam trays and shrink wrap are also included as no one has time for the tedious chore at the rendering plant of unwrapping thousands upon thousands of rejected meat-packs. ear tags, spoiled slaughterhouse meat, road kill, rats, horses, zoo animals, maggots on carcasses and euthanized dogs and cats. What! Wait a minute! Euthanized dogs and cats? Someone's pet? A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (Feb. 19, 1990) presented evidence that dead pets from animal clinics and shelters are carted away to be rendered - with their name tags and flea collars intact! Most of these pets are euthanized with poisonous drugs that are not eliminated during the cooking process. Oh, let's not forget the rancid grease from restaurants added to this "pot of poison." To prevent condemned meat from being rerouted and used for human consumption, government regulations require that meat be "denatured" before removal from the slaughterhouse and shipped to rendering plants. According to federal meat inspection regulations, fuel oil, kerosene and crude carbolic acid are highly toxic substances approved for denaturing materials. Now stand back and watch as these prime ingredients are dumped into a giant pit where an auger-grinder at the bottom begins to turn, popping bones and squeezing flesh. Then the mass is cut into small pieces, shredded and cooked at 280 degrees. Meat is melted away from bones and fat and yellow grease or tallow rises to the top and is skimmed off. What is left is pressed to remove all moisture and crushed into "bone meal" or "meat, poultry or lamb meal." Meat and by-products are the unrendered parts of the animal left over after slaughter, everything deemed unfit for human consumption. For kibbles, ingredients are mixed together with water or steam, pushed through a machine called an extruder which gives the food its shape, then cooked at high temperatures and dried. To make the food more palatable to your pet, fats - often the tallow separated during the rendering process - is sprayed on after the food is dried. Canned food is made from raw ingredients ground up with additives and preservatives. "Chunky" canned foods are run through an extruder to produce the look of natural meats. Sodium nitrate is added to many canned meat products in order to make the product retain color. Dr. Wendell O. Belfield, author of How to Have A Healthier Dog, states that since 1963, scientists have known that nitrite can combine with digestive food and agricultural chemicals to form nitroso compounds, many of which cause cancer in laboratory animals! If you thought that dog food companies use the best cuts of meats and ingredients, think again. Clever advertising gives the consumer the feeling that their pets are being fed food made from quality ingredients. Those lovely pictures of prime steak or chicken are for your benefit. Do not be fooled! This is not what is put into dog food. For some eye opening information (not for the faint of heart) read Polluted Pet Food, referred to by Wendell. Benefits of ARF Do I trust the pet food industry? No. Do I feed their products? Never again. I'd like to share some of the documented benefits and my own observations over the years since feeding an ARF diet to my Westies. stronger disease and parasite resistance healthier skin and coat (many skin problems of dogs have cleared up on an ARF diet alone) improved digestion clean and healthy teeth and gums and no regular dental cleanings needed no tartar - raw MEATY bones are nature's toothbrush elimination of bad breath AND body odor stools are small and odorless, not large, smelly and frequent as when fed kibbles healthy anal sacs healthy ears higher activity levels, especially in geriatric dogs excellent weight and lean, muscular body condition higher rate of reproductive success for bitches and stud dogs robust puppies whelped and whelping time short the pure satisfaction of choosing the quality of foods to feed to my Westies What does this translate to? Healthier dogs, resulting in fewer and/or no veterinary bills. For me, it was easy to take a step backward in order to go forward. I now find great delight in watching each generation of "natural rearing puppies" grow into robust, happy and truly healthier Westies. Since 1996, I have whelped two litters from bitches fed a raw food diet. Recently, I watched my second 100% ARF litter come into the world. The difference was that the bitches were also fed raw meaty bones. I was truly amazed that the girls whelped effortlessly. Contractions were strong and productive and few were needed before a whelp was produced. There was little discharge throughout the whelping process and both came away in more excellent weight and beautiful condition than when they were fed kibbles. Puppies were robust and of good weight and the umbilical cords were strong. Great improvements have been seen in my whelping box. I believe that we, as guardians, are at a crossroads and important decisions are facing us when it comes to our dogs' long-term wellness. Be open-minded and seek out the facts and then decide for yourself what makes sense to you, and ultimately what will be healthiest for your Westies. Think long-term. Just because your Westies seem to be doing fine now, don't stop educating yourself and researching. Consider the fact that our smaller dogs should be living well into their late teens! Don't do something just because of slick advertising or because your veterinarian said so. It took losing my Westie, Summer, to wake me up. As Marina Zacharias says, listen to what everyone has to say and then think for yourself! As a breeder and guardian of Westies since 1964, I have competed my Westies in conformation, obedience and earthdog trials. There is nothing more important today, I believe, than to raise Westies that are genetically and physically healthier. Physical attributes and performance, champions and ribbons won't matter if a dog develops an illness or a disease or dies young. Today, I am observing that health is the primary concern of many families seeking a Westie as a family companion. They don't want a puppy with allergies, either. In my opinion, true wellness is attainable if breeders will seek out the facts, think for themselves, and make the commitments. Then, pass that knowledge along to those who become guardians of your puppies. Sticking one's head in the proverbial sand will not help our pets. I invite you to start your journey today. Learn about rendering plants and what goes into processed pet foods. Open your mind and you too will understand how logical it is to feed raw foods. Believe that the decisions for your pets' long-term wellness are in your hands, no one else's. Give your Westie the longest and healthiest future possible, just like Jane is doing. Read Jane's story in Part 3.
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