|  They
Are What We Feed Them
What to Offer?
Early on in my career as a holistic veterinarian,
I had very little to offer my new clients, who came seeking natural
solutions for health challenges in their animals. I had no special
training in those days. All I knew were drug treatments and surgery,
and these animals had often been through one or both without improving
their health in any real sense. Their owners were wanting something
better.
So, I began to study. My first eye-opening text
was Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs
and Cats, by Richard and Susan Pitcairn. I devoured it, and saw
that it’s principles made sense. It still occupies the top
of my Recommended Resources
List.
The First Step
I now had something substantial to offer my clients seeking natural
care for their animals -- a raw diet. Often, with only that nutritional
change, animals would get better from a variety of complaints, especially
skin problems and ear infections that recurred frequently. Watching
their response, it became obvious that they had been suffering from
malnutrition. They were starving in the midst of plenty. Though
these creatures never had days without food,
what they were being fed was not meeting
their nutritional needs in a fundamental, health building way.
I brought Dick and Jane into the picture several
years ago to bring this understanding across in a lighthearted way,
in SeeSpotGlow.com
and SeePuffShine.com.
What they learned from a visit to me with Spot and Puff was that
commercial foods were not necessarily the best choices for keeping
their beloved pets healthy. In fact, even expensive, veterinarian
recommended pet foods were very likely to be toxic and harmful.
By switching to an all-natural food with human quality ingredients,
they were due to see good changes in Spot and Puff.
Making the Grade: The
B+ Plan
What Dick and Jane had been doing was feeding a C- or D diet, even
though their veterinarian had recommended it. I was bringing them
up to a version of what I call the B+
Plan: a healthy prepared food that addressed
the issues inherently wrong with commercial food. In the plan I
call B+, you feed
a base of all natural, Flint
River Ranch Super Premium Pet Food with added
raw food (Why?)
and some lively ingredients called enzymes
and probiotics. This is easy for anyone to
do at home, even those busy raising families or those in two income
working households. It is the plan 90% of my clients have adopted,
and they have seen substantial improvements in their animals’
health from feeding this way.
.
Top of the Class: The A+ Plan
The A+ Plan, a balanced raw food diet,
beats the previous plan, but is not for everyone. Time after time,
I’d recommend it and get the same response: “You know,
Dr. Falconer, I’m lucky to get balanced meals on the table
for my family on a regular basis, I just don’t have time for
this!” For those who do, bravo! I see the greatest health
in the small handful of my many clients who opt for this path. In
fact, I rarely see these animals, unless they are dealing with injury
or coming by for an occasional check up. They are truly healthy!
How to do the A+ Plan? Get a book from the Recommended
Resources List to guide you. For dogs, "Give Your Dog A
Bone", by Ian Billinghurst, or Dr. Pitcairn’s book, mentioned
above. For cats, I have a very simple way to feed raw balanced food,
the Feline Raw
Meat Diet.
If you live in the Austin area, a great resource for do-it-yourself raw feeding is here: http://texasraw.org/index.html. Many big cities now have coops where people band together to get raw ingredients to make their own raw pet food while saving money. One in the Austin area is here: http://www.arfcoop.org/
 The
Payoff
What you’ll find, after feeding one of these healthy plans
for a few weeks or a month, will be quite amazing. Your animals
will look and feel better. It will be obvious, especially if you
are feeding a so-called premium pet food, or one bought from the
pet store or grocery store. Even pets on veterinarian recommended
pet foods (from companies that should know better!) will show nice
improvements in a number of areas once they make the switch.
Common things I see in this period of time are: more energy, improved
stool odor and consistency, less shedding, less itching, less ear
wax and eye discharges, and more shine and pleasant smell to the
coat. And these things continue to improve over time, as the body,
now fed clean and efficient fuel, works better.
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