March 2005
Letters: 03/05
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Gluten-Free Canine Diets
Does your dog suffer from allergies, joint pain, epilepsy, recurrent ear infections, or other chronic health problems? Have you tried lots of treatments – alternative and conventional – but you just can’t seem to help your dog get well and stay that way? You might want to look a little closer at the diet recommendations of John Symes, DVM.
The Canine Digestion Process
Subscribers Only Digestion involves the balanced interaction of several biodynamic systems. A healthy animal ingests raw materials (food), changes these raw materials into usable nutrients, extracts from these nutrients the essentials for life and vitality, and excretes (in the form of feces) those substances that have not been digested or that weren’t utilized.
What Different Dog Barks Mean
Subscribers Only While dogs are primarily body language communicators, they also use their voices to share information with other members of their social group. Compared to their wild brethren, however, our domesticated dogs use their voices far more – a tendency we have genetically encouraged. We’ve created herding breeds, including Shelties, Border Collies, Welsh Corgis, and others, who use their voices when necessary to control their flocks. We’ve bred scent hounds to give voice when they are on the trail of prey.
Does Your Dog Have Gas?
It is normal for dogs to have an occasional bout of gas. But it is not normal for flatulence to occur all the time. Flatulence can be relieved quickly in dogs by use of simethicone, the same anti-foaming drug that is marketed for humans in a variety of over-the-counter preparations. Simethicone is generally accepted as safe for dogs, even in human-sized doses. However, there may be some drawbacks to the use of Gaviscon, Gas-X, or any other simethicone product in your dog.
What Should Your Dog Eat?
Subscribers Only Few topics excite the passions of dog lovers as much as food. Should dogs eat meat? Bones? Fruits? Vegetables? Grains? Dairy? Should their food be commercially prepared? Home-prepared? Raw? Cooked? Fresh? Frozen? Should dogs eat what people eat? What dogs in the wild eat? Whatever the choice, is it safe? Is it dangerous? For thousands of years, domesticated dogs ate whatever their humans fed them plus whatever they could find on their own. No one worried about fat/protein ratios, the role of carbohydrates, or how much calcium is too much.
Gut Check
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