Having a solid library of canine literature, or at least a shelf or two full of good books, is a great hedge against making uninformed decisions about your dog’s health. Of course, a trip to your veterinarian is your first line of defense when something is obviously wrong with your dog. But we suggest hitting the books for information before and after vet visits.
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A good canine health handbook can help you interpret what your vet tells you, give you ideas for further questions to ask, bolster your argument for a different type of treatment, and give you a list of invaluable home healthcare practices you can put into place to speed your dog’s recovery – or better yet, prevent problems in the first place.
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One challenge is finding health-oriented texts that are not dogmatic in their insistence on conventional medical approaches to the exclusion (if not derision) of all else. I’ve seen complementary and alternative approaches succeed where conventional medicine has failed too many times to throw the puppy out with the bathwater. The canine health books highlighted here take a truly holistic, inclusive approach to animal healthcare.
I have several $300 veterinary textbooks on my office shelves for reference and fact-checking articles, but it’s amazing how frequently I find the answers I am looking for in the following books!
Caring For Your Dog, by Bruce fogle, dVM. 2002, dk Publishing, inc. 448 pgs.
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Only conventional medical approaches are discussed in this book, but it’s the most complete, well-researched, and well-illustrated general dog health book I’ve seen. Hundreds of color photos and medical illustrations help owners visualize the conditions and anatomy discussed. Amazingly, Dr. Fogle is refreshingly not hostile to home-prepared diets.
And no kidney stone goes unturned! The book contains at least a bit of helpful information about every medical condition I’ve ever needed to look up.
The Complete Holistic Dog Book, by Jan allegretti and katy Sommers, dVM. 2003, celestial arts. 372 pgs.
This book succinctly and convincingly describes the benefits (and basics) of a healthy lifestyle and holistic healthcare for dogs. Healthy diets and complementary modalities (acupuncture,
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chiropractic, homeopathy, and herbal medicine) are described and indications for their best use are suggested. The section on the “holistic medical chest” will be useful to owners who are new to providing safe, effective home treatments for their dogs.
The Pet Lover’s Guide to Natural Healing for Cats & Dogs, by Barbara fougère, BVSc. 2006, elsevier inc. 628 pgs.
The design of this book is a little odd, but once you get past this superficial aspect, you’ll discover a wealth of suggestions on conventional and complementary treatments for numerous health conditions. Home-prepared diets and supplements are discussed in depth, and overall, Dr. Fougère’s treatment philosophies closely complement ours! As the title suggests, feline care is covered, too.
The Encyclopedia of Natural Pet Care, by cJ Puotinen. 2000, McGraw-hill. 544 pgs.
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My copy of this book (pictured above) is a first edition; a newer edition was published in 2000. Written by longtime Whole Dog Journal contributor CJ Puotinen, this book is calm, warm, and encouraging. It gently helps inspire owners to take increasing responsibility for their animal companions’ health, through improved diet and less-toxic care practices. Puotinen describes opportunities for owners to use flower essences, herbs, supplements, and hands-on therapies to make a palpable improvement in their dogs’ health. The book also includes interviews with a number of high-profile holistic veterinarians.
Holistic Guide for a Healthy Dog, by Wendy Volhard and kerry Brown, dVM. 2000, howell Book house. 314 pgs.
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Wendy Volhard was one of the pioneers of home-prepared diets for dogs, and is still considered a guru for those feeding a certain type of diet. She and Dr. Brown are strong proponents of grains in canine diets, which may not jibe with other authorities’ opinions, but the authors do have decades of experience and terrific results behind them.
Sections on less-mainstream modalities such as kinesiology and homeopathy are well-described. The section on thyroid and adrenal abnormalities and treatments for these conditions is worth the price alone.
Hound Health Handbook, by Betsy Brevitz, dVM. 2004, Workman Publishing. 468 pgs.
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Only conventional medical care is recommended in this book, so you have to take suggestions on diet and vaccinations with a grain of sea salt. But Dr. Brevitz’s descriptions of the causes and symptoms of so many medical problems earns this book a place on our shelf. Also, we applaud her inclusion of a chapter on mental health and behavior problems; many veterinarians fail to consider these as “health” issues, even though the problems are responsible for the loss of millions of dogs’ lives (through euthanasia). A list of common physical health problems endemic in an alphabetical list of breeds is another highly valuable tool.
Help Your Dog Fight Cancer, by laurie kaplan. 2004, Jan-Gen Press. 120 pgs.
Obviously, this book is not a general health guide. But the author does such a thorough job in describing the total care program needed to help her dog through a long fight with cancer, that literally every type of healthcare is discussed.
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Kaplan discusses diagnostic tools, various cancer treatments conventional and alternative), how to interpret lab tests, and how to communicate with veterinarians and make informed medical (decisions. She also does an especially good job of describing (and illustrating with photos!) how she formulated and prepared a homemade “anticancer” diet for her dog (who, by the way, outlived his diagnosis by years).
– Do some research before adding a new species to your family, so you can make adoption choices that have the greatest likelihood of success.
– Recruit friends and family to assist you in orchestrating careful introductions.
– If your animal companions already have undesirable associations with each other, commit to a training and behavior modification program to create peaceful relationships.
– Use fail-safe management protocols to protect everyone.
You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “fighting like cats and dogs.” As well-known as the saying is, it’s also an often inaccurate one. Millions of dog lovers share their hearts and homes with feline family members with nary a scratch between the species.
On the other paw, stories of dogs killing cats are fact, not fiction, and many unfortunate Rowdy Rovers have suffered ulcerated corneas, scratched nose leathers, and infected puncture wounds from Tough Tiggers who decided that “fight” was a better strategy than “flight.” What determines the difference between Fido and Fluffy amicably sharing the sofa and one or both ending up at the emergency clinic – or worse?
The media likes to play up stories about personality differences between “cat lovers” and “dog lovers,” but many of us are both. We may also fill our lives with one or more small animal companions including rabbits, rats, ferrets, guinea pigs, iguanas, fish, finches, macaws, and a multitude of other creatures. It’s our responsibility and obligation as their guardians to ensure that they have a safe, reasonably low-stress environment in which to live – sometimes a large challenge when we’re asking predator and prey species to live in harmony. Whether the multi-species household is one big happy family or not depends on reasonable pet adoption decisions, careful introductions, good management, dog training and behavior modification, and a little – or a lot – of luck.
Sensible Adoption Selections and Careful Introductions
When we found our Scottish Terrier running loose in Chattanooga as a stray at age seven months, we were impressed with how well he adapted to our household. Despite warnings from other Scotty owners about the breed’s propensity for attacking cats, Dubhy couldn’t have been better behaved with our two geriatric felines. However, a year later we brought home an eight-week-old stray kitten, and Dubhy came close to committing kitty mayhem when we foolishly assumed he’d be fine with her. Perhaps we were unwise to keep Dubhy if we wanted to be able to adopt future cats safely, or perhaps it was the choice to bring home a new kitten that was foolish.
Lulled into a false sense of complacency because Dubh was so good with our adult cats, I ignored the sound advice I give so often to others about carefully orchestrated introductions, and walked into the house with the foundling kitten in my arms. (The right way to accomplish this is detailed in “Carefully Orchestrated Introductions,” below.) Five dogs charged up to me in greeting, and the kitten did a classic Halloween cat imitation, complete with arched back, bottlebrush tail, and alarmingly loud hissing and spitting. While our other four dogs backed off in awe and respect, this highly arousing stimulus immediately turned on Dubhy’s “fierce predator” switch.
Had we introduced Viva to the dogs one at a time, at a distance, with the canines carefully restrained, she probably would have reacted much more calmly, and Dubhy might never have “turned on” to her. Feeding treats to dogs and cat at the same time might have helped create an “other species makes yummy treats happen!” association. Once the predatory association was made, however, it was too late to un-ring the bell. We would have to work to repair the damage.
To maximize your chances for harmony between species, it’s smart to select individuals who have a high likelihood for compatibility. Since terriers were originally bred to rid barns, homes, and fields of unwanted rodent pests, it may be unwise to adopt a rat – or even a cat – as a pet, unless you are prepared to do a significant amount of very careful management – or you know your Parsons Russell Terrier well enough to be confident that he’s not a typical representative of his breed and won’t present a serious risk to Ricky Rat.
It’s also smart to select younger, rather than older. If you want a dog who will be trustworthy around other small animal species, you’re generally better off starting with a pup and raising him to know only appropriate behavior around other animals. It’s much more challenging to change inappropriate behaviors and associations in an adult dog than it is to create appropriate ones initially in a young dog. Alternatively, to keep life simple you can choose to adopt a dog who has a known history of living peacefully with other types of animals.
Of course there are exceptions to the species-compatibility rule. Decades ago my very gentle torti-tabby cat, Tofu, lived in perfect harmony in my bedroom with my breeding pair of canaries and their clutch of nestlings. She never even cast yearning glances at them. Long before I knew anything about behavior modification, I was proud of my success in getting predator and prey to live together peacefully.
Truth be told, this was more a case of luck – Tofu was a very nonpredatory cat – than any skill on my part. I looked forward to a long and happy canary-raising hobby – until the day my roommate’s cat accidentally got shut in the room. When I returned from work at the end of the day I was devastated to find only beaks and claws scattered about the carpet. I had failed my vulnerable charges.
When you’re contemplating adding a new family member, be wise. If your dog has a history of killing cats in your backyard, a feline may not be the best choice for you, especially if you intend to let your cat outside (not something I recommend, but that’s a different discussion). On the other hand, some dogs who chase – and kill – cats outdoors can live safely with their own cats indoors, where the cats are less likely to run and thus trigger the predatory response. Still, it’s a greater compatibility risk than a dog who shows no desire to chase/attack cats.
Good Pet Management
I thought I was doing a darned good job of managing the risks to my tiny avian family’s safety. I was wrong – and they paid for it with their lives. Fortunately we did a far better job of managing Dubhy’s behavior with the eight-week-old kitten who triggered his hardwired Terrier prey behavior. We expect Viva, now age three, to live a long and happy life with us. She and Dubhy are fast friends these days, no management necessary.
Good management requires effective barriers (doors, baby gates), sturdy containment units (crates, pens), restraint (leashes, tethers), and unwavering supervision (your eyeballs and awareness). However, all of your management tools are only as good as your ability to ensure their use. A moment’s lapse can result in beaks and feathers instead of warm breathing beings, and sooner or later there’s likely to be a lapse.
If your children (or roommates) aren’t good at heeding your warnings to keep doors closed, or if your talented canine can open doors, you might need to add self-closing springs, child-proof latches and/or padlocks to your list of management tools. You’re likely to be more successful in the long run commingling species if you combine a foolproof management plan with an effective program of training and behavior modification.
Good Pet Training
After taking emergency management precautions with our new kitten, I set to work creating the associations I should have arranged from the start. I did a boatload of counter-conditioning, feeding high-value treats nonstop when Viva was in Dubhy’s presence, quietly restraining him if he lunged at the tiny cat (I’ll describe how to conduct counter-conditioning and desensitization sessions in a moment). By the end of the first session Dubhy was lying at my feet, not taking his eyes off the kitten, and happily munching treats.
The next day my husband was hospitalized, and I had neither the energy nor the heart to work on the Dubhy/kitten relationship. I kept them separated while I divided my energies between hospital, home, and training center.
Five days later, I was ready to address the challenge again, and prepared for another difficult evening. With Viva safely on the back of the sofa, I brought Dubhy into the room. Bless his little Scottish heart, he was clearly excited to see the kitten again, but he looked at her, then laid down on the floor at my feet and looked up at me, clearly saying “Okay, where’s my treat?”
The rapid progress continued over the next few sessions. There were tears in my eyes at the conclusion of session five as I watched Dubhy and Viva lying together on the sofa, with the tiny black feline occasionally taking a playful swipe at Dubhy’s nose with her paw, and Dubhy declining to take offense. Even when she raced across the room, a sure trigger for a predatory chase, Dubhy controlled himself – key: controlled himself – I didn’t have to say a word. He jerked forward as if to take off after her, then thought better of it, settled back onto his blanket and looked at me. And yes, he got a big delicious treat jackpot!
Counter-Conditioning and Desensitization
We talk about the process of counter-conditioning and desensitization (CC&D) a lot in Whole Dog Journal articles. That’s because it’s such an effective behavior modification tool that it can be applied successfully in an almost endless number of behavior challenges.
All living things – at least those with a central nervous system – learn and respond to their environment through two primary pathways: classical (or respondent) conditioning and operant conditioning.
With operant conditioning, the dog operates on the environment. That is, the dog does deliberate behaviors in an effort to make good stuff happen and bad stuff go away. For example, your dog chooses to offer a sit because he knows there’s a good chance it will result in you paying attention to him and perhaps feeding him a tasty treat.
With classical conditioning, the environment operates on the dog, triggering a response as a result of a prior association between two stimuli in the dog’s experience. Something happens in the dog’s world and the dog has an emotional and/or biological response.
For example, your dog hears the “click!” of the clicker and starts to salivate because his brain has made the association between the click! and the arrival of a yummy morsel. He doesn’t have to think, doesn’t have to decide to salivate – it just happens. He also wags his tail and gets happy – all automatic responses because of his association between click! and treat.
A dog’s desire to chase something that moves is an innate, hardwired behavior; it doesn’t have to be learned. It is certainly stronger in some dogs than others, due to genetic influence. We have intentionally bred some dogs to be more turned on by movement than others; herding dogs, terriers, and sighthounds leap to mind. Still, it’s the association between the presence of the cat and the dog’s experience that cats often run away that make the feline a high-arousal chase object.
We use counter-conditioning to change the association with a stimulus. If we can replace the “cat = rousing game of chase/kill” association with “cat = totally delicious treat from human” association we have “countered” the prior association with the new one. (In Australia I heard it called “reverse conditioning,” which makes a lot of sense.)
Classical and counter-conditioning are both happening all the time. When you click and treat your dog for sitting, operant conditioning happens. The dog learns that he can sit to get you to click the clicker, so he sits more often. He’s also associating the sound of the click with food, and associating training in general with good stuff – having fun with you and eating treats.
However, when your dog is in the throes of a strong emotional response – high arousal, fear, great excitement – operant conditioning goes out the window. This means that when your dog is barking and lunging at your cat, or chasing your ferret madly through the house, he is unable to respond to your cues to come or lie down. It’s not that he’s deliberately ignoring you; he truly can’t think clearly enough to register and act on your cue.
That’s why changing the dog’s emotional response is a much more effective way to modify his behavior than yelling at him, or asking him to perform an operant behavior. When his emotions are under control, then he can sit when you ask him to, but not before that. The sequence of events that is most likely to produce effective counter-conditioning is this:
1. Stimulus (cat) appears at sub-threshold distance, which is the distance at which the dog sees the cat and becomes alert but doesn’t start barking and lunging.
2. Owner begins feeding bits of high value treats to the dog as long as the cat is in view near threshold distance. (I like to use chicken for this as it is very high value for most dogs).
3. Cat disappears from view.
4. Owner stops feeding treats.
5. Repeat these four steps until when the cat appears, your dog looks at you with a big “Where’s my chicken?” grin on his face. We call this a “conditioned emotional response” or CER. When you have a consistent CER at your starting distance, you can decrease the distance slightly and repeat steps 1 through 4. Every time you obtain consistent CERs you can increase the intensity of the stimulus – bring the cat closer, have the cat move a little faster, introduce two cats . . .
The process of changing the association from inappropriate to appropriate is the counter-conditioning part. Increasing intensity of stimulus is the desensitization part. Done well, you end up with a dog and cat (or chinchilla, parrot, snake, tarantula) living safely together, just like Dubhy and Viva.
Combined Approach
Despite our stunning success in a very short time – who says positive methods take longer? – we continued to manage Dubhy with Viva by keeping them in separate rooms when we weren’t home to directly supervise, until the baby cat was six months old and better able to fend for herself. Viva’s healthy presence in our lives today is testimony to the effectiveness of our management and modification efforts.
Dubhy hasn’t lost one whit of his terrier gameness, however, as demonstrated recently. We share our farm with a fair number of black snakes, which is more than fine with me. I actually love snakes, and they are a big help with our resident wild rodent population. A few weeks ago I heard a Scottie commotion in the backyard while I was cleaning stalls in the barn. By the time I arrived to see what the fuss was about he had, much to my dismay, killed a six-foot black snake that was crossing the yard. Guess I won’t be keeping any snakes as pets in the near future!
If you combine basic good manners training with your program of counter-conditioning and desensitization you’re even further ahead. The better you and your dog can communicate to each other, the more effectively you’ll be able to control his behavior when the need arises.
Lucy, our Cardigan Corgi, is also fond of chasing cats, albeit from the herding dog “Whee, it’s fun to chase and round up things that move!” perspective rather from the terrier “KILL!” motivation. Although her motive is gentler, she is still capable of making the cats’ lives miserable. Counter-conditioning worked for her as well, but while Dubhy has completely given up any “kill” association with Viva, Lucy still yearns to chase our cats when they move. Her well-practiced “leave-it,” “come,” and “down” cues give us an added layer of insulation against inappropriate cat tormenting.
Carefully Orchestrated Introductions
Your chances of a successful multi-species relationship are best if you plan their introductions carefully. It’s rarely wise, although it sometimes works, to simply march in with a new family member and, in essence, “throw her to the wolves.” Far better to have both or all) nonhuman family members safely restrained and have the introduction be a positive classical conditioning experience or counter-conditioning if one or more of the participants have some prior association with the other’s species).
Here’s an example of a well-orchestrated introduction. For other species, substitute “other” for “cat” and figure out how to alter the process as appropriate. For example, “snake in tank” rather than carrier, and at some point human would hold the snake, rather than releasing her to roam around freely. Depending on participants, the processes described could take several weeks, or could occur all in one session.
PARTICIPANTS: Dog and Cat, 2 Humans
– Have cat in carrier.
– Place carrier on floor on far side of room.
– Enter with one dog on leash.
– Do classical conditioning (feed treats!) with both dog and cat at subthreshold distance until both are offering conditioned emotional responses (CERs) in the presence of the other.
– Decrease distance between dog and cat and repeat process to obtain CERs.
– When both are comfortable when the dog is in close proximity to the cat in her crate, return to the original distance and remove the cat from crate (but keep her restrained, ideally on harness and leash).
– Repeat CC&D process until dog and cat are comfortable in close proximity, both restrained.
– Return to original distance and release cat (dog is still restrained).
You will find that some species are more difficult to incorporate in the process as anything more than a silent presence. Because of the feeding habits of snakes, for example, it would be difficult to do CC&D with a snake as the dog enters the room and approaches the snake’s tank. In this case you may just have to settle for desensitization (becoming accustomed to the increasing intensity of the stimulus — the dog) without the classical conditioning (association) part.
Rehoming
There may come a time when you decide that it’s in the best interests of all concerned to remove one or more species from your household. This is a painful decision for any animal lover – and a very selfless one. It’s not easy to put the welfare of your cat, hamster, or cockatiel above your own emotional connection and feelings of commitment and responsibility. You may feel guilty that you perhaps haven’t done as much to make the situation work as you could – or should – have.
But with someone’s life is at risk, rehoming really is the best choice. This will give the at-risk pet a better chance for a long and happy life and remove much stress from your own home, thereby improving the quality of life for all your remaining family members, including yourself.
There must be millions of successful multi-species households, so chances are good that if you put your mind to it, you can make it work for yours. Take time to make wise adoption choices, orchestrate careful introductions, implement good management and training programs. If you do all this, you will likely succeed in your desire to turn your home into a peaceable kingdom, where lions lie down with lambs – or at least cats and dogs can live peacefully with canaries, rabbits, and boa constrictors.
Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, is Whole Dog Journal’s Training Editor. Miller lives in Hagerstown, Maryland, site of her Peaceable Paws training center. She is also the author of The Power of Positive Dog Training and Positive Perspectives: Love Your Dog, Train Your Dog.
Despite everything modern medicine has to offer, cancer remains among the most feared of canine diseases.
Just over a year ago, Whole Dog Journal reviewed conventional, complementary, and alternative cancer therapies in a series of articles (“Canine Cancer Crisis,” November 2005; “Conventional Cancer Care,” December 2005; “Don’t Despair, Just Care,” January 2006, and “What Are the Alternatives?” February 2006) Since then, a cancer vaccine has been approved for veterinary use and a new version of an old herbal salve has become a “first choice” for many holistic veterinarians. Here’s what’s new.
Melanoma vaccine Most vaccines are designed for prevention, but a new type is designed to treat active disease. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently approved such a vaccine for the treatment of canine melanoma.
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“Everything about this vaccine is unusual,” says Gerald Post, DVM, a Norwalk, Connecticut, veterinary oncologist and founder of the Animal Cancer Foundation. “In addition to being therapeutic rather than preventative, it contains human DNA. Injecting an animal with DNA from a different species can effectively stimulate an immune response that attacks cancer cells.”
The vaccine is a result of collaboration between human and veterinary oncologists at the Animal Medical Center in New York City, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, and the drug’s manufacturer, Merial.
Melanomas are usually solitary black tumors, and those appearing on the mouth or nail bed are usually malignant. Dr. Post understood the prospects all too well when, four years ago, he noticed a tiny lesion on one the toes of his own Miniature Schnauzer, Smokey.
“It was metastatic melanoma,” says Dr. Post. “When I saw the x-rays and biopsy report, I was devastated. It had already spread to his lungs, and the average survival time for dogs with this type of cancer is about three months.”
Smokey, who was 12½ years old at the time, was such a healthy, vibrant dog that Dr. Post worked frantically to save him.
“At that time the melanoma vaccine was still very new and experimental,” he says, “but I didn’t hesitate to try it as everyone I consulted agreed that it looked like our best hope. I was really pleased when he lived an additional two and a half years. The vaccine didn’t cure him, and eventually the tumor came back, but it gave him extra time and an excellent quality of life. The result was far more than I had dared to hope for when I first made the diagnosis.”
Dr. Post was particularly pleased because Smokey never experienced an adverse side effect. “In the beginning Smokey received the vaccine every two weeks for two months,” he says. “After that, he got it once a month or so. Smokey responded really well, and throughout his therapy, you would never know that anything was wrong or that he was under any kind of treatment.”
In this respect, Smokey was like most patients. “I’m loathe to say that no dog will ever have an adverse side effect,” says Dr. Post, “but adverse reactions are very, very rare. None of the 50 or more dogs that I sent to the Animal Medical Center to receive the vaccine over a period of four to five years experienced any adverse side effects that I’m aware of.”
According to Dr. Post, the ideal candidate for the melanoma vaccine is a dog whose condition is discovered early, before it metastasizes, when it can be well controlled locally. “Obviously,” he says, “the earlier you find the disease, the better. You don’t want to wait until it has spread.”
In March 2007, the USDA issued a conditional U.S. Veterinary Biological Product License for the vaccine. During the conditional licensure period, Merial will conduct additional research supporting the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness. During this time, it will be distributed by veterinary oncologists.
“I’m excited about the release of this vaccine,” says Dr. Post, “because it’s exactly the kind of medical breakthrough that the Animal Cancer Foundation was created to fund. It’s an innovative, novel therapy, it treats a really serious problem, it’s effective, and it helps not only dogs but people, too. The same technology that created the canine melanoma vaccine is being researched for human melanoma.”
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Neoplasene Our February 2006 article (“What Are the Alternatives?”) on alternative cancer treatments described bloodroot salves, also called black salves, which have been used in the treatment of many types of cancer in humans, dogs, cats, horses, cattle, and other animals. Salves containing bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) are red when first made but turn dark or black with age, hence their common name.
Herbal treatments are popular because they are inexpensive (or at least less expensive than conventional treatments) and they are usually gentle, easy to use, and unlikely to cause adverse side effects.
“Bloodroot salves are generally less expensive than chemotherapy or radiation,” says Deborah Cihonski, PhD, founder of a black salve Internet forum, “but that’s where their similarity to other herbal therapies ends. Bloodroot salves are rarely gentle, and I always recommend that a veterinarian supervise treatment.” Dr. Cihonski, a pediatric psychologist who lives in Tampa, Florida, and Chicago, first heard of black salves from her Chicago veterinarian, Kimberly Curtis, DVM, when her young cat, Piper, was being treated for vaccine-associated fibrosarcoma.
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“I had taken him to the University of Illinois veterinary oncology department,” she says, “and they said there wasn’t much they could do for his long-term survival. They suggested a very expensive treatment that involved leaving him there for nearly two months of radiation, chemo, and bone-removal surgery. This, they hoped, would allow him to live another three years at most.” Dr. Cihonski had lost several dogs to cancer after aggressive and heroic treatments. “These rarely worked out to anyone’s favor,” she says, “so I was open to alternatives for Piper.”
Piper had received several months of herbal therapy when Dr. Curtis mentioned hearing about black salve, which she thought might be helpful for him. Dr. Curtis discovered Neoplasene and consulted with its manufacturer, Terry Fox, PhD, at Buck Mountain Botanicals in Miles City, Montana.
Traditional black salves are made with zinc chloride, a caustic chemical that burns the skin. In contrast, Dr. Fox uses zinc chloride to make a highly ionic solvent with which he extracts bloodroot’s isoquinoline alkaloids. Although it is used in Neoplasene’s production, zinc chloride is not contained in the final product. Neoplasene’s bloodroot alkaloids comprise a small but vital portion of its ingredients. According to Dr. Fox, the isoquinoline alkaloids are modified in such a way as to cause diseased tissue to self-destruct preferentially, sparing healthy, normal non-cancerous tissue.
Four forms There are four Neoplasene products: Neoplasene salve (which is also known as Sarcoma #1) for topical application; Neoplasene oral; and two types of NeoplaseneX for intravenous use or injection directly into tumors.
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Dr. Curtis and Dr. Cihonski used Neoplasene salve to remove Piper’s tumor, then switched to oral Neoplasene to complete his treatment.
“We did the same thing with my pet chicken, who had major tumors that were very vascular,” says Dr. Cihonski. “We almost lost her in surgery so we had to explore other treatment options. The results were successful in both cases.”
Throughout her study of alternative cancer therapies, she kept wishing that Neoplasene had been available years ago, when her Rottweilers suffered from osteosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma, and malignant histiocytosis. “I kept thinking that this could have helped them when nothing else did.”
One year ago, Jackie, a three-year-old Jack Russell Terrier belonging to Dr. Cihonski’s mother, Phyllis Cihonski, developed a tumor on her foot. “It was diagnosed as a histiocytoma,” says Mrs. Cihonski. “These are most frequently benign and often disappear spontaneously. The only prescribed treatment was antibiotics for infection, and if necessary, the toe would be removed. I felt that treatment with the oral Neoplasene was preventative. Within days of beginning the treatment the tumor regressed and then disappeared. Jackie is a happy, active dog, and she still has all of her toes.”
Although the application of Neoplasene is easy, Dr. Cihonski warns that it is best used by an informed consumer with the assistance of an experienced veterinarian. “The results are simply beyond what most people expect,” she explains, “especially the topical salve. When a tumor falls off, it can leave a huge wound behind, and that can be very frightening. This was certainly true in the case of my own animals, whose wounds looked awful. However, the wounds never became infected even though I didn’t treat them with antibiotics or disinfectants. I just kept them clean and lubricated.”
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Lubricating salves or oils help speed healing and keep skin pliable.
It makes sense, says Dr. Cihonski, to start with oral Neoplasene because some tumors respond quickly, sparing patient and caregiver the inconvenience of extensive wound care. “You won’t know until you try what the results will be,” she says. “My chicken responded well to oral Neoplasene, but it did nothing for my cat. Some dogs get immediate results and others don’t. In some cases of very aggressive or advanced tumors, topical application is the best line of defense.
“In some cases,” she continues, “animal guardians have given their dogs oral, topical, or injected Neoplasene only to produce dramatic results that they did not consider positive. Some have stopped treatment altogether. The same is true for chemotherapy and radiation. When you’re dealing with cancer, you’re dealing with a serious, complicated illness. I wish there were a works-for-everything cancer treatment that is gentle, easy to use, 100 percent effective, entirely free from side effects, and painless, but if there is, I haven’t found it.”
For those interested in using Neoplasene, says Dr. Cihonski, the choice of treatment depends on the patient, the type of cancer, its location, and its stage of growth.
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“For example,” she says, “if you’re treating a squamous cell carcinoma in the mouth, you may not have time to give the oral dosing and wait to see what happens. Some tumors are so fast-growing that you can literally watch them increase in size from one day to the next. If you start with oral Neoplasene and don’t see results right away, you can switch to the topical salve, which works immediately. Multiple treatments are often required at 7- to 14-day intervals. The same is true for Neoplasene that’s injected into tumors.”
Clinical guide To help veterinarians use Neoplasene correctly and help their clients understand what to expect, Dr. Fox provides a clinical guide for the treatment of neoplasm (abnormal tissue growth or tumors), proud flesh (soft, swollen, granulated tissue that develops over large surface wounds, especially in horses), and warts. Instructions for use precede case histories from a dozen holistic veterinarians, complete with graphic photos.
Conventional cancer treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy often fail to remove or destroy active cancer cells while they simultaneously damage healthy, nonmalignant tissue.
“This often leads to failure,” says Dr. Fox, “and the stoic acceptance that all that can be done has now been done, and euthanasia or animal suffering is inevitable. What has been needed is a drug that causes the destruction of all neoplasm, preferentially sparing healthy cells. Neoplasene’s isoquinaline alkaloids appear to present just this effect.”
According to Dr. Fox, the active principle in bloodroot’s main alkaloid, sanguinarine, interacts with DNA while inhibiting adenosine triphosphatase. “These and other demonstrated mechanisms offer clues to the ‘how does it work on neoplasm?’ questions,” he says. “There is a functional relationship between the death of neoplastic cells and exposure to Neoplasene.”
The cases documented in Neoplasene’s clinical guide include sarcoma, melanoma, osteosarcoma, mammary tumors, malignant liposarcoma, mixed cell chest tumors, malignant fibrosarcoma, papilliferous cyst-adenocinoma, nerve sheath tumors, spindle cell carcinoma, and various other tumors and growths in dogs, cats, and horses. The graphic color photos that accompany the case studies put wound treatment warnings into perspective; this therapy is not for the faint of heart.
Not without side effects “I’ve been using Neoplasene for a year now,” says Linda Faris, DVM, of Overland Park, Kansas, “and I’m very impressed with the results. My preference is definitely for the oral product. This is a liquid that you place in a capsule just before giving it to the pet with food. I usually give my clients enough to treat their animals for a month and then check on their progress.”
Dr. Faris acknowledges that injectable NeoplaseneX and topical Neoplasene can be highly effective, but she approaches both with reservations. “I’ve used the injectable version with mixed results,” she says. “For a couple of my patients it proved too caustic, and they had anaphylactic reactions. These reactions seem linked to repeated exposure and individual sensitivities, but in general, I think the chances of having an adverse reaction are greater for the injectable or intravenous version. I’m also reluctant to use the topical salve because of resulting wound care management issues.”
The most common side effect that Dr. Faris’s patients experience with oral Neoplasene is nausea. “Some pets throw it up soon after they swallow it,” she says. “That’s the only adverse effect I’ve seen, and we either lower the dose or stop the treatment for those animals. In some cases, if we stop treatment for a while, we are able to start it back up with no problem.”
Occasionally, Neoplasene is Dr. Faris’s first choice for economic reasons. “Some clients are on such a tight budget,” she says, “that other treatments are just not affordable. Neoplasene isn’t free, but it’s far less expensive than conventional cancer therapies and most alternatives.”
One of her favorite success stories involves a small female Poodle with perineal adenocarcinoma that was impinging on her rectal canal. Thanks to oral Neoplasene, the tumor softened and shrank, and the dog is doing well.
“This was a serious case,” says Dr. Faris, “because the tumor was beginning to interfere with her ability to defecate. Within a month, the tumor had softened and changed shape, and with continued oral Neoplasene, it shrank. She’s now on a maintenance dose of a small amount three times a day, and sometimes she only gets it twice a day. The prescription is for one-third of a c.c. every eight hours, and that’s all this dog is on.”
Holistic treatment required For the dog’s caregivers, an effective treatment that’s easy to administer and costs only $40 per month is a blessing.
More typical of Dr. Faris’s patients is a Chow Chow with very advanced metastatic liver cancer. A multi-pronged approach is most effective in severe or advanced cases like hers.
“We’re using several different treatments, not just Neoplasene, to try to manage the cancer,” Dr. Faris says. “Last August the dog was given a 30-day prognosis, her condition was so serious. The surgeons who opened her up decided not to operate. Instead, they sent her home to die.
“Today, eight months later, you can’t tell she’s ever been sick. She honestly shows no symptoms. Her blood work is a mess, but you’d never know that by looking at her. She’s active, happy, and leading a perfectly normal life. She has had to go off the Neoplasene a couple of times because of digestive upsets, but she’s on it most of the time, along with Chinese herbs, glutathione therapy, alpha lipoic acid, liver support products like milk thistle, and a few other things.”
All of Dr. Faris’s cancer patients are on a no-grain diet that’s as low in carbohydrates as possible. “I find that really makes a difference,” she says.
Whenever she sees a cancer patient, Dr. Faris’s goal is to extend the animal’s life while improving the quality of that life. “Some dogs with cancer don’t come to me until they’re at end stage,” she says. “Unfortunately, I’m not able to do much except ease their transition. But those who come to me in time typically do very well.”
Spreading the word In addition to seeing her own patients, Dr. Faris consults with veterinarians around the world.
“In one case a woman in Great Britain got in touch with me because of an article I’d written about a case similar to that of her Northern Inuit. The dog had advanced histiocytic sarcoma, with large tumors that were actually rotting on her body. She had already been put on chemotherapy, but it made her so ill that they had to stop.
“Through the help of her local veterinarian, we were able to put the dog on Neoplasene and European mistletoe, another herb with cancer-fighting properties. That dog is a miracle. The tumors have all healed and regressed to nothing. Now, just a few months after she started treatment, you can’t tell she has cancer.”
For as long as people have been experimenting with black salves, some have taken them orally once or twice a year as a cancer prevention therapy. Dr. Faris considers a similar use of oral Neoplasene a sensible strategy for dogs at high risk of developing cancer or experiencing a recurrence.
According to Dr. Fox, since its introduction four years ago, over 2,000 veterinarians worldwide, most of them in the United States and Canada, have prescribed Neoplasene for their cancer patients. “Considering that a single jar of the salve will treat 80 cats or a large number of dogs,” he says, “this is a very affordable therapy.”
In August 2006, New York City veterinarian Jill Elliot, DVM, told the New York Post that Neoplasene was changing her medical practice. One of her patients, a 10-year-old Belgian Shepherd named Athos, had been given six months to live by oncologists who removed his cancerous tumor. Dr. Elliot combined conventional and homeopathic treatments to keep Athos in remission until July 2006, when a new tumor appeared.
Dr. Elliot injected the growth with NeoplaseneX, and almost immediately, the tumor began turning white. “About five hours later,” she said, “the sick tissue was literally dying and dripping off. This is so miraculous that I’m fully endorsing Neoplasene. With results like this, it’s worth devoting the rest of my practice to it.”
CJ Puotinen is author of The Encyclopedia of Natural Pet Care, Natural Remedies for Dogs and Cats, and other books. She lives in New York with her husband, a Labrador, and a tabby cat.
Who could have imagined a month ago how the pet food recall could implode like this?
This started in mid-March, when Menu Foods, a contract manufacturer of wet pet foods, announced it was recalling dozens of products containing wheat gluten, which was traced to a new source in China. A fortnight later, investigators identified a contaminant, melamine, a chemical used in plastics.
Once the source of the ingredient was known, investigators sought to locate every place the ingredient had ended up – and the pet food recall expanded as more products made with the contaminated wheat gluten were found. As we went to press with the May issue, it seemed possible that the contamination of wheat gluten was limited to a sole shipment, and the number of places where the ingredient was used was finite – if not yet fully identified.
Just days later, that idea was disproved, as a number of dry pet foods, biscuits, and treats were found to have been made with the Chinese wheat gluten. The recall expanded day by day.
Then, an even more frightening shift in the news occurred, as reports surfaced that both corn gluten and rice protein concentrate sourced from China had also been found to contain melamine.
The news was the number one topic of conversation at Petfood Forum, a trade association conference held in Chicago in mid-April. The experts seemed most shocked about the discovery of contaminated rice protein; this is considered a “quality” ingredient, expensive, and is not in wide use in mass market pet food like corn gluten or wheat gluten. Suddenly, even the makers of “super-premium” pet foods – who had no doubt been relieved previously that the problems seemed limited to a different segment of the market – were scrambling to trace and test their ingredient sources. The most frequent comment I heard at the conference was “it could happen to any one of us.”
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Each day has seen dozens more foods added to the recall list. The latest news, as this issue is going to press, is that hundreds of foods that don’t (according to their labels) contain any of the suspect ingredients are being recalled by Menu Foods (where they were manufactured) due to “cross contamination.”
Currently, there are thousands of recalled products – too many to list in our pages. Websites published by dog enthusiasts seem to offer the latest-breaking news of expanding recalls, including sites such as petfoodtracker.com, petconnection.com, and itchmo.com. If you don’t have internet access, contact the manufacturer of each of your dog’s foods and treats and ask if the products you have bought and fed to your pets have been recalled.
“An Open Secret” in China
On April 30, the New York Times broke the story wide open. Reporters for the paper visited chemical plants in northeast China that make melamine from coal – and sell it to companies that manufacture plant-based proteins.
The Times reporters learned that the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company, one of the companies that American regulators named as having shipped melamine-tainted wheat gluten to the United States, had posted ads on industry websites in China, looking for sources of melamine to use in their products.
The reporters also spoke to two animal feed producers who told them that the use of melamine in plant-protein products is common in China. Inclusion of the product in small amounts “fools” the tests used to determine the protein content in the ingredient, making it appear that the protein levels are greater than they actually are; the higher the protein, the higher its value, and the higher its profits.
What are they good for?
Many dog owners, reeling from the daily bad news, are still trying to figure out what plant-based proteins are doing in carnivore food –especially in high-priced, presumably top-quality foods.
Plant proteins are mainly used to boost the protein content of some pet foods, though they may also contribute other functions. As discussed in “Pet Food Disaster,” May 2007, wheat gluten is widely used to thicken and “bind” the processed “chunks” or “cuts” of ground and mixed meat and grain material (known as “meat analogue”) used in wet “cuts and gravy” food products.
Corn gluten is frequently used to complete the desired amino acid profile of the finished product in an economical way. Wheat gluten costs about two to three times as much as corn gluten.
Rice protein concentrate is considered a higher-quality plant protein than wheat gluten or corn gluten, as it contains more of the amino acids needed by dogs and cats and is more digestible. It’s generally more expensive than wheat gluten, and even costs more than some animal proteins.
In low-cost foods, plant proteins (especially the extremely inexpensive corn gluten) are frequently used as a less-expensive alternative to a higher inclusion of animal proteins.
In higher-end foods, plant proteins are sometimes included when a manufacturer is seeking to provide a sole source of animal protein in the product, but the species used cannot provide as much total protein as is desired in the formula. They may also be used when including more of the animal protein source would contribute too much of another nutrient, to potentially harmful levels.
This is often the case with lamb- or venison-based foods. Lamb and venison meal are lower-protein meals, with higher ash levels, and have a moderate risk of going rancid. Ash is present in these ingredients in proportion to the amount of bone included in the meal. Low-ash meals are available, but the price is very high. These meals are also very high in fat, which presents another problem for the formulator who is trying to increase the product’s protein without increasing the fat level too much.
This is why manufacturers will often supplement their lamb- or venison-based products with rice protein concentrate (which is higher in protein, lower in ash, and is a more stable product) to help achieve the desired protein levels while maintaining safe ash levels and decreasing the risk of rancidity.
Rice protein may also be used in foods that are formulated for animals who are allergic to or intolerant of animal proteins.
In our opinion, the inclusion of rice protein in a food is not a problem – unless the ingredient is contaminated with melamine! And the only way that the inclusion of melamine-contaminated rice protein in a food could be even worse news for a company is if “rice protein” wasn’t on the list of ingredients on a pet food label.
We’ve been telling people to read dog food labels since Whole Dog Journal’s inception. But what’s a consumer to do if the label doesn’t list what’s actually in the food?
Inaccurate labels
When Natural Balance announced that it was recalling four of its foods, saying that the products contained rice protein concentrate found to contain melamine, our immediate response was “What?” The labels of the named products did not list rice protein as an ingredient. The company said in its April 17 press release that the ingredient had only recently been added to some production runs of the four products. The ingredient lists of the four foods were quickly changed on the company’s website to reflect the inclusion of rice protein, but of course the bags and cans of food already in stores (and people’s homes) did not.
Most pet food companies fiddle with their ingredients from time to time, adding a bit of this or that, or removing ingredients that are difficult (or prohibitively expensive) to source or that pose processing challenges. But they are legally obligated to immediately update the package labels of the reformulated products to accurately reflect their contents.
There is a persistent myth that every pet food executive has heard (and many may have repeated), to the effect that federal labeling laws allow pet food makers a “grace period” of six months, in which they can change the ingredients of their foods without changing the label. This is not true.
Another shoe dropped when American Nutrition, the contract manufacturer that made Natural Balance’s wet foods and baked treats, announced a recall of 26 wet pet foods and two baked dog treats after learning that the rice protein it used in the foods was contaminated with melamine. Four foods not previously recalled by
Natural Balance were on American Nutrition’s recall list. Natural Balance issued a press release the same day, stating that American Nutrition had added rice protein to these four products without the consent or knowledge of Natural Balance. Canine Caviar, a company with two products on American Nutrition’s recall list, and Blue Buffalo (with nine products on the American Nutrition list), and others also have denied having any knowledge that rice protein was added to their foods.
American Nutrition has since published its own press release in response, saying (in part): “American Nutrition did not engage in any deliberate or intentionally wrongful conduct relative to the inclusion of rice protein in certain products it manufactures . . .
“American Nutrition is investigating the circumstances surrounding labeling, formulation, and related inter-company communications, but it is simply false to state that American Nutrition was engaged in any deliberately deceitful and/or unlawful conduct. Labeling responsibility is a cooperative effort between American Nutrition and its customers. American Nutrition believes, for their part, that they were compliant with all applicable label regulations. Additional information will be released as American Nutrition completes its own investigation and as they continue to cooperate fully with ongoing FDA and other governmental agency inquiries.”
I’ve toured American Nutrition’s cannery, and I’m aware that their computers and technicians generate “batch records” that note the amounts of each ingredient used as batches of food are mixed and cooked. Some pet food companies require copies of these records and actually review them. Usually, any deviations from the formula given to the co-packer must be approved by the pet food company whose name is on the label. In my opinion, it’s a bit disingenuous for a pet food company to claim they didn’t know what a co-packer was putting in their food.
But on the other hand, what are we to make of the “cross-contamination” claimed by Menu Foods?
We’re frustrated, given that we’ve spent 10 years telling our subscribers to read product labels – and make purchasing decisions based on the ingredients that are on the labels. Now, it seems to be developing that “what’s in the bag” (or can or pouch) is accurately described by the product labels only sometimes. The industry owes consumers some solutions; how can we ever trust that what’s in the package is what the label says it is?
This incident opens another can of worms – or we should say, reopens. Lawsuits were only recently settled following a 2003 dog-killing recall involving food made by a contract manufacturer that evidently didn’t contain what its labels said it contained. The co-packer pointed a finger at the formula provided by the pet food company, the company blamed the co-packer, and, thanks to the sealed nature of legal settlements, we’ll never know who or what was truly at fault.
Bring on the revolution!
Problems frequently present an opportunity for growth or change, and the crisis in the pet food industry is no different.
Eager to win back the trust of concerned buyers, pet food companies are putting far more rigorous quality-control practices into immediate use. Some are “embedding” company staffers at contract manufacturing facilities. Some are seeking their own manufacturing facilities. I’ve heard from a number of pet food companies who are pledging to begin using U.S.-sourced ingredients only. Everyone has stepped up their procedures for sourcing and testing their ingredients.
While we’re glad to hear about these planned improvements, we have to be a bit skeptical. How will the companies involved prove to us that these things have been accomplished?
I’m thrilled to hear that thousands of people (including Oprah Winfrey!) have started feeding their dogs home-prepared diets. I hope that Whole Dog Journal will help inform the people who stick to the practice over the long haul, to prevent health problems related to nutritional deficiencies, excesses, or imbalances caused by poorly designed diets or adherence to a single recipe.
Author Mary Straus has been slaving over our series of articles on the nuts and bolts of home-prepared diets for more than six months. The first one in a planned series of five or six articles appeared very fortuitously in our April issue; the third installment appears on page 3 of this issue.
In the long run, owners will have to determine where on the scale of fear and trust they stand. Guardians who have little faith in the pet food companies and much fear about commercial products will have little choice but to begin making home-prepared diets for their pets. Those on the other end of the scale – with little fear and lots of trust – will keep buying the products they and their dogs like. And many of us will probably take a middle path – at least until the recall headlines stop appearing daily.
As a new subscriber to Whole Dog Journal, this is the first time I have received the issue that contains your recommended top quality dry food for dogs (February 2007). I was surprised that Solid Gold was not part of your list. I recently lost a 14-month-old Golden Retriever to cancer. Since that experience, pet food quality is my top priority for my dogs.
Marie Camirand Montreal, Canada
Solid Gold’s products did appear on our lists of “top dry foods” and “top wet foods” (March 2007). The dry products we highlighted were listed under their names: Hund-N-Flocken and Mmillennia.
I feed my three Border Collies Flint River Ranch food with an occasional treat of The Honest Kitchen and they are doing great. However, I noticed that Flint River Ranch was not on your list this year. Can you tell me why?
Barbara Berg Via e-mail
My sincere apologies for not explaining the omission of FRR’s dry food this year. As far as I know, nothing has changed about the food’s ingredients or manufacturing; it still meets our selection criteria. But every year I receive complaints from readers who are frustrated by the management style/business structure of this multi-level marketing company. Consumers either get no response, or a poor response, when they try to reach the “home office” – the people responsible for formulating and making the food. Consumers with questions or concerns about the pet food are encouraged, instead, to bring their questions to an independent distributor of the food near them. Often, these independent agents are unable to answer consumers’ questions about the food – and are even sometimes unable to find out the information from the “senior distributor” above them, much less the company representatives.
Recent events have demonstrated how important it is to be able to quickly and easily contact the maker of a dog food, to report problems, have confidence that the problems will be recorded and considered, and to receive quick and reliable answers to urgent questions. It’s been our experience, and that of many of our readers, that the folks in FRR’s corporate office discourage interaction with consumers. Given this persistent complaint, I decided to stop listing the products; it was no reflection whatsoever on the products themselves.
A phone number, please, for the company that sells Bioflow magnetic therapy products for dogs (as mentioned in “Help Rover Get Over It,” April 2007)? It’s incredibly annoying for those of us who don’t have a computer (and don’t plan to get one!) when only a website or e-mail address is given for a company or person.
Via e-mail
I’m very sorry about that; we usually take pains to include a phone number, not just a website address, for the companies whose products we recommend. The company can be reached (in the United Kingdom) at 011-44-155-939-5477. The address is Magnetise, Bwlch Bychan Farmhouse, Brynteg, Ceredigion, SA40 9UY.
You’ll never hear me say that coercive dog training methods don’t work; they can. Nor will you ever hear me say that positive training turns every dog into a model canine citizen. It doesn’t.
There is a big difference, however, between positive and coercive dog training. When methods that rely on the use of force and application of pain fail, it’s often because of the dog’s inability to tolerate coercion and intimidation. This can result in serious long-term behavioral damage and sometimes physical injury.
Dogs at the assertive end of the canine personality continuum may fight back assertively against coercive techniques, while those who are too soft to tolerate physical punishment may bite defensively or simply shut down. Positive dog trainingmethods, however, are most likely to fail because of mistakes made in the implementation of the method. If you misuse your clicker (clicker training) and treats you may end up with a fat, happy, out-of-control dog, but you’re far less likely to do any long-term physical or psychological damage.
The ideal, of course, is to have a healthy, happy, well-behaved dog. In order to accomplish this with positive training methods, you’ll want to be sure to avoid the common mistakes described below.
Mistake #1: Confusing Positive Conditioning with Permissiveness
You may hear non-positive trainers insist that there has to be a negative consequence for a dog’s inappropriate behavior or he’ll never learn what’s not allowed. It might surprise you to hear that positive trainers don’t disagree. We just differ on the nature of the consequence. A well-implemented positive training program combines good management, to prevent the dog from having the opportunity to be reinforced for undesirable behavior, and negative punishment, in which the dog’s inappropriate behavior makes a good thing go away. Consider this comparison:
Trainer Ruthanna Levy properly manages a meeting between a teen at a park and her dog, Ziggy. She limits Ziggy’s reach without tension, instructs the boy on how to act, and clicks and rewards Ziggy’s gentle greeting.
Coercive dog training – Dog is on leash, goes to jump up on an approaching pedestrian. Handler gives a sharp correction (punishment) by jerking hard on the leash. Jumping up is punished; dog learns that bad things happen if he tries to jump up. Note that he may also learn that approaching people makes bad things happen, a possible foundation for future aggressive or fearful behavior with strangers.
Positive dog training – Dog is on leash, goes to jump up on an approaching pedestrian. Handler restrains dog so he can’t reach the stranger, and asks the stranger to stop and wait for the dog to sit before petting. Jumping up is managed; dog learns that jumping up gets nothing, but sitting makes good things happen, a foundation for future good manners/ polite greeting behavior.
Permissive dog training – Dog is on leash, goes to jump up on approaching stranger. Handler allows dog to jump up and stranger pets dog. Jumping up is reinforced; dog learns that jumping up makes good things happen, and will continue to jump up to greet visitors, perhaps even intensify his efforts to jump up.
Management plays a vital role in the “positive doesn’t equal permissive” piece of positive training. By removing the positive reinforcement for unwanted behaviors, you prevent your dog from being rewarded by them. This is true whether you’re restraining with a leash to prevent jumping up, crating to stop adolescent house-destruction, clearing tables to manage counter-surfing, putting tempting objects out of reach to avoid chewing, or any of a long list of other management applications.
Behaviors that aren’t rewarded in some way eventually extinguish, especially if you make it a point to reinforce an alternative and preferably incompatible behavior.
Mistake #2: Dependency on Luring
Unless you’re a dedicated pure shaper, if you train with positive methods you probably use luring to some degree.
Luring is using a treat to show your dog what you want him to do. To lure a “down,” for example, hold the treat in front of your dog’s nose while he’s sitting, then lower it a tiny bit toward the floor. As his nose follows the tidbit, “mark” the behavior that you want with the click! of a clicker or a verbal marker, such as the word “Yes!”, and feed him the treat.
Levy used a lure to teach Ziggy to put his head down and is fading its use in favor of a physical cue (her finger pointing down). At this stage, Ziggy more readily responds to the cue if Levy is bent over, as if she were about to use the lure.
Continue gradually moving the treat toward the floor, clicking and treating along the way, until he’s lying down. If at any time he stands up, say “Oops!” and have him sit again, then resume luring the down, moving the treat toward the floor in smaller increments this time.
Luring to teach behaviors is just fine. Forgetting to “fade” (gradually remove) the lure is not. If you don’t fade the lure early in the training process, you and your dog can become dependent on the presence of treats to get the behavior to happen. While I almost always have treats in my pockets or close by, I don’t want to have to rely on treats to get my dog to offer behaviors when I ask for them.
Here’s how to fade the lure with the “down” behavior:
1. Use the lure until the “down” happens easily – when you lure to the floor your dog follows into a down position immediately, with one click! and treat at the end. For most dogs this should only take a half-dozen or so repetitions.
2. Stand in front of your dog with your hands at your sides, a treat in the hand you’ve been using to lure with. If your dog mugs that hand for the treat, hide it behind your back.
3. With your dog sitting in front of you, ask for the “down.”
4. Wait a second or two, and if he doesn’t lie down (he probably won’t), lure him to the ground.
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 several times, sometimes waiting a little bit longer to lure, sometimes a little shorter.
6. If he’s not lying down when you ask after a half-dozen repetitions, start fading the lure in gradual steps. Ask for the “down,” pause, and when you lure, instead of moving the treat all the way to the floor, move it three-quarters of the way, and then whisk it behind your back, parallel to the floor (if you lift it up you’ll lure him back into a sit). Since he’s three-quarters of the way down, he’s likely to continue all the way to the floor, even though the treat is gone. If not, repeat again and go seven-eighths of the way to the floor.
7. Repeat Step 6, gradually decreasing the distance you lure toward the floor, until you’ve faded the lure completely.
You can apply this same process to any behavior you teach initially by luring. As soon as the dog can perform the behavior easily for the lure, begin fading. You are, in essence, translating for your dog, showing him that the word you’re using is the equivalent of the lure. When you say the verbal cue “down,” pause, and then lure, it’s as if you’re saying, “Dog, the word down means exactly the same thing as putting the treat in front of your nose and moving it toward the floor.”
Mistake #3: Dependence on Treats
Even if you do a good job of fading the lure, you can still find yourself dependent on treats – feeling like you have to click! and treat your dog every time he performs, or the behavior might go away.
This is known as a continuous schedule of reinforcement (CSR). Dogs can achieve superb, reliable behaviors on a CSR, but the behaviors are probably not very durable. If for some reason you stop giving a click! and treat for each repetition of the behavior, the dog will probably stop doing as you ask in fairly short order, since he no longer gets his primary reinforcer (the food).
Trainer Sarah Richardson uses clicks and treats to teach Quaid to stay in the down position until he is released to eat from his bowl. Sometimes, though, dinner is the reward jackpot!
Enter the very important concept of intermittent reinforcement. When your dog performs reliably on a CSR, that is, offers the desired behavior in response to your cue at least eight out of ten times, it’s time to start reinforcing intermittently. In plain English, that means every once in a while you skip a click! and treat, and praise your dog instead. At first just skip an occasional click!, and as you practice this, over time you can skip more and more, until your dog works primarily for praise (or other life rewards).
If you include praise regularly as part of your clicker training – click!, treat, “Good dog!” your dog will have a very positive association with praise, and it will still have value even when the click! and treat are absent.
Note: In my training, a click! always means a food treat is coming. When I start using intermittent reinforcement, I don’t click! if I’m going to use praise alone. This helps to maintain the value and power of the clicker.
You can use other rewards as well, when you want to reinforce without a click! and treat. Anything your dog loves can be used as a reinforcer if you can figure out how to control your dog’s access to it and use it to reward desirable behaviors: a ball, a favorite toy, a car ride, a walk on-leash, or a scratch behind the ear.
Sometimes I reinforce my dogs for waiting politely at the door by opening the door and telling them they can run through. They get to dash outside and poop, pee, and play. These are all valuable “life rewards” – things that are naturally reinforcing to dogs.
Of course, sometimes they don’t get to run out the door. Intermittent reinforcement makes a behavior very durable. Like a gambler at a slot machines, your dog will keep playing the game because he’s learned it will eventually pay off.
Mistake #4: Poor Timing
Some trainers will tell you the consequence must happen within “x” amount of time in order for it to be effective; that is, in order for the dog to understand the connection between the behavior and the reward (or punishment). I’ve heard as much as five seconds (which I would suggest is far too long) and as little as one second (which is much more likely to be accurate).
Suffice it to say that the results are optimal when the consequence happens as close to the instant the behavior happens as possible. This is true whether the consequence is positive reinforcement (treat, praise, toy, play, petting), negative punishment (where the dog’s behavior makes a good thing go away), or “positive punishment” (where the dog’s behavior makes a bad thing happen). Of course, positive trainers studiously try to avoid using positive punishment.
With good timing, you can mark the precise moment when your dog moves in a specific way (and then reward it), and eventually teach him to duplicate this move on cue.
The greatest value of a reward marker – such as the click! of a clicker or the word “yes!” – is that it enables you to have perfect timing. With a marker, you can always have perfect, or at least near-perfect timing, because the marker bridges the time gap between the behavior and the delivery of the treat. Of course the marker still has to be given the instant the behavior happens – or very close thereto – but it gives you a few seconds of breathing room in which to deliver the treat.
If you have poor timing, you may inadvertently but consistently reinforce a behavior other than the one you want your dog to perform. At best, this is confusing for the dog, slows learning, and is frustrating for both of you. At worst, you might reinforce the exact opposite of the behavior you’re trying to teach, and end up training your dog to do an entirely different behavior, perhaps even a highly undesirable one!
Let’s say you’re trying to teach your dog the polite greeting behavior of “sit” when he approaches visitors in your home. When your guests arrive, you have him on leash so you can manage his jumping up behavior. As your first guest enters the door, your dog executes a brilliant “sit” on the doormat! You fumble for your clicker, and just as you press the metal tongue he decides he’s not getting reinforced for the sit and jumps on Aunt Martha. Click! – and major oops! Of course you haven’t done terminal damage – unless Aunt Martha is 90 years old and breaks her hip when your dog knocked her down. But every time you’re too slow with your marker and it arrives when your dog is jumping up instead of sitting, you’re telling him that jumping is a good thing to do; it earns a marker and reward!
Herein lies one of the values of having a verbal marker, such as the word “Yes,” or a clicking sound you make with your tongue. If you’re caught off guard and you don’t have your clicker handy – just let loose your verbal marker and follow with one of the treats you always have in your pocket.
If you realize your timing is sloppy even with your clicker ready in hand, then do some clicker-timing practice. With your dog out of earshot, turn your television onto the sports channel and find a tennis match. Watch closely. Every time a player hits the ball, click! your clicker. When your click! regularly coincides with the “Thwack!” of the ball hitting the racket, you’re ready to go back to work with your dog. (Note: this sort of practice isn’t nearly as effective with golf or baseball.)
Mistake #5: Lacking Sufficient Courage of Your Convictions
When you’re training your dog and things don’t seem to be working as they should, it can be tempting to let yourself be led astray. You can always find a ready supply of friends, family members, and other animal care professionals who are happy to tell you that you need to correct, alpha roll, intimidate, and/or shock your recalcitrant dog into submission.
Perhaps you’re a crossover trainer and even your own past success using forceful methods prompts that little voice in your brain to say, “I could just jerk his collar one time…”
STOP!
One of the things we value so much about positive training is the trust it builds between dog and human. Your dog trusts that he can try behaviors without getting hurt – you’ll let him know when he’s right, but you won’t frighten or hurt him when he’s wrong. When you violate that trust, you risk negative behavioral consequences that are sometimes significant, ranging from aggression at one end of the spectrum, to shutting down, or learned helplessness, at the other.
When a dog becomes aggressive, his future becomes questionable. When a dog shuts down, losing his willingness to offer behaviors for fear he’ll be punished, it makes his training even more frustrating.
Aggression aside, using coercion along with positive training has serious consequences. If you punish your dog for failing to perform a cue that you “know” he knows, you “poison” that cue; in other words, you give him a negative association with it. The cue becomes ambiguous; the dog doesn’t know if it predicts “good stuff” (click! and treat) or “bad stuff” (punishment). This ambiguity creates stress, and can turn a happy working dog into one whose tail starts to lower and enthusiasm starts to wane.
A poisoned cue is very difficult, if not impossible, to rehabilitate. If you poison a cue you’re better off introducing a new one than trying to regain the consistently positive association with the old one.
You always have a choice as to how to behave with your dog. One of the many things I love about positive training is that if one way isn’t working, there are many more possibilities to try to get the behavior you want to reinforce, without resorting to coercion or intimidation. Use of force in an otherwise positive training program is detrimental to future training, as well as evidence of lack of creativity and lack of commitment to a pain/intimidation-free relationship with your dog.
At a recent seminar, the owner of a lovely Bernese Mountain Dog admitted to me that he “had” to use a forced retrieve (ear pinch) on his otherwise positively trained dog. I gently suggested that he didn’t “have” to, but rather he “chose” to use this pain-inducing method. I wasn’t surprised when we got to the shaping exercise in the seminar and the Berner sat next to his owner, staring unwaveringly into his eyes, not offering a single bit of behavior, while the rest of the dogs in the group happily engaged in the shaping game and learned to move toward, and eventually onto, their mats. His choice definitely affected his dog and their relationship.
Positive works. If you’re committed to positive training, you can find a way to teach a retrieve without pinching your dog’s ear, or overcome your own training challenge. There are plenty of great books, videos, positive trainers, and supportive e-mail lists that can help you through your training program. Or you can decide that teaching the retrieve isn’t important enough to lose your soul over, and find something else to do with your dog that doesn’t “require” the infliction of pain. It’s your choice. Choose wisely.
DOG TRAINING MISTAKES: OVERVIEW
1. Review your own training program to identify which of the training mistakes you might be making.
2. Implement changes to your training protocols to help you avoid the mistakes and improve the efficacy of your training.
3. If necessary, renew your commitment to positive training methods that encourage a relationship between you and your dog based on mutual trust, cooperation, and respect.
Special thanks to trainers Ruthanna Levy of Alameda, CA, and Sarah Richardson of Chico, CA, for demonstrating proper positive training techniques for this article.
Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, is Whole Dog Journal’s Training Editor. Miller lives in Hagerstown, Maryland, site of her Peaceable Paws training center. She is also the author of The Power of Positive Dog Training and Positive Perspectives: Love Your Dog, Train Your Dog.
Ask a dozen health experts about allergies and you’ll get at least that many theories about what they are, why they happen, and how to fix them.
What’s interesting is that even when they disagree, most allergy theories point to the same underlying causes. This is because allergic reactions are symptoms of a deeper imbalance. Dogs don’t develop allergies because they are exposed to allergens. Dogs are exposed to allergens all the time, usually with no reaction. Dogs develop allergies with implications of skin problems because something has made them vulnerable, and the culprit is often a combination of diet, stress, conventional medical treatments, heredity, and environmental factors.
Four months ago we explored Candida albicans (“Canine Candida,” February 2007), considered by some to be a major factor in canine allergies. This article explores the links between canine allergies and leaky gut syndrome, a different species of yeast called Malassezia pachydermatis, and detoxification support.
Leaky Gut Syndrome in Dogs
Also known as intestinal permeability, leaky gut syndrome is exactly what it sounds like, a condition in which damage to the small intestine creates spaces between cells in the intestinal lining, spaces that are large enough to allow fragments of partially digested food, toxins, and bacteria to migrate from the intestinal tract into the bloodstream. The results include impaired digestion, incomplete absorption of nutrients, and the presence of what the immune system identifies as foreign invaders throughout the body. The immune system responds with its usual weapons, which produce inflammation and allergic reactions.
Soon the liver and kidneys, the body’s main filters, become overwhelmed, and toxins spill over into the bloodstream, which carries bacteria, toxins, and partially digested food particles to muscles and connective tissue throughout the body. Leaky gut syndrome is blamed for respiratory and skin allergies, arthritis, irritable bowel disease, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, and a host of other problems.
Leaky gut syndrome is a vicious cycle. Something (usually diet-related) causes injury to the small intestine, resulting in impaired digestion, which leads to bacterial overgrowth and other problems, resulting in further damage, and the cycle continues. Some of the conditions blamed for leaky gut syndrome include high-carbohydrate diets, antibiotics, parasites, yeast or fungal infections, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and mineral deficiencies. Some of these, such as parasite infestations, yeast or fungal infections, and mineral deficiencies, can result from the syndrome as well as help cause it.
At Reinhardt Ranch Holistic Nutrition Center for Pets in Elk Grove, California, nutritional consultant Elaine Reinhardt hears every day from people whose dogs have chronic allergies. “Leaky gut syndrome is at the root of many illnesses,” she says, “including autoimmune diseases, joint diseases, and allergic reactions. Since much of your immune function is in your gut, it makes sense to look there first. Certainly this is true when it comes to allergies.”
A large number of the dogs she works with were adopted from shelters or rescue groups. Most, she says, are underweight. Even in their new homes and on an improved diet, they can’t gain an ounce. Reinhardt suspects that conditions that interfere with their gaining weight, such as leaky gut syndrome and malabsorption, contribute to behavioral problems, hyperactivity, and other factors that prompted their previous owners to give them up. “Add all the health problems that come with leaky gut syndrome and an inflamed intestinal tract,” she says, “and the expense of conventional medical treatment, and I suspect that many of these dogs were given up because their owners couldn’t afford the time and expense their treatment required.”
Symptoms as varied as ear infections; seasonal or respiratory allergies; itchy skin; hair and coat problems; diarrhea; and an inability to gain weight can all stem from digestive problems, she says.
To heal the digestive tract, Reinhardt recommends an improved diet with higher-quality protein and the elimination of soy, corn, wheat, and chicken fat. “Soy, corn, and wheat are at the top of the list of foods that irritate canine digestion,” she says, “and I like to stay away from chicken fat because it contains residues of whatever the chicken was exposed to in the way of drugs and toxins. Fat from organically raised, pastured chickens is fine, but that’s not what you’ll find in commercial dog food.”
Reinhardt then recommends three supplements that she considers crucial for rapid healing and recovery: Seacure, probiotics, and digestive enzymes.
Seacure, described in “Securing Seacure” (April 2003) and “Accelerated Wound Healing” (August 2006), is a very fishy smelling powder made from fermented deep sea white fish. Because the fermentation process predigests the fish and breaks it into amino acids and peptides, which the body uses as building blocks to repair damaged tissue and speed healing, it requires no digestive effort and is assimilated on contact.
“I started taking Seacure seriously,” says Reinhardt, “when I gave it to some cats who were dying. They literally responded within 15 minutes. Their eyes went from dull to sparkling in that short a time. Since then, I’ve seen the same response again and again, including seriously ill and unresponsive dogs who sat up, began grooming themselves, wagged their tails, interacted with their owners, and took an interest in their surroundings, all within 15 minutes. I’m not saying that they all get well, but when any pet in dire straits responds dramatically, it’s wonderful.”
In most cases, she says, underweight dogs and dogs with allergy symptoms begin to improve within a few days, and within a month or two, they have gained weight, their coats have improved, bald spots have disappeared, and they no longer chew on their paws. “The food that goes in stays in,” she says. “It doesn’t come shooting out the other end as bright yellow diarrhea. Seacure provides the deep nourishment that helps with conditions across the board.”
Reinhardt usually starts with the label-recommended dose of ¼ teaspoon per 10 pounds of body weight per day, but for dogs weighing over 100 pounds, she finds that 2½ teaspoons works well. “Larger animals don’t necessarily need a greater dose,” she says, “and dogs who don’t need a lot of digestive support do well on half the recommended dose.”
Reinhardt says that when she adds probiotics (beneficial bacterial) and digestive enzymes, the dogs’ health improves even faster.
Some probiotics (see “Probiotics Boost Canine Overall Health,” August 2006) are labeled for pet or veterinary use. Among the many strains of probiotics for which canine health claims are made, one of the most interesting is Lactobacillus sporogenes. Unlike L. acidophilus and similar strains, L. sporogenes reproduces rapidly, so it acts faster in keeping yeasts and fungi in check. Some human product lines, such as Thorne Research, carry L. sporogenes supplements, which can be safely given to dogs.
Several canine probiotic supplements, such as Jarrow Formula’s Pet Dophilus Powder, contain Enterococcus faecium, a strain that is native to dogs and which some nutrition experts consider essential to canine health.
Enzyme products that have helped dogs with allergies include digestive enzymes that are added to food, such as Prozyme and NZymes, and systemic oral enzymes, such as Wobenzym and FlavenZym, which are given between meals on an empty stomach (see “Enzyme Therapy for Quicker Canine Injury Recovery,” January 2001, and “Digest These Benefits,” October 2005).
Reinhardt prefers PetLabs360 DigestAbles tablets. “They’re chewable,” she says, “so they can be fed directly to dogs or put in their food. They’re beef and cheese flavored, so even finicky dogs like them, and the results are excellent.”
Her favorite product for dogs suffering from airborne allergens is SeaVive, a companion product to Seacure. SeaVive contains Seacure, colostrum, Beta-1,3-D glucan, and vitamin C.
Another supplement that has helped dogs with all types of allergies is Willard Water (see “Willard Water,” June 2006), which can be added to drinking water or herbal tea and diluted and added to food to improve digestion and increase the assimilation of nutrients.
Malassezia
Malassezia pachydermatis is a yeast commonly found in the ears and on the skin of dogs. Held in check by the immune systems of healthy dogs, it can multiply until it becomes pathogenic in susceptible dogs, resulting in itchy, oily, or scaly skin, hair loss, redness or blackening of the skin, thickening of the skin, and an offensive greasy odor.
Affected areas tend to be the ears and skin folds on or around the face, elbow, underarm, and tail. Dogs with an overgrowth of Malassezia may lick their feet incessantly because of atopic or environmental allergies that accompany the yeast overgrowth. Cocker Spaniels, Basset Hounds, and West Highland White Terriers are said to be especially susceptible, but any dog can experience a Malassezia overgrowth.
Malassezia yeast cells can be identified under a microscope. A skin lesion can be scraped or swabbed, or a sample can be collected on scotch tape. Conventional veterinary treatment of Malassezia usually involves a shampoo containing one or more topical antifungal medications, such as miconazole, clortrimazole, or ketocanazole. Oral anti-fungal drugs are prescribed in cases that don’t respond to topical treatment.
Holistic veterinarian Susan Wynn, DVM, thinks that Melassezia, not Candida, is implicated in many itchy dogs’ uncomfortable plight. “Malassezia is a yeast species that can cause thickened, hyperpigmented skin, bad ears, fatigue, and lethargy,” she says. “Of course, Malassezia is also a secondary problem to whatever is going on with the dog. Malassezia is the primary yeast that causes opportunistic (secondary) infections in dogs and is diagnosed regularly on the skin or in the ears. Secondary infections by Candida albicans are possible but much more rare, and most of the holistic veterinarians I know treat leaky gut syndrome instead of candidiasis.”
Dr. Wynn does not believe treatment with anti-fungal medications or herbs is always necessary before giving an affected dog probiotics and changing the dog’s diet, and she emphasizes that leaky gut syndrome can occur independently of candida overgrowth.
For Malassezia-infected ears, Dr. Wynn recommends daily cleaning with vinegar diluted with an equal amount of water, which is a gentle way to lower the pH in the ear, making it less hospitable to yeasts and fungi. A pinch of boric acid has a similar effect (as described in “A New Old Ear Treatment,” June 2004). For topical treatment of the skin, Dr. Wynn recommends Selsun Blue shampoo or the application of a 10-percent tea tree oil spray, which has proven antifungal properties.
Our literature search of holistic treatments for Malassezia produced recommendations identical to holistic treatments for candidiasis. “You’ve discovered exactly the point,” says Dr. Wynn. “And if you look further, you will discover that the treatment is very much like what we recommend for any chronic allergic or immune-mediated disease, many of them centering on abnormal gut permeability.
“To wit, we have diseases that respond to diet changes, probiotics, and various herbal tonics or specifics, and we can only document the presence of fungi in some cases, so we look for a different cause. This is why so many veterinary practitioners look at chronic yeast infections as a problem that pops up in immunocompromised animals and not as the primary disease. Holistic treatments like improved diet and probiotics work, but they work directly on the immune system, strengthening the body so that it resists yeast, rather than by killing the yeast directly.”
Dr. Wynn almost never recommends conventional antifungals like Nystatin for Malassezia, finding that Selsun Blue shampoos works well for all but the most serious cases in combination with holistic treatment for leaky gut syndrome.
Detoxification Support
Most of us think of detoxification as something that happens when we go on a “detox” program of fasting, herbs, juices, or supplements that speed the body’s release of impurities. In fact, detoxification goes on constantly as the body breaks down and removes waste products.
If the liver receives the nutrients it needs to perform this function well, it maintains itself in a state of health. If the process is impaired, health suffers. Unfortunately, dogs are often overwhelmed with the burden of detoxification – and undernourished by low-quality commercial diets. This combination can contribute to leaky gut syndrome, yeast overgrowth, and a variety of allergy symptoms.
During the first stage of the detoxification process (Phase I), the body’s filters identify and separate waste products and toxins from the blood and lymph. Water-soluble material gets sent to the kidneys for excretion. Dehydration complicates this process, which is why consuming clean drinking water is so important. Additional nutrients are required by the liver to perform Phase II functions, the elimination of materials that couldn’t be made water-soluble in Phase I.
When a dog is deficient in key nutrients, backups and spillovers of waste products can occur. Partially processed toxins traveling through the bloodstream may find a home in fatty tissue, or they may stay in the blood, infect healthy tissue, and cause new illnesses. Incomplete detoxification and leaky gut syndrome (and the allergy symptoms they aggravate) can be corrected with an improved diet and supplements that support the digestive tract.
Seacure, described above, is an important whole-food source of amino acids and an aid to Phase II detoxification. Digestive enzymes taken between meals help support the process. So do whole-food nutritional supplements, such as Standard Process Canine Dermal Support, which targets skin conditions, or Canine Hepatic Support, which improves liver function.
Dogs are well known for finding their own treatments when given the opportunity. Renee Votta, an herbalist in New Braunfels, Texas, adopted a mixed-breed dog she found. “We had just had a huge flood, and many animals were homeless due to houses being destroyed and animals being caught in the river. I looked for her owners but no one claimed her.”
Votta named the dog Bonnie and took her to a veterinary clinic for spaying and to have the open sores on her legs treated. “She licked at them all the time,” says Votta. “Most were an inch wide and an inch long, some smaller and a few larger. The vet said they were caused by contact dermatitis having something to do with the grass, weeds, and green things that grow here all year. The vet said we would have to live with them because it’s the kind of problem that keeps coming back.”
That winter, Votta experimented with topical treatments. A mix of aloe vera, vitamin E, and olive oil worked best, but even though the sores got smaller, they never went away and new sores often developed.
One day, Votta realized that Bonnie, standing in a weed patch, was carefully harvesting cleavers (Galium aparine). “I couldn’t get over it,” she says. “Bonnie was ignoring all the other weeds. At that moment I realized that her condition had nothing to do with external factors. Her problems were inside her.”
Votta encouraged Bonnie to eat all the cleavers she wanted from the yard, plus she made cleavers tea to add to the dog’s water. She also added minced cleavers and raw garlic to Bonnie’s dry food.
Within a month, all of the sores on Bonnie’s legs cleared up and in the eight years since, she has never had another open sore. She continues to graze on cleavers, especially when the plants first emerge in the spring. “Eating a few strands of them every so often is enough to keep her healthy and her blood clean,” says Votta.
In her book Veterinary Herbal Medicine, Dr. Wynn describes cleavers as a mildly astringent and mildly diuretic herb that is a tonic for the lymph system. It has been used for dry skin eruptions, as a remedy for ulcers and tumors, and for the treatment of psoriasis. In All You Ever Wanted to Know about Herbs for Pets, Mary Wulff-Tilford and Gregory Tilford describe cleavers as an herb that enhances the body’s waste management by improving lymphatic circulation, thus “washing” body tissues.
Because cleavers is an invasive weed with a wide range, it’s probably growing in your neighborhood. Consult a plant identification guide or search for cleavers online; several herbal websites offer descriptions and photos. In addition to having a distinctive appearance, cleavers feels sticky to the touch and clings to whatever it contacts. Avoid herbs that grow near highways, busy parking lots, or fields treated with pesticides or agricultural chemicals.
To try Bonnie’s remedy, finely chop or mince fresh cleavers and add it to your dog’s food, starting with small amounts and increasing to about 1 tablespoon minced herb per 25 to 30 pounds of body weight per day in divided doses. For convenience, store fresh cleavers in the freezer by pureeing the herb in a small amount of water, placing it in ice cube trays, and as soon as it’s frozen, transfer to a tightly sealed plastic bag. Remove a cube at a time as needed.
Dried wildcrafted cleavers can be ordered from Jean’s Greens and other herbal supply companies. To brew cleavers tea, pour 1 cup boiling water over 2 tablespoons fresh or 2 teaspoons dried cleavers, cover, and let stand until cool. Add the tea to food at the rate of 1 teaspoon tea per 10 pounds of body weight. Refrigerated tea can be kept for up to 5 days.
The Jean’s Greens tea blend Pollution Solution, which combines cleavers with elderflower, rosemary, dandelion leaf, peppermint, cinnamon, echinacea leaf, and red clover, provides gentle detoxification support and can be brewed and used in the same manner.
Whole Dog Journal contributor CJ Puotinen lives with her husband, Joel, and Labrador Retriever, Chloe, in New York.
Although I have received Whole Dog Journal for at least three years, I was thinking of letting my subscription lapse until I heard the terrible news of the dog food recall. If it wasnt for your newsletter I would still be feeding a terrible canned dog food (that I thought was high quality) to my two dogs. Needless to say my renewal is in the mail. I realize that this can happen to any dog food but I hope that the companies who care enough to use the best ingredients are also vigilant about safety. Please keep educating us on what to look for in dog food. Mary Wright
Latrobe, PA
Thanks, Mary, for your continued support of Whole Dog Journal. Long-time readers know how much we, too, have learned about the industry over the 10 years Whole Dog Journal has been in print. Our goal is to continue to dig for new and ever-more-helpful information about the best canine diets.
We received many letters similar to the one below, but inquiring about different pet food companies.
I have a question regarding the food made by Timberwolf Organics. I currently feed this food (the bison/salmon variety) to my two dogs, and in light of recent events with the toxic dog food scare, I wanted to find out who manufactured it. I realize it is not involved in the recall; I just wanted to know.
Timberwolf Organics website says that due to proprietary/legal reasons they do not give out the name of their manufacturer.
Do you know who manufactures this food, and do you think it odd that they will not say who makes their products?
I dont know who manufactures that food (although I may have known at one time), and no, its not odd that they wont say where their products are made. I should say that its not odd, but its not right, either (in my humble opinion).
Weve long stated our preference for foods from companies that are willing to disclose detailed information about their products. A few years ago, that was a short list to choose from. Today, disclosure about manufacturing and even ingredient sourcing is becoming common enough to provide you with plenty of top-quality alternatives.
I have been contacting companies to see if they have products made by Menu Foods. There are a lot of us who dont want anything to do with this company, whether our foods were made at the plant that made the contaminated foods or another plant owned by Menu.
It would be nice to have a list of where the dog foods are actually made. Can you help compile a list?
I think this information should be listed on the label.
Thats funny; I was just thinking how helpful it would be if the manufacturer was listed on food labels alongside the (legally required) information for the company that sells the food.
I just made a snap decision. Given that we have long recommended that owners choose foods from companies that disclose their site (or sites) of manufacture, Im going to start including the site (or sites) of manufacture for all the products on Whole Dog Journals top foods lists. If a company wont disclose this information, its products wont appear on our lists.
Heres the thing: as I stated in Should You Boycott (Fill In the Blank)? on page 6 of this issue, I dont think its all that useful to boycott a pet food company, a contract manufacturer, or (especially) all the products made by a contract manufacturer following a single adverse event. Stuff happens, and even though the scale of this event was huge, and the injuries caused are horrific, its unlikely that it will ever be repeated. Of course, if Menu ever did have another deadly problem with its ingredients, Id join the protesters.
After the recent recall of some foods manufactured by Menu Foods, I have been very surprised to learn that some of the holistic brands on your top wet foods list are made by Menu, even if they are not part of the recall.
Why do these companies outsource the manufacturing of their foods to Menu Foods? How are we supposed to trust these brands if they have their foods manufactured in the same plants as low-quality foods? What about contamination?
How can we verify that all ingredients are originated in the U.S., not in China or elsewhere?
Do you intend to do an investigation on the origin of ingredients in foods? It would be a good idea to list all the brands that are manufactured in the U.S., with only American ingredients. Judith Cassidy
Howell, Michigan
Thanks for your great questions.
First: Did I know that many of Whole Dog Journals top wet foods were made by Menu? Yes.
Why do companies with good products use Menu, which also produces some really low-quality foods? Because Menu is the largest contract manufacturer of wet pet foods in the U.S. No other co-packer has anything close to its capacity. And there are very few other options for the pet food companies that are large enough to need a high-capacity plant, but too small to be able to afford to buy or build a canning plant from scratch. Also, prior to this event, Menu had a very good reputation for the quality and reliability of its work.
What about contamination? Some companies source their own ingredients (or some of their ingredients). Most take advantage of Menus massive buying power to procure supplies of other ingredients at a lower cost. The companies should be well aware of the quality of the ingredients sourced by Menu, however; specifications for each ingredient are generally spelled out in their contract with the co-packer. If a company wants (and pays for) only the best-quality ingredients in its foods, Menu can supply them. If the pet food company wants to provide Menu with ingredients it has sourced independently, Menu can deal with that, too. Pet food executives trust Menu to keep these ingredients straight largely thanks to Menus long-term reputation for doing so.
As far as disclosing information about the source of the ingredients used in the products it makes for other companies Menu is contractually prohibited from doing so. Pet food companies and co-packers routinely sign nondisclosure agreements, in order to protect the pet food companies trade secrets. If the source of the ingredients in your dogs food is important to you, ask the company whose name is on the label for information. If you are not satisfied with their answers, move on.
Finally, I will write an article about the global market for pet food ingredients in an upcoming issue. Thanks for an excellent suggestion!
I know the pet food contamination story has been beaten to death, yet new facts keep coming to light, and I still have questions, such as:
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Why would a (Canadian) company located in the middle of the American wheat belt (Kansas) buy wheat products that have to be shipped half way around the world? It is not like we dont have enough wheat of our own; why are we buying wheat from China? And how many dogs and cats in China have been killed by that product? Come to think of it, how many people in China die from contaminated food? We will never know.
I have always made an effort to buy pet food made in the USA; it isnt difficult. However, it is difficult to buy treats that are made in the U.S. Nine out of ten treat products are made in Asia or South America. I avoid them on the theory that the lax manufacturing oversight in the U.S. is better than no oversight at all.
It appears that I am going to have to rethink my criteria for food, and buy food with all its ingredients grown and processed in the USA. I hereby challenge all companies claiming to make a top tier food to meet that challenge and say on the bag that the ingredients are 100 percent North American-sourced and -processed. I would be glad to vote with my pet food dollars. Mike Burks
via e-mail
Weve learned that wheat gluten from China costs about 10 cents less per pound than U.S.-grown and -processed wheat gluten, which costs around 60 cents per pound. Multiply that by the 792 metric tons of wheat gluten imported in the same lot as the contaminated product bought by Menu, and you begin to understand the size of the problem. I dont know how much of this wheat gluten Menu bought, but I do know that its very difficult for companies to take a pass on savings of that magnitude.
Of course, weve also now seen what the hidden price of a bargain ingredient may be.
Using U.S.-grown and -processed sources of ingredients that are abundant here makes sense.
I just read Mary Straus first article on feeding home-prepared diets to dogs. Although she is preaching to the converted with regard to me, I am still delighted to know that we will be getting the benefit of her excellent research and expertise. I have great respect for Mary, having read many of her articles in various media, and Im eagerly looking forward to the rest of the series.
I am getting a new GSD puppy in three weeks and having never fed a pup a home-prepared diet (although my last dog was fed a raw diet for eight years). Im relieved that I will have Mary to advise me on the best way to proceed.
Whole Dog Journal is the best thing to ever happen to those of us who care about the health and mental well-being of our dogs. (Ive also purchased Pat Millers book on positive dog training. Her training articles are excellent.) Carol Marsh
Kanata, Ontario
Why cant Whole Dog Journal list all of its top foods on its website for all dog owners to benefit from? I contacted your customer service department and was told I would have to pay for a subscription or a back issue if I wanted that information. Im looking for safe foods. Clearly you care more about profits than saving the lives of dogs. I will never subscribe and support a company that puts its profits before anyone else. Besides, I found the information on a website for free.
Wow.
First, because we do not sell advertising, we must charge for our content. If we gave it away, we wouldnt be able to pay our contributors, printer, etc., and we wouldnt be able to continue to research and analyze the pet food industry (and other canine-health-related industries).
Yes, our publisher is a for-profit company, and we expect to be paid for expert analysis. We dont think that makes us puppy killers. You must value what we have to say, or you wouldnt be driven to search for a free way to access it! We would think your peace of mind would be worth the price of a subscription.
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First, let me express my deep sympathy for everyone whose pets were recently exposed to toxins in foods containing a contaminated ingredient. Im sure that every animal lover can empathize with your pain and concern for your canine and feline companions.
If there can be an upside to this disaster, its that the event is already shaking the pet food industry to its core. America woke up, started looking at its pet food labels, and had a few questions. Every pet food company in this country has been buried in calls, letters, and e-mails from pet owners who wanted to know how the disaster had happened and what the makers of their dogs foods were doing to prevent it from happening again. Thats a good thing.
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Another positive result is that the industry seems to be taking this event very seriously and very personally (as well they should). I guarantee you that every pet food company executive alive has spent many hours of the past month in meetings about improving their companys ingredient sourcing and testing, manufacturing practices, customer relations, product liability, and more.
Ill have an amazing opportunity to eavesdrop on the conversation of some of these executives as they gather in mid-April at Petfood Forum, an annual industry event sponsored by Petfood Industry magazine and its publisher, Watt Publishing. The editor of Petfood Industry, Tim Phillips, DVM, invited me to speak at the conference about scrutinizing super-premium pet foods. After 10 years of criticizing the pet food industry, I feel a little bit like a hen invited to a foxhouse, if there is such a thing. Im terribly excited.
Like the pet food companies, weve also received lots of calls and letters about the recent recall. Ive printed a sampling of the letters (and my responses) on pages 22-23. I hope that this exchange, and my article on page 3 (about what you can do to help protect your pets from future disasters), will help answer some of your questions.
Of perhaps even more use to owners who may have lost faith in the pet food industry is the second installment of our series on home-prepared diets, which appears on page 8.
In the first article, published in the April issue, author Mary Straus presented an overview on home-prepared diets everything you ought to understand about making your dogs food before actually feeding the stuff to your dog. This month, she gets down to the nitty-gritty regarding diets that include raw meaty bones. Next month, shell discussed cooked diets, for those owners not yet ready to go raw. And in the July issue, her topic is the reality of home feeding. Straus will describe how different people go about building their dogs diets in different ways, and offer tips on finding economical sources of nutritious ingredients and ways to limit preparation time.
Like a lot of you, Im not quite ready to cook more for the dog than I do for my husband. But another disaster might change all that.
In October of 2004 we published an article (“When Foods Go Bad”) that discussed how owners could protect their pets from serious harm from contaminated or toxin-adulterated food. It outlined the lessons learned from the three previous commercial pet food disasters: the 1995 event involving vomitoxin in Nature’s Recipe dry foods; the 1998 aflatoxin event involving dry dog foods made by Doane Products; and the still-unidentified problem that sickened and killed dogs who ate certain lots of Go! Natural dry food in 2003.
Since then, there have been two more well-publicized pet food recalls: the afla-toxin poisonings caused by some dry foods made by Diamond Pet Food in late 2005, and the very recent event involving canned and at least one dry pet food made with (in the leading theory) contaminated wheat gluten.
These events – the most recent one in particular – have given us all quite a bit to think about, from the local (how did my pet store respond to news of the recall?) to the global (how does the global economy affect us?); from the specific (what foods are safe to buy for my dog right now?) to the general (what types of food pose the greatest risk to their consumers?).
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Lessons learned
Past recalls have taught us the following:
• You should always store dry pet food in the bag it came in. This helps keep the food fresh, but more importantly, keeps the date/code information with the food. If a problem arises, this information will be critical to a proper response and/or investigation. If you feed canned food, rinse each can and keep it for at least a week or two.
• Don’t feed your dog any food that looks or smells bad or abnormal. If a dry food is covered with green, hairy structures, it’s moldy and should not be fed! Contact the food company or your local retailer and ask for a replacement. Usually, you will be asked to bring the food to the store from which it was purchased for a replacement. It helps if you retained the receipt, proving it was purchased from that store.
• Owners should always be alert to the response of their dogs to their food. Vomiting or diarrhea are the most obvious signs of a problem with the food, but any changes in your dog’s elimination and consumption patterns changes are notable. If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: write down and date any odd response or change in a notebook or on your calendar. Your memory is not as good as a written record.
• With all but perennially fussy dogs, it’s significant when a dog declines or is reluctant to eat a food. This is important every time you open a new bag or can, but is also significant if the dog becomes increasingly reluctant the deeper you reach into the bag of food. In past cases where foods sickened animals, the individuals who ate the most of the bad food fared the worst . . .
• . . . so, stop feeding the food if your dog won’t eat it, or if he becomes very reluctant to eat it, and contact its maker. Give the company the date/code information, ask specifically if the company has received any other reports about that food recently, and ask what the company will do for you.
• The same goes, of course, if your dog becomes ill after eating a food. Stop feeding the food. Contact your veterinarian to discuss your dog’s symptoms, and make sure the vet makes a note of your discussion in your dog’s file. Get any sick dog to the veterinarian ASAP!
• Following a bad reaction to one food, do provide your dog with another food, from a different company, while you monitor his response. If possible, feed him a product you can confirm is made (not just sold) by a different manufacturer.
By the way, we don’t recommend feeding a combination of commercial foods at the same time. In case of a reaction, you may be confused as to which food caused the problem, and will have to suspect both products. (See “Switch, But Don’t Mix,” June 2004 for more information.)
• Contact the maker of the suspect food to discuss, date/code information in hand. Be prepared to give the company your veterinarian’s contact information, also.
When you contact the manufacturer, persist until you are satisfied that the company representative will record your complaint (including your dog’s symptoms and the date/code information from the food).
If you feel brushed off, ask to speak to the company’s veterinarian, nutritionist, or customer service supervisor – anyone who can discuss the issue with you further. A over-casual or defensive response from the company, in our opinion, is grounds for a “divorce.” We would avoid that company’s products in the future. There are too many good foods on the market today to pledge your undying loyalty to a company that can’t wholeheartedly support its products.
• Ask your veterinarian to report the suspected product injury to his or her state veterinarian and the FDA. Please note that this might take some real effort! See “Problems With Reporting System,” left.
You get what you pay for
During the Menu Foods/wet foods/wheat gluten incident, we quickly lost patience when hearing owners who said, “We thought we were paying for the best foods available for our pets, and now this!” If an ingredient is needed to make other ingredients resemble meat, when meat could (and should) be used instead, you’re not dealing with a top-quality food.
One of our most dearly held principles of dog food selection is that whole food ingredients are more desirable than food “fragments.” This means wheat, yes; wheat gluten, wheat mill run, wheat bran, no! Chicken meal, yes; chicken by-product meal, no! This is for two main reasons.
First, unprocessed foods enjoy less exposure to potentially harmful agents in the course of processing, storage, and transport. Second, fresh and minimally processed foods are more nutritious than ingredients that are several operations (and perhaps many months and many miles) from harvest. Processing reduces the vitamin content of many foods, and can destroy any unique nutrient properties they may contain, such as antioxidants, flavonoids, and enzymes.
In some cases, the fractions used in low-cost pet food are truly “fillers,” and comprised of the part of a raw food that human food manufacturers have little use for; peanut hulls and cereal fines come to mind here. In other cases, pet food formulators utilize certain fractions to provide just the right amount of a needed nutrient or attribute. Tomato pomace and beet pulp are examples of truly functional fragments.
We’re also sticklers for the use of whole meats from named species of animals (i.e., chicken rather than poultry; beef rather than “meat”) and meals made from whole meats from named species (chicken meal rather than poultry meal). All animal proteins (even by-products, which tend to be of lower quality than muscle meats) have more to offer dogs (and especially cats) than plant-derived proteins, especially wheat gluten and corn gluten (a case can be made for a certain amount of rice gluten).
We can’t think of any pet food recall in the past 10 years that was due to a problem with the meat (or meat by-products, to be fair) in the food. If one arises, however, we’ll bet the farm that the animal proteins in question will be low-cost by-products, rather than high-priced muscle meats.
In our opinion, the presence of an inexpensive fraction or by-product high on the list of a pet food’s ingredients should warn you that the maker of the food has cut a corner. If the food contains several fractions or inexpensive ingredients, its maker is definitely utilizing “least-cost formulation,” as in, “What’s the cheapest way to make a food and still meet these nutrient levels?” The more fractions and other inexpensive ingredients a food contains, and the lower a product’s price, the less confidence you should have in its quality.
Of course, pet foods that meet all of our selection criteria tend to be far more expensive than grocery store brands. You can’t buy filet mignon at a hamburger price, and you can’t expect top-quality ingredients to go into a product that retails for pennies per pound.
Hallmarks of quality
Buying products that contain whole food ingredients (and do not contain by-products) is one way consumers can tilt the odds in their favor. Another way is to choose products sold by companies that readily share information about their products with consumers.
This has been a long time coming, but it’s a trend that is picking up steam (at least among the companies that aspire to the “premium foods” segment of the market). When WDJ began publishing in 1998, not a single pet food company would tell us where their products were made. Today, many disclose that information and much more. Some disclose the origin of their ingredients, or offer certification that confirms the quality (and traceability) of their ingredients.
Still others are eager to discuss the quality controls they exert on their manufacturing process, including in-person supervision of co-packers, independent audits, and certification from outside inspectors such as the American Institute of Baking.
We understand all the various justifications that pet food companies have for not disclosing information about their ingredients or manufacture. But the advantages of nondisclosure are all theirs.
Too much disclosure is a risk in a competitive market, but truthful information about ingredient quality and good manufacturing practices helps pet owners discern and appreciate the differences between products – and win their long-term loyalty.
Ye of lost faith
Given the scope and severity of the latest pet food recall, we don’t blame dog owners who are considering feeding their canine companions a home-prepared diet, due to anxiety over the safety of commercial food. We support the impulse, though we do feel there are better reasons to feed a home-prepared diet (for example, we strongly feel that a well-formulated diet of fresh and varied ingredients is healthier for dogs). Don’t just jump into the practice with a recipe off the Internet, however; these diets require a little homework.
Last month, we began a series of articles on how to formulate and prepare a complete and balanced diet for dogs using fresh, species-appropriate ingredients. The series will discuss cooked and raw diets, those that contain bone and those that do not, and those that contain grains as well as grain-free diets. The second installment starts on page 8, and the series will continue through the July issue.
Countless dog owners have witnessed the benefits of feeding their dogs a nutritious home-prepared raw dog food diet, such as cleaner teeth, brighter eyes, thicker and glossier coats, more lean muscle and less body fat, and better energy level – hyper dogsoften become calmer, while couch potatoes may become more energetic.
In last month’s article, “Have Dinner In,” we discussed those benefits at length and introduced the fact that there are many different styles of homemade dog food diets. In this article, we’ll explain how to create a raw dog food diet that includes bones -perhaps the most commonly used “evolutionary” diet for dogs. In a later installment, we’ll discuss cooked diets.
When I first began to consider feeding my dogs a homemade diet, one of my biggest concerns was the fact that I am not comfortable in the kitchen. I don’t really cook for myself, so the thought of preparing meals for my dogs was overwhelming. Once I started, though, I was happy to discover that it was not as much trouble as I had feared – in fact, it was quite rewarding. Dogs are usually so appreciative of everything we offer that it makes meal time a real joy. I feed a great deal of variety, yet my dog Piglet tells me that each and every meal I put in front of her is her absolute favorite, and she devours it, practically licking the finish off the bowl (I call it “checking for molecules”). How can you resist something that makes your dog so happy?
Raw meaty bones
Most of us who feed a raw diet to our dogs include whole raw meaty bones (RMBs), animal parts that are at least half meat but also include bone that is fully (or mostly) consumed. This is in contrast to recreational bones, such as knuckle and marrow bones, which usually have little meat and where the bone itself is not eaten.
Photo by and courtesy of Ginny Wilken.
RMBs that are commonly fed include chicken necks, backs, and leg quarters; turkey necks; lamb breast and necks; pork breast (riblets) and necks; and canned fish with bones, such as jack mackerel, pink salmon, and sardines (preferably packed in water rather than oil). Raw fish can also be fed, though some may harbor parasites (freshwater fish are more likely to have problems than saltwater fish). Never feed raw salmon or trout from the Pacific Northwest (California to Alaska), as this can cause a fatal disease called salmon poisoning in dogs. Cooking makes salmon safe to eat; canned fish is cooked, so there’s no concern about salmon poisoning from canned salmon.
It’s not always easy to find RMBs. Ask your local meat manager or butcher; they can often order them for you, though you may have to buy a case at a time. (Most of us who feed our dogs a raw diet have purchased a separate freezer to help store the food!) Ethnic markets often have a wider selection than grocery stores do. There are a number of raw food co-ops and groups who share information and buy in quantity directly from vendors, both to lower the cost and to gain access to a wider variety of foods. If there is no group in your area, consider starting one.
You can keep costs down by buying in bulk, looking for sales, and buying meat that is close to its expiration date and marked down. It helps to develop a relationship with your suppliers, who may be willing to save bargain-priced meats for you.
RMBs should make up 30 to 50 percent (one third to one half) of the total diet, or possibly a little more if the parts you feed have a great deal more meat than bone (e.g., whole chickens or rabbits). The natural diet of the wolf in the wild contains 15 percent bone or less, based on the amount of edible bone in the large prey animals they feed upon. While a reasonable amount of raw bone won’t harm an adult dog, more than 15 percent is not needed and reduces the amount of other valuable foods that can be fed.
Too much bone can also cause constipation, and the excess calcium can block the absorption of certain minerals. The stools of raw fed dogs are naturally smaller and harder than those fed commercial foods, and often turn white and crumble to dust after a few days. If the stools come out white and crumbly, or if your dog has to strain to eliminate feces, you should reduce the amount of bone in his diet.
Most dogs do fine with raw meaty bones, but a few may have problems, including choking and (rarely) broken teeth on the hardest bones. In my experience, turkey parts are associated with the most problems, though many dogs eat them regularly with no trouble.
If you are concerned about feeding whole RMBs, you can buy them in ground form or grind them yourself. You can buy a grinder for $100 to $150 that can handle most chicken parts and possibly a few other kinds of bones. More expensive grinders may be able to handle bones that are somewhat harder, but they all have a similar chute size, which makes it difficult to fit in larger parts. Note that none of the makers of these grinders claim their products have the ability to grind bones.
Another option that I use for my older dogs, whose teeth are too worn to be able to chew bones properly, is to cut up the parts into bite-sized pieces using Joyce Chen kitchen scissors. These scissors handle chicken parts and lamb breast easily (except for the hardest end of the ribs).
For harder bones, such as turkey, pork, and lamb bones, you can use a hatchet or a cleaver that you hit with a mallet (which is safer than swinging the cleaver). While ground and cut up RMBs will not provide the same chewing pleasure or dental benefits, many people who feed ground RMBs report that their dogs’ teeth stay cleaner than when they fed packaged foods.
You can also feed larger, harder bones with a lot of meat on them; just take the bone away when your dog is done removing the meat. I have done this with beef rib and neck bones; people with large dogs use bigger bones. There is still some danger of broken teeth, but less than if you allow the dog to continue to chew on the bone after he’s eaten the meat (bones dry out and become harder over time).
Remember that if you feed a diet that includes 30 to 50 percent RMBs, there is no need to add calcium supplements.
Organ meat
Organs are an important part of a raw diet. Liver and kidneyin particular are nutrient-dense and provide a great deal of nutritional value. These foods should make up 5 to 10 percent of the total diet. Note that they may cause loose stools if too much is fed at one time. It’s better to feed smaller amounts daily or every other day than to feed larger amounts once or twice a week.
Heartis nutritionally more like muscle meat than organ meat, but it is rich in taurine and other nutrients. If possible, make heart another 5 to 10 percent of the diet. More can be fed; just remember that too much can lead to loose stools in some dogs.
Other organs, such as spleen, eyeballs, sweetbreads (pancreas and thymus glands), brain, etc. are nutritious and can be added to the diet in small amounts.
Muscle meat, eggs, and moreThe rest of the diet will be made up of muscle meat and eggs, along with dairy products and other healthy foods.
Muscle meatconsists of all meat that is not considered organ meat. Feed muscle meat from a variety of sources, such as beef, lamb, pork, chicken, and turkey. Muscle meat can be fed ground or in chunks. If you have difficulty feeding much variety in your raw meaty bones, you can make up for it in this category. For example, if your raw meaty bones are mostly poultry, then you can feed beef, lamb, and pork muscle meat. Never feed more than half the total diet from a single protein source, such as chicken.
Eggsare an excellent source of nutrition. They can be fed raw or cooked; cooking actually makes the whites more digestible. You can feed as many eggs as you want, as long as you still feed lots of variety.
Dairy products, such as yogurt, kefir, and cottage cheese, are well tolerated by most dogs and offer good nutritional value. Yogurt and kefir have the added advantage of providing beneficial bacteria (probiotics). Dairy fat is a source of medium-chain triglycerides, a form of fat that is easier to digest for dogs with pancreatic disorders and other forms of fat intolerance.
Green tripe, which is the stomach lining from cows and other animals, is an excellent food for dogs, but be warned that it smells awful – at least to us; dogs love it. Nutritionally, it is similar to muscle meat. Green tripe can be purchased only from sources that sell food for dogs; it cannot be sold for human consumption. The tripe that you find in your grocery store has been bleached and treated and does not provide the same nutritional value as green tripe.
It is also fine to feed healthy leftovers (food you would eat yourself, not the scraps you would throw away) to your dog as long as they are not too great a percentage of the diet – 10 to 20 percent of the diet should be okay.
Vegetables, fruits, and grains
Feeding vegetables, fruits, and grains is optional, as dogs do not require carbohydrates in their diet. Even though these foods would make up a tiny percentage of the natural diet, they provide some nutritional value, especially trace minerals and phytonutrients from leafy green vegetables.
If you feed veggies, they need to be either cooked or pureed in a food processor, juicer, or blender. Whole, raw veggies are not harmful, but their cell walls are not broken down during digestion so they provide little nutritional value to dogs. Most veggies have few calories, so they should be added on top of the amount of food you feed, rather than calculating them as a percentage of the diet.
Good veggies to feed include broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbage, all kinds of leafy greens, celery, cucumber, bell peppers, zucchini and other summer squashes, carrots, and more. You can mix up a large batch and then freeze them in ice cube trays or muffin tins for easy meal-sized portions.
Steaming is the best method to cook fresh or frozen veggies. You can add the water used to steam veggies to the meal, as it will contain the minerals that were leached out during cooking. Small amounts of leftover meat juices, drippings, sauces, and gravy will make this into a savory soup.
Some dogs enjoy vegetables, but others refuse to eat them no matter how they’re prepared. If your dog won’t eat vegetables, or you prefer not to feed them, you may want to add a blend of kelp and alfalfa, or a green food supplement (more on this below).
Fruitssuch as apples, bananas, papayas, mangoes, berries, and melon can be added to the diet in small amounts. Don’t feed grapes or raisins, which can cause kidney damage in some dogs.
Grains, legumes, and starchy veggies, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and winter squashes, are a source of inexpensive calories but don’t provide as much nutritional value to dogs as foods from animal sources do. These starchy foods need to be cooked in order to be properly digested by dogs.
Many health problems can be caused or exacerbated by grains and other starchy carbohydrates. If your dog is overweight or suffers from allergies, arthritis, seizures, IBD, or other digestive disorders, you may want to try feeding a diet without these foods to see if your dog improves. If you decide to feed them, it’s best if they make up no more than 20 percent of the diet.
Potatoes (not sweet potatoes), tomatoes, peppers (all kinds), and eggplant may aggravate arthritis pain, but are otherwise fine to feed. Grains and starchy veggies may also aggravate arthritis and other forms of inflammation.
Fresh food supplements
Healthy dogs that are fed a wide variety of appropriate foods should have no need of supplements, but there are several fresh food supplements that may provide additional benefits when added in small amounts:
• Fish body oil, such as salmon oil, provides beneficial omega-3 fatty acids that help to reduce inflammation and regulate the immune system. However, you must add vitamin E to the dog’s diet whenever you supplement with oils; otherwise fish oils can induce a relative deficiency of vitamin E.
• Sea blend, green blend, or kelp/alfalfa mixture supplies trace minerals. These are especially good to add if you don’t feed green veggies.
• Organic (unpasteurized) apple cider vinegar provides some trace minerals.
• Raw honey has antibacterial properties and offers a variety of nutritional benefits.
• Fresh crushed garlic has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, as well as other benefits, and may help to repel fleas. Give no more than 1 small clove (one small portion of the bulb) per 20 pounds of body weight daily, as high doses can cause anemia.
• Ginger is good for digestion and may help with inflammation.
• Nutritional yeast is an excellent source of B vitamins, along with trace minerals.
• Dark molasses can also be used in small amounts as a source of trace minerals.
More information on supplements will be provided in the upcoming article on cooked diets.
Prey model
There is a style of raw feeding called “prey model,” that advocates feeding a diet based on whole prey and excludes anything else, such as dairy, vegetables, fruit, or supplements. This is based on a desire to mimic the diet of the wolf in the wild. The true prey model involves feeding large chunks of meat along with small amounts of bone, organs, and eggs. It is certainly possible to feed a good diet using this model, but there are some factors that should be taken into consideration.
Feeding parts is not the same as feeding whole prey. When wolves in the wild eat a deer, they consume almost everything except the stomach contents and some of the hardest bones from the skull and legs. That includes not only the muscle meat, bones, liver, and heart, but the eyes, tongue, brain, blood, intestines, kidneys, lungs, and various other organs. If you are not feeding actual whole prey, you may be missing parts of the diet that include important nutrients.
In addition, whole, large, grass-fed prey such as deer, moose, and bison have different nutrient profiles than animals that are farm-raised, and smaller animals such as chickens. The nutrient content of animals raised in various ways (wild animals, grain-fed animals, animals raised on grass from depleted soils) also varies widely. Even if you feed whole rabbits or chickens, the nutrition will not match that of the large ruminants that our dogs evolved to eat.
While some people swear by prey model diets, I believe there is no benefit to be gained by leaving healthy foods such as dairy and vegetables out of the diet. The more restrictions you place on a diet and the less variety you feed, the higher the likelihood that something may be missing. I believe that adding foods and supplements not found in the natural diet of the wolf can help our dogs live the longest, healthiest lives possible.
Commercial raw diets
There are two types of commercial raw, frozen diets currently available. The first type is a complete diet, formulated to meet the nutrient levels suggested by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). Examples include Prairie from Nature’s Variety, Home Made 4 Life, and Steve’s Real Food for Dogs.
These foods can be used just as you would commercial dry or canned foods, with no need to add anything else (though just as with other commercial diets, it’s best to rotate between different brands and protein sources, and it’s fine to add some fresh food as well). Complete commercial raw diets are generally quite expensive; they’re usually not an option for those who have large dogs or limited funds.
The second type of commercial raw, frozen diets provide a variety of different parts that can be combined, along with other foods, to create a complete diet. These parts may include meat, bone, organs, and vegetables, but generally nothing else. Examples of companies that offer these types of diets include Bravo!, Oma’s Pride, and an increasing number of small, independent local companies. These are great foods to include in the diet you feed your dogs, but you cannot feed them alone, without adding anything else.
When you compare the ingredients of the complete diets to those of the incomplete blends, you will notice that the complete diets add a number of foods in addition to meat, bone, and organs, including such things as eggs, kefir, tripe, kelp, alfalfa (sprouts or dried), garlic, raw honey, organic apple cider vinegar, ginger, oils (fish, flaxseed, olive, coconut, cod liver), seeds (sprouted or ground), nuts, and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. They also sometimes add specific vitamin and mineral supplements, such as vitamin E, manganese, zinc, iron, and copper, or a natural source of minerals, such as montmorillonite clay. Note that complete diets usually include more muscle and organ meat and less bone than the meat/bone/organ/veggie blends.
If you want to use incomplete blends as the basis for the diet you feed, most often you’ll want to add a bit more organ meat (particularly liver), some additional muscle meat that does not include bone, and a variety of other healthy foods, including eggs, dairy, canned fish with bones, green tripe, healthy leftovers, and some fresh food supplements. Fish oil and vitamin E would also be good additions to the diet. The fewer foods you add, the more important supplements will be.
For example, the Bravo! blends are approximately 10 percent organ meats (equal parts heart, liver, and either kidney or gizzards), 15 percent vegetables, and the rest ground meat and bones. These blends should be used as one half to two thirds of the total diet, with a mixture of the other foods listed above making up the rest of the diet. You can get some of these other foods, including muscle meat and organ meat, from Bravo! or at your grocery store.
Puppies
For the most part, puppies can be fed the same diet as adult dogs, though young puppies will benefit from the addition of goat’s milk to the diet. It is even more crucial that you get the proportions correct and feed a wide variety of foods when feeding puppies. It is also imperative that you feed an appropriate amount of bone, neither too much nor too little, especially to large- and giant-breed puppies under the age of six months, when they have less ability to regulate their uptake of calcium, and both calcium deficiencies and excesses can lead to serious orthopedic problems.
Raw meaty bones should comprise around 30 to 50 percent of the diet. Be careful if you supplement with cod liver oil or another form of vitamin D. Vitamin D increases the absorption of calcium, so if you feed high amounts of bone and vitamin D, you increase the likelihood that too much calcium will be absorbed. Never add calcium to a diet that includes appropriate amounts of bone.
Remember that high-protein diets will not cause excessive growth or lead to orthopedic problems in puppies. These problems are caused by overfeeding and by improper calcium amounts (either too much or too little). In order to avoid orthopedic problems, keep your puppy lean and slow-growing by limiting the total amount fed.
Remember the rules
As a reminder, there are three basic rules to feeding a homemade diet: variety, balance over time, and calcium.
All homemade diets need to contain a variety of different foods, including different types of meat and raw meaty bones, different parts (especially organs), and different foods, such as eggs and dairy. A lot of people depend on chicken since it’s cheap, but if your dog gets nothing but chicken, even if you feed organs along with muscle meat and bone, he will not get all the nourishment that he needs. As a general rule, you should never feed one kind of food as more than half the diet, and preferably less.
When you feed a variety of different foods, every meal does not need to be “complete and balanced.” You should ensure that all of your dog’s nutritional needs are met over a period of a week or two, but that can be done by feeding different foods at different meals, and on different days; you don’t have to combine all the different foods into a single meal. It’s also fine to feed just beef, for example, for a couple of weeks, and then switch to another meat source for the next two weeks.
A raw diet that includes 30 to 50 percent raw meaty bones will supply the proper amount of calcium; there is no need to add more.
Amounts to feed
As a general rule of thumb, dogs will eat around 2 to 3 percent of their body weight in fresh food daily, but remember that each dog is an individual, and the amounts they eat can vary considerably. There will be more details on calculating amounts to feed in the article on cooked diets.
Making the switch
The first time we feed raw meaty bones to our dogs is always frightening. We’ve been told so many times to never feed bones to dogs that it’s hard to believe they won’t drop dead when we do. It’s important to remember that the warnings are about cooked bones, not raw, and that eating bones is natural for dogs.
Most raw feeders can empathize with my friend, Mindy Fenton, who says, “The first time I fed one of my dogs a raw chicken wing, I followed her around for three days, terrified that I was going to kill her, and waiting for that darned wing to come out whole because I was sure it would. Of course, she was perfectly fine, but it took some time before I became relaxed about feeding raw meaty bones.”
The choice of what to start with can vary according to your comfort level, and how likely you think your dogs are to gulp their food. Many people advocate feeding pieces that are too large to be swallowed, requiring the dog to chew on them first. This doesn’t always work, since large pieces become small pieces as the dog eats them, and he may still try to swallow pieces too large to go down easily.
I am most comfortable with feeding chicken necks and backs to my dogs; the bones are soft and easily chewed, and the pieces are small enough to be swallowed even if the dog does not chew them well (small dogs may have problems with chicken necks). Others feed chicken wings or leg quarters. If your dog is not protective of his food, you can try holding onto one end while she chews on the other, to help her learn to chew rather than gulp, but watch your fingers, and don’t try this if it makes your dog anxious.
Many people worry that their dogs may be too old to switch to a raw diet, but in my experience, older dogs do as well as younger ones with the change. My oldest dog was 13 years old when I switched him overnight to a raw diet, and he had no problems.
Most dogs do just fine when switched “cold turkey” from commercial food to a homemade diet, but a few will experience digestive upset. The longer a dog has been fed the same food with no variation, the more likely he is to have a problem if his diet is changed too quickly. Dogs that are prone to digestive upset may also benefit from a slower, more careful approach.
To make the change gradually, start by adding small amounts of fresh food to the current diet, then gradually increase. If problems develop, return to the prior diet and make the change more carefully once your dog’s digestive system is back to normal. That may include feeding the new food separately from the old (at least a few hours in between meals), or feeding only one new food at a time, to see if your dog reacts to any of the new ingredients.
The one exception to mixing foods is when you feed raw meaty bones. I find that the consumption of kibble interferes with the digestion of bones; digestive problems are more likely if you mix the two together. If you are feeding whole raw meaty bones, feed them separately from kibble, at least a few hours apart.
It’s fine to start with limited variety until you see how your dog does, but don’t feed just one food for long periods of time. Sometimes people will start with just chicken parts, for example, but this may lead to constipation if there is too much bone in the diet. While you may want to feed just chicken at the beginning, be sure to feed plenty of meat as well as bone, and don’t feed such a limited diet for more than a week or two.
If your dog has any problems with the new diet, back up and start again, making the change more slowly this time. Do not blame problems on “detox.” If your dog develops diarrhea or other forms of digestive upset, it is because his diet was changed too quickly, or because he is reacting to one or more of the ingredients in the new diet.
In that case, again, go back to what you were feeding before (or what you know your dog can tolerate without a problem), then add new foods one at a time in order to identify which one(s) are causing problems. Also, while most dogs improve when fed raw foods, a few cannot tolerate it for some reason and may need a cooked diet instead. There will be information on cooked diets in next month’s article.
The rewards
Preparing your dog’s meals yourself is not as easy as simply opening a can or pouring kibble out of a bag. However, once you’ve done the initial work of devising the diet and finding sources for the products you will feed, it isn’t terribly time-consuming. The actual preparation is fairly simple; the hardest part is buying products in bulk and then splitting them up into meal-sized portions for feeding. But the rewards can make it all worthwhile.
Most people who switch their dogs to a raw diet notice improvements even in dogs who seemed to be perfectly healthy before. Feeding a homemade diet may cost a little more, but many people report a decline in vet bills. Best of all is watching the enjoyment our dogs get from their meals, and taking pride in knowing we are doing the best we can for our dogs.
Mary Straus does research on canine health and nutrition as an avocation, and is owner of the DogAware.com website.
I’ve had a number of older owners book lessons with me lately—more than half a dozen individuals and couples in their 70s and even 80s, all wanting some training help with their new dogs or puppies.
