If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging.
It can sometimes be a hard lesson to learn, especially if we do not recognize
that we are digging.
Veterinarian, Dr. Tom Lonsdale sees pets as being in a hole of disease being dug
by human beings. The shovel is the food that we feed them, the “McCans” and
“McKibble” as Dr. Lonsdale puts it, in other words, all the over-processed
canned and bagged food that we feed to our animal friends.
For the first 15 years of his veterinary career, he “went along with the
conventional veterinary wisdom. I counselled my clients against the feeding of
home-prepared meals” for reasons ranging from unbalanced nutrients in these
diets to the risk of choking on bones.
But as he began diagnosing and treating
pets with an array of illnesses – “skin disease, heart, liver, bowel and dental
disease, cancer and other maladies” – he began to see things in a different
light. Almost without exception, of all the sick pets he saw, their one
commonality, he says, was their “junk food diet” of “McCans and McKibble”.
Studying these cases more scientifically, his findings led him to the conclusion
that people, who sincerely are trying to do the best for their pets by feeding
them processed food, should actually ditch the “pet junk food” and feed their
pets “raw, meaty bones,” his phrase for food that would more resemble the
natural diet of each animal.
Among his findings: “Dogs, cats and ferrets don’t have the digestive enzymes in
the right quality or quantity to deal with the nutrients in grains and other
plant material” that are found in the animal junk food. In addition, this “junk
food is laden with colorants, preservatives, humectants and a raft of other
strange chemical additives – none with any nutritive value and all toxic to
varying degrees.”
Again, it should not be strange that by doing that which is most in accordance
with nature, we promote good health, less disease and can know that we have the
wisdom to recognize and follow the most natural course, like a body of water
winding its way to the great ocean.
