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Articles on Health

A series of articles on the health and well being of your pet.

The Issue of Heartworm

JENNIFER LENNON

For me, the issue of whether to treat for heartworm is based on possible threat. Since I live in Toronto and my dogs aren’t out unattended all evening long, the chances of them contracting heartworm are not great enough for me to treat with a chemical that contributes to ill health.

Heartworm is of concern to all dog owners, and is a potentially serious, sometimes fatal, disease. It is not, however, the unavoidable scourge that many vets and pharmaceutical companies would have us believe. If your dog is reasonably healthy, eating a species appropriate raw diet, is not currently on any HW “preventives” or chemical flea and tick preventives, his immune system should be strong enough to fight off a heartworm infestation with none of the larvae reaching adulthood.

In the event that some of the larvae should manage to get past your dog’s immune system defences and survive to adulthood, it is still far from a death sentence. They will be much weakened, and the truly healthy dog will make a less hospitable host. Even at the adult stage, a healthy dog, possibly with some veterinary assistance, should be able to fight them off with no lasting ill effects to his health.

Kibble Me This: The History of Kibble

JENNIFER LENNON

In the late 1850s, a young electrician from Cincinnati named James Spratt went to London to sell lightning rods. When his ship arrived, crew members threw the leftover “ships biscuits” onto the dock, where they were devoured by hordes of waiting dogs.

Spratt had the idea that he could make cheap, easy-to-serve biscuits and sell them to the growing number of urban dog owners. His recipe was a baked mixture of wheat, beet root and vegetables bound together with beef blood. When Spratt’s Patent Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes came on the market in 1860, the pet-food industry was born. In 1870 he too k the business to New York and began the American pet food industry.

In 1908 the F.H. Bennet Biscuit company opened, making biscuits shaped like bones, and also made the first puppy food, and was the first to package different-sized kibble.

JENNIFER LENNON

I have been avoiding this topic as it has as many opinions as there are pet owners. But I
receive so many phone calls from people who’s pets suffer from food and air-borne allergies
and the issue of vaccination never seems to come up with their veterinarian. Pet owners and
professionals throw their hands in the air with how best to treat root problem.
So this information may be a bit radical for some, but it is my hope that when it comes to your
pet, their allergies and their annual boosters, you’ll give this some consideration.
Until recently, vaccinations were considered harmless and beneficial. But today, scientific
evidence proves that there are many potential side effects.

Jennifer Lennon

Will feeding a raw food diet help my pet’s allergies?

I will tell you that raw food will unquestionably help pets with allergies.

See, one of the problems with using kibble when dealing with allergies, is that there are SO MANY ingredients in the food, how can you properly identify what the troublesome food source is?

The second problem I have with kibble is that it's actually the processing of the food that is causing problems and usually not so much the food itself. That is not to say dog’s don’t have food allergies, they can and do. But I know people whose dogs were "allergic" to beef but once their systems were cleaned out with a proper raw diet, they could eat beef without incident. I will get into detail further along about mucous, as this does have a bearing on allergies and how they are perpetuated by processed food.

Bacteria and Raw Pet Food

Audrey Blanco

The microscopic world around us is so vast that if every living thing and every non-living object were to suddenly disappear, except for the microscopic life, you would still be able to see the outline of everything that was gone. That's a lot of microscopic life. Without these organisms every other living being would soon die.

As human beings we depend on our bacteria to perform many biological functions for us and to protect us from disease. "Protect us from disease?" you may say, "I thought bacteria caused disease!" Well some do, but there is a balance that we have to achieve in our bodies.

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