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How to Have Healthy, Happy Pets
(and ditch the vets bills)
FACT: Civilised humans are the only chronically sick animal on the planet. That is an incontrovertible fact. Human cultures we call 'primitive' don't get any of the diseases we do. They don't carry calorie charts — yet they don't get fat. They have no need for doctors, dentists and the enormous and costly health industry we have to fund, because they don't get ill.
The increasing ill-health in the world could just stop there with just the one sick animal — us — but, unfortunately, we also control what some other animals eat and, by subjecting them to our ideas of what constitutes a 'healthy' diet, we make them as sick as we are. I'm talking of our pets, of course, as well animals in zoos and wildlife parks that have their diets determined by us.
FACT: No wild animal in its natural habitat, eating its natural food, gets the heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and all the other chronic degenerative diseases we do. They don't even catch infectious diseases — or if they do, they soon get over them. This, despite the fact that they never get vaccinations; never get to live in nice warm houses; are subjected to whatever the weather and their environment throws at them. No wild animal dies of cancer, or has a heart attack; they die of old age or of predation or accident. And while they are alive, they are entirely healthy. No Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis to make their lives a misery.
But that's not the case with our pets. We feed them basically the same foods we feed ourselves. In some cases, we feed them exactly the same foods we feed ourselves. And, in so doing, we have made them as sick as we are, with exactly the same diseases we get. Not that vets will mind — they'd be largely redundant if we fed our animals properly.
But we know that animals, whether they are plant eaters or carnivores, which eat their natural diets, ALL eat high-fat, high-saturated fat diets. They never get the diseases that plague our pets.
FACT: Keeping a pet, particularly if it is a large carnivore such as a German shepherd dog, is not cheap. You need to understand this before setting out to get one. But, although the meat you should feed it can cost as much as the meat you eat yourself, buying that will still work out a lot less expensive that the vets bills you will incur if you don't feed it the right foods.
Healthy animal feed
The secret to having healthy, lively and happy pets, without any need for expensive vaccinations and other vets bills, lies mainly in feeding them the diet they are designed and adapted to eat. I hope to show what this is on these pages. Nature is quite simple. There are basically two types of animal:
- Herbivores which eat plants. You will never see a rabbit thinking to herself "Oh, dear, I'm pregnant again. I really should eat a few mice to increase the protein content of my diet for my baby's sake."
- Carnivores which eat herbivores. You'll never get a lion thinking, "That antelope was a bit rich, I think I'll go eat some goji berries." It would never happen.
Carnivores are not designed to eat the same food as herbivores. If that statement seems superfluous, self-evident or insulting to your intelligence, I apologise. But it has to be said because if you look at commercial dog and cat foods, they invariably contain rice or other cereals and 'healthy' vegetables. Despite the incontrovertible fact that these are decidedly unhealthy for any carnivore. Food manufacturers know that you will buy any rubbish if it is sold as 'healthy'. And, unfortunately, vets tend to work in collusion with the pet-food industry.
For example: Here's a 'healthy' dog-food recipe I saw online.
Ingredients:
- 6 big cabbage leaves
- 1/2 cup cooked chicken breast, shredded
- 2/3 cup cooked white rice
- Pinch of oregano
- Pinch of salt and black pepper
- 1/3 cup low fat yogurt, plain
- 1 can low sodium chicken stock
- 1/3 cup Cheddar cheese
This is totally inappropriate — and harmful — for a dog; there is only one ingredient in it that a dog should eat naturally — the chicken breast — except that, in real life, the dog would eat the fattier parts of the chicken. Apart from the inappropriate rice and other plants, this diet is woefully inadequate in terms of energy. Like all other mammals, a dog should get around 80% of its calories from fat. I doubt whether there is more than 8% in this.
And it gets even worse. Here is another recipe — a vegetarian one — aimed at a carnivore dog.
Ingredients:
- 2 small red potatoes with skin, chopped
- 2 cups water
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 2 small patatos, diced
- 3 cups fresh corn kernels (or frozen)
- 3/4 cup kidney beans cooked
- 3/4 cup milk
- Salt and pepper to taste
Don't ask how you get a dog to let you know how much salt and pepper is to their taste — the authors obviously haven't thought that out either. But this recipe couldn't be more harmful if it had been planned to be. It's not even a healthy recipe for a herbivore.
There will be more on the correct way to feed animals in future. In the meantime, I hope this will give you something to think about.
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