The Whole Pet Diet

Excerpt from The Whole Pet Diet: Eight Weeks to Great Health for Dogs and Cats, by Andi Brown

Chapter Two

The Art of Great Health

The eight-week plan outlined in this book is a creative process that binds you and your pet more closely together and unites body, mind, and spirit for each of you It’s a lifestyle change that returns you and your pet to a more natural, wholesome way of eating, moving, breathing, and living. When we promote peace and harmony in our lives, we positively affect every cell in the body and create a healing physiology. This healing art strengthens the immune system, calms the nervous system, and can even change our attitudes, emotional state, and perception of pain. In other words, the art of creating great health for your pet is transformational, and I believe, transcendent.

The Whole Pet Diet originated with the illnesses of my cat Spot and several close friends’ pets, but it was quickly elevated to a fine art when a very special puppy, an Australian shepherd named Bravo, entered my life. My healing experience with Bravo illustrated the whole life benefits of the whole pet approach, and his story is interwoven with the following descriptions of my most important principles.

I already understood the power of real food and how it could benefit animals whose health was compromised by low-quality, commercial, pet-grade foods. I wondered what my already magnificent Bravo would grow into if we took a whole pet approach with him. For Voyko and me, exploring just how fabulous a totally holistic dog could be was the next and most natural step of our path. We were already into nutrition, herbs, fasting, and meditation for ourselves, and the more we worked with animals, the more we saw that similar lifestyle changes could be enormously beneficial for them, too. Before long, our kitchen and, soon after, our house were entirely devoted to providing natural care and healthful food for cats and dogs. When we changed how we viewed our pets’ world, our own world changed completely.

One day, I noticed Bravo was scratching incessantly. I checked his skin, and he definitely had some sort of irritation. I also noted he was eating less and wasn’t as energetic as usual. I suspected chemicals had infiltrated his system and later, while watering the garden, I discovered a hole he’d dug underneath the fence. No doubt he’d been rolling in the neighbor’s yard, and probably eating their grass. I couldn’t blame him. The thick, beautiful, dark green St. Augustine lawn was certainly inviting. But it wasn’t altogether natural: I remembered that my neighbor had mentioned a yellow spot full of chinch bugs he had to treat with insecticide. That evening I checked Bravo’s stool, and sure enough, it was a bit green and much softer than usual. I could tell that his immune system was weaker, too, because he was starting to attract fleas and drinking more water than normal. (What I learned from Bravo’s brush with insecticides is the basis for the project you’ll do in week four.)

To look beyond Bravo’s symptoms, we did what we always do: extensive research. We learned what he needed to support the ballistic movement of his body, energize his curious mind, and lift his joyful spirit. Our success came from simple practices: providing great food and a clean environment, and understanding how to create harmony in the body so it can heal itself. Our approach embraces homeopathy (the philosophy that like heals like), and remains open to all alternatives therapies, such as acupuncture, aromatherapy, Bach Flower Remedies, energy healing, feng shui, and massage, some of which are incorporated into this eight-week plan. You might say we balanced the conceptual healing arts of Mother Nature with physical clues to develop our basic principles.

The Basic Principles of Great Health

Our plan for healthy pets is based on four principles: balance, conscious feeding, guidance, and love.

Balance

Holistic health is the philosophy that all things are connected. The inside of the body, the outside of the body, and the environment must be in balance to achieve harmony. Just like us, pets need love, quality nutrition, sleep, clean air, fresh water, exercise, sunshine, and positive emotional and spiritual surroundings. It’s important to understand that when pets display physical disease symptoms, such as skin disorders, ear or eye problems, even fleas, they are simply out of balance in one or more of these areas. By stepping back and looking at the whole pet, you can see what is out of balance and what you can do to bring it back into alignment naturally.

Taking care of a physical or bodily need, like ensuring more sunlight for that cat who hides in the closet or the dog who only gets walked at night, often aids an animal’s emotional or mental acuity, thus lifting its overall health. There is significant potential that one change can bring balance to many needs, and the following list illustrates some of the connections in the balancing process.

Physical needs: real, wholesome, delicious, and satisfying food; exercise and play; sunlight; pure water; stool health; hugs and pets; grooming; a safe place to rest.
Emotional needs: love, compassion, and forgiveness; hugs and pets; grooming; a purpose in life or a “job”; companionship; sunlight; real, wholesome food; a snug retreat.
Mental needs: stimulation of all the senses; a sense of responsibility; wholesome food; positive thoughts; exercise and play; sunlight; fresh air; naps throughout the day.
Spiritual needs: calm, quiet times; fresh air; closeness to nature; love; hugs; naps and a good night’s sleep; cleanliness; opportunities for service, such as guarding, providing warmth, or being a greeter or a hostess.

I believe harmony is found in the blending of opposites, much like the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang. In the middle of hot and cold is a comfortable warm temperature, just right for bathing your pets. They need sunlight and play, and also darkness and rest. You might blend the sweet taste of pineapple with the sourness of yogurt to heighten your pet’s digestion, or alternate vitamin C with a vitamin B complex to balance its pH levels. We need to understand that both opposites are equal in importance and necessary for harmony.

To bring Bravo back into balance, we first filled the hole he’d dug and fixed the fence. To heal him from the outside, I rinsed his coat thoroughly with water then used a castile shampoo with a couple of drops of an herbal flea potion added in for good measure. For a week I misted him with this herbal flea spritz every time he came in from the outdoors. Voyko prepared a plate full of live enzymes, protein, and supernutritious green foods to soothe Bravo’s stomach and heal the inside of his body.

Conscious Feeding

Food is the foundation of life. This is my most basic principle. I know it’s radical to think of food as medicine and to imagine that those expensive, colorfully bagged kibbles and canned pet food patés are destroying the health of your companion animal, but the art of great pet health depends upon nutritional enlightenment. In reality, food as medicine isn’t a new or radical concept. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, expressed his view 2,500 years ago. He understood that true health requires a balance of body, mind, and environment, and that disease is caused by a disharmony in one or more of these areas.

The power of food to heal disease is dependent on the quality of food, and that’s why every recipe and remedy in the Whole Pet Diet includes the freshest, most environmentally safe ingredients you can grow or buy. Be conscious of everything you put in your pet’s mouth or on your pet’s body. I wouldn’t give anything to my pets I wouldn’t eat or use myself.

Our conscious feeding of Bravo incorporated plain, organic yogurt to benefit his intestinal tract, along with a raw organic egg and some freshly chopped parsley to help the nutrients assimilate into his system quickly. We also added a little chopped garlic to his dinner: Mama’s healthy homemade chicken stew.

Conscious feeding moves beyond ingredients to include clean bowls and cleared eating areas. Get your pet accustomed to eating only at meal-times. This means no more free-feeding. Your pet will have a better appetite and more vitality, and will also build better bones and blood and a stronger immune system during the rest of the day. Ending free-feeding will also help an overweight pet slim down more naturally and prevent your pet from getting bored with his food. Both cats and dogs should be fed twice a day, and food should be removed between meals (with homemade, high-quality food, dogs will typically finish in a few minutes; allow thirty minutes for each cat’s meal). You can make an exception for sick or elderly animals and kittens and puppies, which may eat smaller, more frequent meals, perhaps three or four times a day.

Sometimes a caregiver is locked into the one-meal-a-day mind-set. Oftentimes, vets lead us to believe feeding less, in amount, duration, and frequency, helps our pets lose weight. This isn’t true. Feeding too little or too seldom will slow your pet’s metabolism and can lead to weight gain. Achieving an ideal weight is less about quantity than about the quality of the ingredients and the body’s ability to assimilate as well as eliminate the food. I like the two-times-a-day regimen to separate digestive times. Plus, it’s easier on their bodies and our schedules.

When your pet is done eating (or when your cat’s thirty minutes is up), remove the bowl. This is important, because a pet’s olfactory sense activates the digestive process. Every time an animal smells or eats food, vital blood and oxygen supplies rush to the stomach to aid in digestion. This process diminishes the amount of oxygen that reaches all the other organs and actually causes the body to age prematurely. Leaving food down is actually against the laws of nature. Pets’ bodies need to rest, have mini fasts, and not be in digestive mode all the time.

Many pet owners are initially unnerved by the notion of not leaving food down all day. Some even develop the fear that their pet might somehow starve if it didn’t have access to food for a few hours. However, not eating is nature’s way of promoting healing.

In nature, most animals function on a feast and famine diet, and often the strongest cats or dogs are those who have eaten as natural or as close to nature as possible, which for some means eating wild prey. In a recent conversation with the editor of Cat Fancy magazine, even I was surprised to learn that the oldest cat they knew lived thirty-eight years. (That’s one healthy pussycat!) She was a true barn cat, living solely by hunting the mice that regularly invaded the horse’s grain bin. Wild animals don’t have a tidy little dish or mouse or bird waiting to be eaten, and most wild animals don’t even eat every day. Nature has a way of keeping them fit on less fuel: first the animal becomes hungry, then it finds its prey. As it begins to stalk the prey, its body revs up into the hunting frenzy, preparing itself for digestion. Licking its chops stimulates saliva production, and the smell and sight of food increases its heart rate and thus its metabolism. If the predator isn’t a seasoned hunter, sometimes it misses its prey and has to repeat the process while experiencing the famine cycle.

Most holistic vets I know recommend a full day’s fast each week for a normal, healthy dog or cat. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that most pets fast naturally, sometimes for an entire day at a time. This allows Mother Nature to do her job and cleans the body of impurities. By ensuring that the body doesn’t spend most of its time in the digestive process, fasting helps to keep the body healthier and stronger. Nature intended animals to work hard for their meals and not have food available all day. On the domestic flip side, house pets who casually stroll to the food bowl throughout the day to eat overly processed pet-grade foods may show tendencies toward maldevelopment, constipation, weight gain because of a slower metabolism, and poor skin condition, as well as a slew of other problems. These problems are all too common for the majority of sedentary American pets that spend much of the day sleeping.

Guidance

Making nutritional changes in one area will often spark a healthier change in another. Our eight-week plan is a template, a starting point, for whole pet healing. Unfortunately, this is not a one-size-fits-all program. As you start feeding your pet whole, healthy foods, allow your sense to guide you through the healing process. This book is designed to give you confidence in your ability to observe your pet’s changing symptoms and make gradual modifications to its diet as needed. Your pet may initially prefer foods with salt, sugars, or other “flavor enhancers,” but the elimination of those unhealthy additives will promote obvious, exciting changes in its physical and emotional well-being. In time, your pet will prefer the natural, nutrient-dense choices you provide.

My eight-week plan includes all the tools and tips you need to get in touch with your own inner pet so you can fine-tune the recipes and remedies to your pet’s individual needs, wants, and tastes. You want to make this a pleasurable experience. After all, you’re not starting with a blank canvas or a still life; you’re retouching a living, breathing masterpiece. You need to pay attention to each animal’s own special needs to help bring its body back into balance.

I knew Bravo needed the healing power of garlic to help get rid of fleas and boost his immune system, but I also knew from previous taste tests that he didn’t care much for the smell or taste of it. So I learned to add just a little fresh garlic to each bowlful of the stew that he loved. It’s often more effective to sneak a helpful-but-disliked ingredient into your pet’s favorite main meal or treat than it is to directly dose them with it.

As he ate more garlic, Bravo’s skin cleared up, his scratching stopped, there were no more signs of fleas, and his stool looked fine. But his energy hadn’t returned to normal, and I was worried about his compromised immune system because rainy weather was on the way. I also wanted to return his coat back to its original luster. We gave him a raw marrow bone to chew so he could create more of his own digestive juices and clean his teeth naturally (as you’ll learn about in week seven). I also added some extra vitamin C and vitamin B complex to every meal. (You’ll start giving your pets these water-soluble vitamins in weeks five and six.) We also served Bravo a shake made with liver and greens (see page 141 for the recipe) twice a week for the next month.

In no time at all, my beautiful Bravo was back in balance.

Love

Rest easy, I know you love your pet. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this book. I believe every great work of art is inspired by love, and surely this is more relevant to the healing arts than any other art form. This powerful emotion is the true healer that unites body, mind, heart, and soul. Be very kind to yourself and your pet, and you’ll soon discover a joyful new way of life, a natural way of seeing, thinking, and being.

Practicing kindness and paying attention often raises our awareness, and becoming aware is not always easy. As we begin to fully understand the whole pet, we begin to see how far modern life has taken our pets, and us, from our natural environs, and how advertising and the multibillion-dollar pet products industry has oppressed pets as a group. We must be persistent and continue to read, study, and question everything involving the health and well-being of our animals. We must challenge old ideas, like “kibble is good,” and current trends, where animals are dressed in bathing suits and treated as a fashion accessory. We must find new, more compassionate ways of living in harmony with our animal companions. As we raise our own consciousness, we raise awareness, and this not only benefits the whole pet - it benefits the whole planet.

The external herbal remedy I’d concocted for Bravo did its flea-banishing work, but the bath was also a wonderful opportunity to lavish loving attention and touch on my sweet boy. The welcome-home aromatherapy spritzing ritual I devised for him ensured that Bravo got a loving greeting upon entering the house. (I’ll provide full details on these and other nurturing grooming rituals in week eight.)

Make a Whole Pet Commitment

I wrote this book to help you make wise choices. Only you can determine the degree of wellness your pet achieves, and whether you want your pet to just survive or thrive. Please start by accepting yourself and your pet’s health wherever you are at this moment. Never blame yourself for what happened yesterday, or for what you didn’t know last month. Be joyful that tomorrow is a new and healthier day, and that each week of this program will move your pet closer to glowing radiant health. In this spirit, I invite you to commit yourself to these principles:

I will change my behavior and the choices I make to give my pet great health.
I will make conscious choices to do what’s best for me, my pet, and the environment.
I will choose high-quality, human-grade products and never stoop to lower-quality, pet-grade standards again.
I will go the full mile in my commitments and not take shortcuts.
I will find a veterinarian who supports my natural choices and truly cares for my pet and me.
I will continue to learn more about natural health for my pet and the holistic approaches available.

It’s Never Too Late to Create a Masterpiece

If you pet is aging or overweight, or has chronic health problems, you might be thinking that it won’t do any good to start applying the principles of great health now, that it’s already too late. But it’s not! The doorway to wisdom is always open. As the story of Whisker proves, it’s never too late to eat well.

Whisker: The Diabetes-Food Connection

Sanjay thought his lovely cat Whisker was just getting old. At fourteen Whisker was diagnosed with diabetes and prescribed insulin for the rest of his life. Over the course of the following year, Whisker’s doses of insulin steadily increased until he was up to three units two times a day. Poor Whisker went from a robust thirteen pounds to ten pounds very rapidly. His once-shiny coat became dry, matted, and lifeless, requiring increasingly frequent trips to the groomer.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as a thoughtful and compassionate groomer helped change their lives forever. She suggested that Sanjay add my blend of vegetable oils, which is high in essential fatty acids (EFAs), to Whisker’s food to help with his coat. (See chapter 3 for more on this oil blend.) She assured Sanjay that these oils contained nothing that could hurt Whisker or complicate his issues. Sanjay’s vet wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about trying a nontraditional remedy and caution him that the change in diet might require a change in insulin dosage. Whisker’s entire family discussed the possibilities together, and fortunately they weren’t deterred by the vet’s warning. Sanjay told me his family was already open to new human treatments that might not be accepted yet by mainstream medicine, so it was natural to believe that an alternative treatment might help Whisker, too.

This was around the time when I had the great pleasure of speaking with Sanjay personally. I suggested that, in addition to supplementing with the oil blend, they change Whisker’s food from a grain-laden product to Spot’s chicken stew, which contains only meats and vegetables. I explained that grains turn to sugar in a pet’s body and can wreak havoc on the pancreas and create a need for synthetic insulin shots. The entire family was eager to support Whisker’s new program, which they started right away.

After three months of eating only the chicken stew, along with the oil supplement and a selection of green foods (you’ll learn all aobut these in week four), Whiskers was proclaimed diabetes-free by his vet. He regained the weight he’d lost and grew out a glossy new coat, and all of his blood sugar curves moved back into normal range. It had never occurred to Whisker’s family (or even the vet) that diabetes could be a curable disease. I am still in touch with Whisker and his family and enjoy the wisdom they’ve shared with me over the years. Because they were sympathetic, not apathetic, their cat is longer labeled “diabetic”!

Remember, dogs and cats are primarily carnivores, and neither species would prefer to consume large amounts of grain in the wild. Yet most commercial pet foods contain an overabundance of grains, such as corn, wheat, rice, or potatoes. Since we know that high-carbohydrate diets tend to raise pets’ blood sugar levels, it’s easy to see that synthetic insulin probably wouldn’t be needed if grains were eliminated from a pet’s diet. When an animal eats a more natural, high-protein diet, its pancreas is able to function normally and create the proper balance of insulin on its own. The addition of green foods is beneficial as well, because they help detoxify the liver, thus enabling the entire body to perform more efficiently.

So, are you ready to change your pet’s life and save money? Many people throw good money after bad when it comes to their pet’s condition, buying expensive special foods that don’t work. Unfortunately, pet-grade products rarely address the real problems, much less reduce the need for vet visits and prescription medicines. When a method works, there should be visible results. I can unequivocally say that I have never known a dog or cat who is eating my homemade chicken stew to be overweight. There is nothing about the body that cannot be changed or improved when given the right nutritional support. To begin the process of true healing, look beyond your pet’s symptoms to identify the root problem. Seek new sources of information, believe in yourself, and trust in your own intuitive wisdom.

The Whole Pet Diet Is For Life

The Whole Pet Diet is not about deprivation and indulgence. It’s about a holistic way of caring for and feeding your pet so it will live a longer, healthier, and happier life. You are already an extraordinary healer, and I want you to trust you’ll know right where to look and what needs your attention. As you move forward, try to stay as close to Mother Nature as possible; this means understanding her rhythms and recognizing their effects on all living creatures. Remember that her rhythms, like her colors, vary in intensity and are intricately linked to life cycles and emotional states. Think of the ebb and flow of the ocean, the flames and embers of a fire, and the very breath of life. As with everything in nature, our pets’ bodies go in and out of balance. As you progress through this book and fill in your Whole Pet Journal, your awareness of these cycles and balances will increase. You’ll develop a special way with your animals and fine-tune your eye for creating a healthier life for your pet. And the sooner you begin, the quicker the healing process takes place, so let’s get started!

This chapter also includes blank versions of the forms you’ll use to create your Whole Pet Journal: Whole Pet Portrait, Weekly Checkup, and Week at a Glance.