The Whole Pet Diet

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Foreword
For many years when my veterinary practice was very busy, people would contact my office and get on a waiting list. We would give them recipes for fixing natural and wholesome food, and while they were on this list, they would begin feeding their animals these foods as a preparation to coming in for their first visit. When their name would come up and we called them, we’d often get the response “Well, he’s all better now.” This just from improving the diet. There’s a real lesson in this, isn’t there?

Veterinarians are beginning to realize the importance of good nutrition in matters of health, especially as pioneers like Andi Brown bring this to our awareness. Schools of veterinary medicine offer more instruction on nutrition than when I went to school back in the 1960s. Still, it isn’t enough considering how critical a good diet is for the health of our pets.

As my training occurred a long time ago, I had to learn this the hard way—by becoming ill myself and slowly getting better through changing my eating habits. It was an interesting learning experience for me to first go to a specialist in internal medicine who put me on a very processed standard American diet—a diet that didn’t help me at all. When I took matters into my own hands and began to eat more whole foods, more vegetables, and less meat, and use some nutritional supplements, I found myself on the road to recovery. I also started an exercise program—not much in retrospect, but much more than I had ever done before. Slowly my health improved, enough that I continued to eat this way. Actually, I continued to eat better and better with time, so that now, after twenty-nine years of eating organic foods and a vegetarian diet, I can attest to the real value of this. Perhaps I have been 

unusually fortunate, but I am very grateful that I haven’t needed to be treated by a doctor all these years or take any drugs other than occasional homeopathic treatments.

It was natural to extend this knowledge to the animals I was caring for, and this started me down a different fork in the road. As I began to apply some of my ideas about better feeding to my patients, I again saw positive effects. Sometimes I was shocked by the improvement. I’m embarrassed to admit that, at the time I began to do this, I didn’t understand why the fresh-food diet made such a difference. Wasn’t the food provided by pet food companies also good? After all, it was all balanced, inspected, based on research, and so on. It was only after years of experience that I began to understand why most commercially produced pet food is inadequate for optimal health.

Andi will explain much of this in this book, which I highly recommend. One of the biggest obstacles for people in making a switch from commercial pet foods to a home-prepared and optimal diet is the feeling of being alone. This book will be your friend in this new adventure-— use it and enjoy your pet’s improved health.

—Richard Pitcairn, DVM, author of Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats