Nature's Apprentice

Why feed herbs?

2011-11-17T17:01:00.000-08:00

Hello, world.
For your reading pleasure, here are the first few pages of my herbal recipe book. They set the stage for the recipes that follow by presenting my philosophy on feeding horses:

Using herbs in horses is a no-brainer for me. Horses are herbivores; they are designed by nature to live on a diet of plants. Although horses and other herbivores do occasionally eat animal-source items, generally they do so by choice only in situations of nutritional deficiency, when their needs are not being met by their vegetarian diet. (While a horse may eat a baloney sandwich, that doesn’t mean the baloney was the draw, or even that it was liked.) When an adequate quantity, quality, and variety of plant material is available, horses choose—and thrive on—plants.

So, plants are the principal nutrient source for horses. The neat thing is that many plants also have medicinal properties. Not only do we humans know that, animals seem to instinctively know it, too. (In fact, we may have learned much of it from them.) Self-medication is a specific behavior that biologists have only lately begun to study but that indigenous people and herdsmen have known about for as long as humans and animals have been living together. Both wild and domesticated animals have been observed to select specific plants and even eat soil, clay, and charcoal when ill, injured, parasitized, or otherwise unhealthy. I have witnessed this behavior many times in my patients. In fact, I rely on it when I’m unsure of what to provide an animal for nutritional or medicinal benefit.

Herbs as food and medicine

Taking a metaphorical leaf from nature’s book, in my veterinary practice I use herbs for two primary purposes: as food and as medicine. Of course, there’s a great deal of overlap there, because it’s as Hippocrates advised:

“Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine thy food.”

In fact, I suspect that one of the ways medicinal herbs aid in healing is by providing nutrients which have been lacking in the animal’s diet. Certainly, there’s more going on biochemically (and, I believe, energetically) with the more potent medicinal herbs. But for me the line is very much blurred between nutrition and medicine.

Still, to keep it as simple as possible, I’ve divided the recipes in this book into two general categories:

` herbs as food (chapter 2)

` herbs as medicine (chapter 3)

You may be tempted to jump straight to the second group of recipes, especially if your horse has a current medical problem. But please give the first group of recipes a good look, too. When we eat well, there is less need for medicine of any kind, whether herbal, homeopathic, nutritional, or pharmaceutical.

Although I use each of those classes of medicine in my veterinary practice, time and again I’ve found that simply changing the horse’s diet can be enough to correct whatever medical, performance, or even behavioral problem I was called out to treat. Whether horse or human, our bodies are designed to be self-maintaining and self-repairing, and that’s the way they function—provided that they have all the nutrients they need to do so.

By the way, this book is primarily about herbs for horses, but I do use herbs in other herbivores and in dogs and cats as well, both nutritionally and medicinally. Where appropriate, you’ll see notes on suggested use of the blend for dogs and cats.

More on herbs as food

Here’s my philosophy on feeding horses: Regardless of age, breed, occupation, dollar value, performance level, or health status, horses do best when fed a diet that is as close as possible to what nature has provided for them—a wide variety of plants that changes with the seasons.

“As close as possible” will mean different things for different horses and in different circumstances, but the fundamentals are the same for all. While the typical performance horse is required to do far more than his wild or feral counterparts, his physiology is the same. He is still a horse, and he will do best when fed a diet to which the horse’s digestive system and metabolism have adapted over the millennia.

the horse’s natural diet

The horse's natural diet consists of many different grasses, legumes, and various other meadow and woodland plants. Naturalists estimate that wild or feral horses may browse from at least 50 different types of plants, depending on what’s available in that location at that time. The variety comes not just from the range of plant species available, but also from the variations in plant types, parts (roots, stems, bark, leaves, flowers, fruit, seeds), and constituents with the different seasons.

One might argue that wild or feral horses eat this way because they must, simply to survive. There certainly is a “make do” element to the way wild or feral horses live in most parts of the world. But having practiced both conventionally and holistically during my veterinary career, I can attest to the health benefits gained by attempting to replicate that variety in the way we feed domesticated horses.

the typical domestic horse’s diet

In growing energy-rich foods for our horses and other livestock, we have sacrificed variety for calories, convenience, and economy. The typical domestic horse's diet is very limited in variety, particularly if the horse has little or no access to natural pastures, woodlands, or other uncultivated areas.

Most horses are fed just one or two types of hay, day in and day out. While there may be a few other plants mixed in, most hays are grown as monocrops—an entire field sown with just one species of grass or legume. That’s not the way nature does it; and it’s not the best way of maintaining healthy soils, healthy plants, and healthy animals. Diversity is a fundamental property of a healthy ecosystem, and of a healthy diet.

Even if the horse does have access to pasture, many pastures are overgrazed, seeded with just a few human-selected plant species, or treated with herbicides, so they provide little variety or range of plant nutrients. Regardless of whether some alfalfa or a grain-based concentrate is added, the typical equine diet is profoundly lacking in variety when compared with the horse’s natural diet.

Not only is variety of plant species lacking in this diet, so too is the quality and quantity of phytonutrients (plant-source nutrients), because processing and storage cause a progressive decline in the more fragile phytonutrients, including vitamins, essential fatty acids, and various other antioxidant substances naturally found in abundance in fresh plant material.

Most processed horse feeds are “fortified” with vitamins and minerals, and some these days even contain added antioxidants. But in my opinion the quality, variety, complexity, and synergy of phytonutrients cannot be completely replicated or replaced with factory-made supplements, especially those that contain man-made or industrialized ingredients. For all our knowledge and ingenuity, we still cannot recompose an apple out of a collection of its analyzed parts.

Obviously, horses can survive on the limited variety provided by the typical diet, but they do not thrive on this diet. Over time, various chronic health problems appear that we take for granted are simply caused by “aging.” The truth is that these conditions are largely preventable with good management, which includes good nutrition. The same can be said for many other common ailments, such as colic, heaves, laminitis, and exercise-related muscle disorders. Good food is fundamental to good health, and good food for a horse includes a wide variety of suitable plants.

providing more variety

To recap, horses are designed to get all of their nutrient needs from plants and the soils in which they grow. But the twin keys here are quality and variety. Healthy soils are soils that are rich—in both numbers and diversity—in microbes, minerals, and organic matter. Healthy soils make for healthy plants, which make for healthy horses.

The vitamins and minerals found in plants generally are more bioavailable (more readily absorbed and put to use by the body) than those added to the diet in an inorganic, chelated, or otherwise isolated or artificial form. The plant has already done the work of assimilating minerals from the soil, enmeshing them with its own living molecules, and thus putting them to use in its own biochemical processes.

Nature has already figured this out for the horse. We would be wise to follow her lead and feed a diet that consists of a wide variety of plants and plant parts that have had little or no processing—i.e. whole foods. The recipes in this book consist, for the most part, of whole-food,* plant-based nutrition.

(*Even though almost all of the herbs used in these recipes comprise only certain parts of a plant [e.g. just the root or the fruit] and some are powdered, they are still considered "whole foods" because they are not processed beyond being cut and dried, and in some cases powdered. They are not extracts or isolates, nor in any other way reduced or refined; they are still essentially in their natural state.)

The more variety we offer of plants grown in well-tended soils, the more likely the body will get all it needs in the way of primary nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals) and cofactors (trace minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, beneficial bacteria, and probably some other substances we don’t yet know about). And the less we’ll need to use supplements—including the ones in this book—to meet the shortfall and keep our horses healthy for life. All of these nutrients are essential for maintaining good health, tissue repair, vitality, and longevity.

Ideally, the horse would get the bulk of his nutrient needs by grazing healthy pastures, meadows, and woodland areas, with any shortfall made up by feeding a mix of good quality hays (grasses and legumes) and perhaps more calorie-dense supplements as needed. But when good grazing is not available or advisable for whatever reason, I use herbs to add variety and fill in the nutritional gaps that are inevitable with a hay-based or highly processed diet. The recipes in the next chapter (Herbs as Food) are formulated to do just that.

While on the subject of variety, I try to source hays and herbs from as many different geographic areas as I can. The less fossil fuels burned in getting the plants from soil to horse, the better. On the other hand, gathering plants from several different areas ensures that local or regional soil deficiencies or defective farming practices have less of an impact on the overall diet. Another consideration is whether to support local agriculture exclusively or also support small farmers in other parts of the globe. These are issues you must explore and decide for yourself. ...
click here to order a copy of the book and read on.
-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Book Launch!

2011-11-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

Hello, world.

I finally published the recipe book for the herbal blends I make:

the anima Herbal Recipe Book

- herbal goodies for horses and other animals -

notes & recipes by Dr. Christine King.

The first chapter is about why and how I use herbs in horses, and also my philosophy on feeding horses. The next two chapters provide the recipes for each of the herbal blends I make, divided into the chapter headings: "Herbs as Food" and "Herbs as Medicine." They're followed by a glossary and a chapter of the various sources I use for bulk herbs.

Oh, and several of the blends can also be used in dogs & cats. Amounts and instructions are provided with each of the relevant recipes (e.g. Vitality canid and most of the medicinal blends).

The book is now available through Amazon's Create Space: https://www.createspace.com/3708039.

It's also available through Amazon.com if you already have an account with them. But I get more of the proceeds if you order on Create Space's e-store. (Beats me why; Create Space is a subsidiary of Amazon.) So, it'll benefit me more if you order it through Create Space.

My next book will be available in about a week. It's a simple little book, written in the style of the Tao, that presents my philosophy on caring for our animals (and ourselves).

More soon,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Eat what makes you feel good

2011-06-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

This next installment is loaded with tripwires, because doughnuts and french fries make me feel good - when I'm eating them...
   Here's the devil in the details:
   Eat what makes you feel good - not just when you're eating it, but also 30 minutes later and 4 hours later, and the next morning. Especially the next morning.
   Case in point: I love bread, pasta, and other starchy foods. Sometimes I downright crave them. Same goes for cheese. (Not so much other dairy foods, but definitely so for cheese.) When I eat bread & cheese, or one without the other, I feel great when I'm eating it and still alright 20 or 30 minutes later. But before too long I'm feeling quite tired, even sleepy. And the next morning I wake up feeling like I'm 80! I'm tired, stiff, achey, and lacking in energy. I just want to lie there like a lump of dough that has no intention of rising.
   We could go into how this phenomenon is probably a delayed hypersensitivity reaction to foods which are common allergens. Right; fine; whatever.
   What I'm proposing is far simpler than that. You don't need to know the hows and whys and wherefores of why you don't feel good after eating certain foods; you just need to notice that you don't feel good. And then avoid eating those foods. (Easier said than done, I'll admit :-)
   (Advocates of NAET - Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique - would probably say that these allergies can be eliminated with NAET. Perhaps; but I'm more of the mind that these foods are not the healthiest things for human bodies to be consuming en masse, and we'd do better to avoid them or eat them only occasionally. I'll discuss why in a later post.)
   I've put this approach to the test more times than I care to admit (because I love bread, pasta, cheese...) And every time the same thing. You'd think I'd have learned by now...
   Well, I have; long since. But still I break down and eat the foods I know aren't good for me. Especially when I'm really hungry, really busy, or on the road. We all do the right thing imperfectly. That's life.
   The trick is to make those mistakes less and less, because we value ourselves more and more. I love feeling healthy. I especially love waking up feeling well rested, energised, and ready to meet the day. So, the payoff for making good choices is that I feel good when I do. Not just when I'm eating good food, but 30 minutes later and 4 hours later, and the next morning.
   (I'll have more to say about what I consider good food in future posts. But let me whet your appetite by emphasising that it's got to be delicious and fun to eat, or I'm not interested!)
   The other aspect of eating what makes you feel good is stopping when you're full. Overeating does not make me feel good! It's easy to overeat when I'm hungry and I eat without paying attention to what and how I'm eating. (For example, mindlessly eating while watching TV or a movie.) It's also easy to overeat when I don't eat nutrient-rich foods. Even if my stomach is full, my body may still ask for more, minutes or hours later, if it hasn't gotten what it needs in that big, "empty" meal.

How all that translates to feeding the animals in our care might seem an impossible task - until you start to watch your animals closely. Yes, they make just as many bad food choices as we do, being led into just as much trouble by their taste buds or their empty bellies as we are. But they'll also make good food choices when we give them the opportunity.
   Ms. Lilly won't eat something that has made her feel sick in the past. It needn't have made her vomit; it just needs to have given her a gurgly tummy or a nauseous or bileous feeling (readily apparent on her face once you know her :-)
   For example, I once accidentally poisoned her with garlic by adding too much garlic to her food. Now she won't eat anything that even smells of garlic!
   You might argue that she is not making a good food choice now by refusing garlicky food. I won't disagree. My point is simply that animals can and will choose foods based on what makes them feel good - or not good! When we give them the opportunity.
   A friend feeds his beloved dog a "premium quality," "all-natural," low-calorie kibble and wonders why she's a poor eater. Truth is, she has a great appetite - for fresh foods. She just hates her kibble and tries her best not to eat it. But she's not offered anything else, so she nibbles her way through every boring, disgusting bowlful of the stuff and stares longingly at what Ms. Lilly is eating. (Nobody messes with Ms. Lilly at mealtimes, so her poor friend must stand on the sidelines until Ms. Lilly is finished - and then the kibble dog dives in and licks Lilly's bowl so clean I don't need to wash it!)
   On the other hand are the countless overweight labs who will eat just about anything! Same goes for overweight cats who are kibble junkies. I'll have more to say about obesity and how it's a form of malnutrition. These dogs and cats remain ravenous until their diets are adjusted to provide more protein, vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients that are often lacking in the typical highly processed, high-carb commercial dog and cat foods.
   The same principles apply to horses. I have a formerly obese horse in my practice who is now trim and healthy for probably the first time in his adult life. In concert with his person, we've been encouraging him to make good food choices, giving him ever-expanding opportunities to do so while still providing enough boundaries to prevent disaster (e.g. restricting pasture turnout time when the grass is lush).
   Of course, we've made sure his diet is calorie-controlled and also contains plenty of other nutrients - not to mention lots of interest and flavour. But diet and exercise alone were not enough to effect his remarkable transformation. We've seen him go from a dense, dour chow-hound to a horse who selects what he eats in his pasture with both great care and great enthusiasm.
   We're still very careful about how much time he is turned out on pasture when the grass is lush, but we've also noticed him ignoring grass and eating various other plants that not only are safe for an obesity-prone horse to eat, but are actually beneficial. He's making food choices when left to his own devices that seem to have both good nutritional and medicinal value.
   Self-medication is a fascinating phenomenon that is well documented in wild animals. It's a topic for another time, although it does dovetail nicely here with making food choices based on what our bodies need and what makes us feel good (or better, in the case of medicinal choices).
   So, to the best of your ability, with the facilities and resources you have available, allow your animals to make their own food choices. Provide a range of healthy options and let them eat what makes them feel good.

That's it for now. I'm going to go eat something that makes me feel good! :-)

More on food next time. Lots more to say on my favourite subject!

Until then,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Update on EHV-1

2011-05-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

Just a brief update on my last post, as the USDA released the latest stats on the EHV-1 outbreak last night.

The incidence of equine herpes myeloencephalopathy (EHM) - i.e. actual neurologic disease caused by EHV-1 - remained very low, and only 11 deaths were reported for the more than 2,000 horses exposed.

Here's a summary of the relevant stats:

415 horses were exposed at the event (primary exposure)
another 1,635 horses were exposed via contact with horses returning from the event (secondary exposure) or via contact with horses exposed to the horses... (tertiary exposure)

Of the 2,050 horses who were exposed, only 75 horses (3.7%) were confirmed as having EHV-1 infection or disease:

47 horses (2.3%) were confirmed to have EHV-1 infection but no neurologic signs
28 horses (1.4%) were confirmed to have EHM (i.e. EHV-1 + neurologic signs)

Of those 75 horses confirmed as having EHV-1 infection or disease,

58 horses (77%) were primary infections
17 horses (23%) were secondary or tertiary infections

So, although the exposure rate was high, the disease rate was low. Also, prompt quarantine measures seem to have been very effective at limiting secondary and tertiary infections.

Assuming that all of the 11 horses who died had confirmed EHM (i.e. none of the horses merely positive for EHV-1 died),

39% of horses with EHM died
14.7% of horses with EHV-1 infection or disease died
0.5% of all exposed horses died

So, while the mortality rate in horses with neurologic disease caused by EHV-1 was relatively high, the overall mortality rate in this outbreak was very low.

And for my clients in Washington state:

only 35 horses in our state were exposed, all of them primary exposures; there have been no reported secondary exposures
only 4 horses were confirmed to have EHV-1 infection (but no neurologic signs)
only 3 horses were confirmed to have EHM
no horses have died

Furthermore, most of the confirmed cases were in eastern Washington (Spokane, Chelan, Asotin, and Whitman counties). Thurston is the only county in western WA that has had a confirmed case of EHV-1.

I think the worst of this outbreak is over now. Lessons learned will likely take a while to be distilled. Hopefully we'll have learned something useful before the next outbreak...

More soon,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

More thoughts on EHV-1

2011-05-24T15:53:00.000-07:00

For those with horses or with friends or family who have horses, I wanted to share some thoughts on this latest outbreak of neurologic disease in horses caused by equine herpes virus type 1 (EHV-1). For those who want more of a primer on neuro herpes and how to deal with it, here is a link to an article I wrote during the last outbreak in 2007: Neuro Herpes

It’s May 23^rd, 2011. We’re now more than 2 weeks into the latest outbreak of neurologic disease caused by equine herpes virus type 1 (EHV-1), and I wanted to share some additional thoughts on this disease.

First, a quick reminder:

the virus is EHV-1
the neurologic disease it occasionally causes is EHM, for Equine Herpes Myeloencephalopathy (= disease of the spinal cord and brain)

But it’s important to realize that EHV-1 and EHM are not the same thing, and these terms are not interchangeable. Most horses with EHV-1 do not have, and never will have, EHM.

There has been a lot of research on EHV-1 in the past decade, but still we have more questions than answers. One of the most pressing questions is why only a few horses with EHV-1 develop EHM. What are the factors involved in individual susceptibility to EHM?

Equine herpes primer

Equine herpes viruses, particularly EHV-1 and EHV-4, are very common in horses. In fact, it would not be too great a stretch to use the word “ubiquitous.” Most horses are first infected as young foals, picking up the virus from their mothers, other broodmares on the farm, or other foals. The virus establishes long-term residence in the young horse, remaining probably for life in most cases, being dormant most of the time and reactivating only during periods of stress.

This common characteristic of herpes viruses is called latency: the infection is latent or dormant most of the time and active only occasionally. If you get cold sores when you’re stressed or sick, then you’ll be very familiar with this dynamic, as cold sores are caused by a human herpes virus.

Population studies in horses suggest that at least 60% of horses, and with the more sensitive diagnostic methods, almost 90% of horses in some populations, have at least one strain of EHV-1 in residence. A recent statement by the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine included this telling remark: “For practical purposes, clinicians should presume that the majority of horses are latently infected with EHV-1.”

And yet, despite the prevalence of this virus, neurologic disease caused by EHV-1 is very uncommon. The outbreaks of EHM get a lot of attention when they occur, but given the size of the horse population here in the US and how much horses are moved around the country these days for competitions, breeding, sale, family relocation, etc.—for such a common virus, these outbreaks of EHM are strikingly uncommon.

Also, during an outbreak, the incidence of EHM in exposed horses typically is less than 10%. For example, although we’re only midway through this latest outbreak, the incidence of EHM in the more than 1,000 horses exposed either at the show or by horses returning home from the show is currently less than 3%. We’re not done with this outbreak yet, but we’ve likely seen the bulk of the EHM cases already, so although that figure will probably increase before all is said and done, it is not likely to climb out of the single digits. As a point of comparison, the incidence of fetal loss during outbreaks of EHV-1 abortion in broodmares may be over 50%.

EHV-1 strains

A lot of attention has been paid to the different strains or genetic variants of EHV-1 and their disease potential. Here’s a brief summary of what we know:

· there are several different strains or genetic variants of EHV-1, but they have vastly more characteristics in common than they have differences, which is why they’re all called EHV-1

· all strains of EHV-1 are primarily respiratory viruses; they first invade and multiply in the cells lining the airways, which is also how they are usually spread from horse to horse—in nasal secretions, and less often in a cough or sneeze

· although EHV-1 is ubiquitous in the horse population, we only occasionally see clusters of either abortion or neurologic disease; and seldom, if ever, do we see both at the same time

· with regard to its ability to cause either abortion or neurologic disease, there is one primary genetic variant of EHV-1 that I’ll simplify to N and D strains

· the N strain is by far the most common variant, accounting for at least 80%, and in some populations up to 95%, of all EHV-1 strains; it is also the one most strongly associated with abortion

· the D strain is much less common, accounting for between 5% and 20% of all EHV-1 strains; it is the one most strongly associated with neurologic disease, being responsible for 75–85% of all cases of EHM

· however, it is possible for the N strain to cause neurologic disease and the D strain to cause abortion

· most horses have either the N or the D strain, but a few are co-infected with both strains

But here’s where it gets really interesting. There is some evidence that the N variant is the more recent adaptation this virus has made to the various selection pressures it has experienced over its generations. Evidently, the N variation provides some selective advantage over the D strain. For one, the N strain causes less harm to its host.

The vast majority of cases of EHV-1 infection are seen in young horses, especially yearlings and 2-year-olds just starting in training and competition. In these horses it causes its primary disease: rhinopneumonitis, or inflammation of the upper and lower airways (rhino = nose; pneumo = lungs). Hence its common name, “rhino.” It causes usually mild, flu-like symptoms, and unless it is complicated by some other infection (e.g. bacterial pneumonia), the recovery rate is 100%.

Similarly, in outbreaks of EHV-1 abortion in mares, the recovery rate is pretty much 100%. The incidence of fetal or neonatal death is high, but few, if any, mares die from EHV-1 infection during these outbreaks. And typically, the affected mares don’t even show obvious signs of illness, other than spontaneous premature delivery or abortion.

In contrast, horses with EHM can be quite ill. A high fever is common at some point during the disease, and the neurologic signs can be quite severe, in some cases progressing to an inability to stand. The mortality rate, whether from natural causes or euthanasia, is at least 25% in horses with neurologic signs.

The D strain appears to be quite old. For example, it has been identified in a sample collected from a horse in 1941. In fact, there is some evidence that it may be the original genotype of EHV-1. In other words, the virus probably began as the D variant, but at some point and for some reason, it mutated to the N variant.

This mutation is not stable, meaning that it is not consistently inherited in subsequent viral generations. But that just lends weight to the speculation that this mutation is a positive adaptation, made to ensure the on-going survival of the virus in its host. Internal parasites face the same issue: it is not a good long-term survival strategy to kill one’s host!

The fact that this mutation is relatively unstable suggests that the virus is keeping its options open. What further adaptations EHV-1 might make, both at this specific N/D gene site and at others, remain to be seen. In recent decades EHV-1 has had to contend with widespread and intensive vaccination practices. Immunostimulant use has also increased in young performance horses—primarily for the control of respiratory infections! So, to ensure its continued survival, this virus may have to adopt even more stealthier habits.

Vulnerability theory

Thus far, we’ve established that the less neuropathic N variant is the most common strain of EHV-1 now in circulation. That takes us partway in understanding why EHM outbreaks occur so infrequently and affect so few horses: the more neuropathic D strain is relatively uncommon.

But might there be more going on? And what is it about the D strain that makes it more likely to cause neurologic disease?

We don’t yet know, but the possibilities include higher circulating levels of virus (i.e. greater degree of viremia) with the D strain, so greater potential for damage; and differences between strains in their ability to attach to the cells lining the blood vessels (endothelial cells) of the spinal cord and brain.

Yes, but why the central nervous system with the D strain? (And why the uterus and placenta with the N strain?) Why not other organs or tissues?

That’s what really interests me: why certain cell types, tissues, organs, or body parts are affected and not others. Same for cancer as well as for infectious diseases, injuries, and pretty much any other medical condition. Why there? is the question I keep asking myself. What does it mean that it’s happening in one site or system and not another? And what does that mean for how we treat and prevent this disease?

I’m also fascinated by the concept that viruses are little more than genetic code. They primarily consist of relatively short strands of DNA or RNA—in other words, encoded information which directs the functions of a cell. For the most part, viruses are quite species-specific. They also tend to be quite organ- or tissue-specific. So, infection by a particular virus or a particular strain of a virus tells us something about the individual host’s vulnerability.

Here are some things to ponder about EHV-1, particular in regard to EHM:

· EHV-1 primarily infects the cells lining the airways so that it can readily be spread from horse to horse, and thus preserve its existence over time. Life is geared toward survival of the individual and perpetuation of the species—i.e. continuation of that life form. When it comes to EHV-1, both its habits and its changes over time reflect this tenacity.

· EHV-1 hides out in white blood cells, lymph nodes, and in the trigeminal nerve, which is one of the major nerves that supply the face, including the lining of the nasal passages. From any of these locations, it can quickly reactivate and move into the airways whenever the body’s defenses are compromised because of stress or illness. It is interesting that this virus evades the body’s immune system by hiding out inside the immune system. It could only do that if the body’s defenses were somehow compromised by stress, illness, or immaturity.

· EHV-1 secondarily infects the linings of the blood vessels in a couple of key sites—the uterus and placenta (causing abortion) or the spinal cord and brain (causing EHM). But why disease primarily occurs only in these organs or tissues is still a mystery. It could well be that these are the most vulnerable organs or tissues in that individual at that time. That certainly appears to be the case in pregnant mares...

· EHV-1 abortions occur mostly in the last trimester of pregnancy, when the fetus is growing rapidly and demands on the pregnant mare are increasing by the day. In other words, pregnancy, while a normal physiological process, is taxing on the system, much like strenuous exercise is both normal and taxing. There are also hormonal and immunological changes in the late-term pregnant mare that may further increase her vulnerability. Perhaps that’s why the pregnant mare is vulnerable to EHV-1 disease and the uterus is the target organ.

· EHV-1 myeloencephalopathy (EHM) occurs mostly in young adult horses under the stress of training and competition. It occurs most often in busy boarding/training barns and at events such as the cutting horse show in Utah recently. Horses traveled from all over the country to attend that high-stakes event.

· The central nervous system is the generator of the body’s locomotor processes. Whether movement originates with a conscious thought or an unconscious impulse, the directive is sent to the muscles which enact it via the nerves of the brain and spinal cord.

· The main signs of neurologic involvement in horses with EHM are weakness and incoordination (ataxia). In other words, the horse has less control over how his body moves, and even whether it moves under his direction.

· Metaphorically, this state represents a crisis of self-direction and control over how the horse responds to what’s going on around him.

· It should therefore not surprise us that EHM occurs most often in stressed young performance horses who find themselves transported many hours or days to an event, confined in unfamiliar quarters, surrounded by strangers, and then required to perform at their peak – talk about lack of control!

Combine that with the small percentage of horses latently infected with a D strain of EHV-1, and we gain a better understanding of why outbreaks of EHM occasionally occur at these events and seldom, if ever, at home. From the data we have, it seems clear that horses can be latently infected with a D strain of EHV-1 for life and never develop EHM. It’s not just about the virus. It’s never just about the virus.

Back to the vulnerability theory, a viral infection shows us where we are most vulnerable. With EHM, it is the spinal cord and brainstem—the parts that are responsible for core functions of information processing and response; especially response. It is interesting that the herpes viruses of all types have a habit of latency, re-emerging during periods of stress (i.e. increased vulnerability) to show us where we need to shore up our boundaries and otherwise address our vulnerabilities.

So, what does this mean for the prevention of EHM? I would suggest that, in addition to good food, plenty of rest, loving social bonds, and all the other fundamentals of good health and well-being, we ought to be encouraging as much self-determination, self-direction, and control as possible for the individual horse under the specific circumstances. How you go about that will depend on your horse and your situation. But no matter how you accomplish it, if my theory is even partially correct, enabling your horse to feel a bit more in control of what happens to him will likely go a long way toward reducing his vulnerability to EHM.

Or, you could just vaccinate and cross your fingers J

Primary Resource: Lunn DP, Davis-Poynter N, Flaminio MJBF, et al. Equine herpesvirus-1 consensus statement. Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine 2009; 23: 450–461.

More soon,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Work when you need, play when you want; do both together

2011-05-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

Having to close my practice last year was very hard to bear. But now that I'm over the worst of the disappointment, and I've realised that there IS no walking away from one's purpose, I feel strangely liberated. Because if there's no way I can succeed by doing everything the "right" way - the way conventional wisdom says it should be done - then I'm free to try it another way.
Here's the way I'm doing it now - after having taken more lessons from my dog:

when there is something that needs to be done, then do it
throw yourself into it with total enthusiasm and absorption; give it your all
and then when the job is done, stop; go rest - or play
as much as possible, combine work and play, so that the work is enjoyable and the play is both fun and useful

In other words, blur the lines between work and play. That way, work ceases to be a chore, we can fit more play into our days, and our play contributes more to our health and well-being. When we get it right, we can end up spending an entire day in enjoyable endeavour (combined, of course, with plenty of rest :-). That's my aspiration every day now, thanks to Ms. Lilly's unstinting instruction.

Play is very important to animals. Have you noticed? And doesn't it stop you in your tracks when you see a mature and ordinarily "sensible" animal gambolling about like a little kid? Doesn't that make you laugh with delight! It does me.
   It delights me both personally and professionally. That's because play is an important indicator that health and well-being are being restored to a chronically unhealthy or depleted system. I've taken to calling it the play index. It might just as well be called the quality-of-life index (as others do), but as return of play is one of the most unique milestones in the return to health and well-being, I like to make play the sentinel event.
   Particularly in senior animals, I'm especially glad to see them begin to play again after what might have been years. It's a very good sign, and it means we've managed to turn back the clock a bit on what was seemingly an inexorable decline.

However you can contrive to do it, give your animals ample opportunity - both space and time - to romp and play every day. With pets such as dogs and cats, the quality of their play is often enhanced by you joining in. I can make Ms. Lilly's whole head crack open in a wide, tongue-lolling grin just by joining her in one of her goofy games. We both end up on the ground laughing at our shared silliness. I don't know of any medications - natural or otherwise - that do quite as much good for body and soul as a fun game played together.
   Horses usually enjoy playing with one another or with another animal they especially like. I'm not inclined to encourage humans to play with their horses unless each thoroughly understands the species differences of the other. "Equal but different" is the catch-phrase of importance here. Horses and humans have different perspectives on life, different responses, and certainly different physicality. Unless both horse and human have made concerted efforts to understand the other and are careful to accommodate the differences in one's playmate, play can be hazzardous to one's health and to the relationship. So, by all means encourage your horses to play, but play advisedly if you're joining in.

Just a final thought before closing this post. I really like adaptogenic herbs for improving health and well-being in working animals, seniors, and others dealing with chronic stress or illness. A few months ago I wrote a pair of articles on adaptogens in dogs - one on working dogs, the other on senior dogs - that are archived on my web site. The one about seniors includes a short section at the end on quality of life and play. Take a look if you're interested (those links are live). The same information applies to horses and other animals as well (including cats, but with all the usual caveats about palatability and the inadvisability of wrestling medications into unwilling cats... :-).

Enjoy!

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Rest when you’re tired, sleep when you’re sleepy, get up when you’re done.

2011-05-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the delay between posts. I was resting... :-)

This topic is mostly for the humans, although it's a lesson I've learned from my dog. (Animals are such masters at taking good care of themselves!)
   For the past several months I've been trying to pay better attention to my body in all things, one of which is to rest when I'm tired. We don't get much encouragement for that in our culture. Quite the opposite, in fact. To rest in the middle of the day - even if just to sit and read a book - is considered lazy, one of the worst things to be in our culture. It's almost better to be a thief than a layabout! Better to be grinding yourself into the ground with constant work than to be perceived as idle or lazy. Naps and playtime are for children, is the message from our culture.
   But here's the thing I've noticed since giving myself permission to stop and rest when I'm tired during the day, go to bed right after dinner if I need, and stay in bed until I'm no longer tired of a morning: I'm shocked at just how exhausted I am!
   Years and years of systematic and culturally sanctioned neglect, coupled with the stresses of starting a new business, only to have the economy fall out from under me, have left me feeling utterly drained.
   Well, duh!, you might say. But really, have you been taking any better care of yourself than I have of me? Your circumstances may be different, but every one of us is labouring under the same strains of cultural expectations, let alone family and personal expectations. Every one of us is overdoing it, slogging away day after day, trying to make a living, trying to prove ourselves worthy, fretting over the fact that we're not doing enough (and can never do enough), and all of the other inane and insane things we humans think are important...
   What would happen if you just stopped? What if you listened to your body for a change, and did its bidding instead of the other way around?
   Why not try it for a day, for just one day? (But note: your life may irrevocably change as a result...) Make it a weekend day if need be, but don't schedule anything at all for the day. Do nothing but the essentials: eat when you're hungry, drink when you're thirsty, pee when your bladder's full, etc. Don't even shower if you can stand yourself unwashed for a day. Do nothing you absolutely don't have to, just for a day.
   When my practice was busy, I'd try my best to make at least one of my weekend days just such a "drop-out" day. I'd feed the dog, feed myself, but other than that I'd do only what I felt like doing. Most of the time it was nothing but rest. I guess I should have cottoned to the fact right there that I was chronically over-tired and under-rested.
   Since the new year, I decided to damn the torpedos and give myself permission to rest when I'm tired. That doesn't necessarily mean I actually lie down and sleep during the day. I've never been much of a napper; if I sleep during the day, I wake up feeling like I've been drugged, and I don't sleep as well that night. I used to envy those who can "power nap" (i.e. have a short sleep during the day and wake up refreshed), but I'm definitely not one of them. I seldom nap, although I may lie down and read or close my eyes and daydream for a while.
   By "rest" I simply mean stop what I've been so focused on doing when I register that I'm tired and go do something else. I may go make myself a cup of tea and sit down and stare out the window for awhile or pick up one of the books I'm perpetually reading and enjoy a few pages. Or I may take the dog for an impromptu walk, which utterly delights first her and then me.
   The funny thing is that when I go through the day like this, I'm actually more productive than if I just keep pushing on through, not letting myself rest until after 5 p.m. I'm more relaxed, creative, and inspired to work after I've had a rest. I'm also loving my work more when I don't feel I have to be chained to my desk or running around from call to call for the customary 8 hours a day.
   And I'm finally starting to feel less exhausted.

The same principle applies to our animals, particularly to those who work for us. To the best of your ability, allow the animals in your care to rest during the day when they're tired, and to get a good night's sleep. Try turning off the radio in the barn and the radio or TV in the house if you're in the habit of keeping it on for "company." In my experience, animals are not as comforted by all that noise as we are. I'm not even sure we're all that comforted, either. In fact, domestic animals seem to me to be every bit as overstimulated and under-rested as we are.
   At nightfall, turn off the barn lights and let the horses settle down for the night. Try to do the same in the house for your dogs and cats, at least in the rooms you're not using. Ms. Lilly has been my best instructor here.
   At first it amused me, and then as I got to thinking about it, it intrigued me that Ms. Lilly puts herself to bed at nightfall, whatever time that is during the year. As soon as it's dark, she puts herself to bed, usually in the darkest one of her favourite sleeping places if I'm still up. In the summer months, when it may be light outside until after 10 pm, I have to practically drag her inside when I'm ready to go to bed. But in the depths of winter, when it is starting to get dark by 4:30 pm, she's ready for bed right after dinner (which she also wants earlier than usual). It's been a very valuable lesson for me on listening to one's biorhythms and following the ebb and flow of the seasons. When I follow her lead, I feel much better in all respects.
   In fact, what she's taught me about appropriate proportions of rest and activity, and of sleep and wakefulness could be summed up thus: follow the rhythms of the earth -

get up when it's light, go to bed when it's dark
be more active when the days are long, be less active when the days are short
listen to your body during the course of every day and follow every period of activity with a period of rest, just as every in-breath is followed by an out-breath

   The whole show oscillates in various rhythms, each overlaid and already orchestrated for us: breaths, days, months, seasons, years, life phases, lifetimes. Our patterns of activity likewise should oscillate around a life-sustaining centre, wherein a period of activity is always followed by a period of rest - not necessarily of equal length, but of equal revivifying quality. The activity should be thoroughly engaging, and the rest equally restorative. Therein we find our balance.
   When it comes to working animals, rest is restorative for both body and mind. During a schooling lesson, for example, letting the horse (and rider) take short rests during the lesson can be a very useful training tool that, in my opinion, is vastly underused. Every animal (and human) I've ever met learns best - fastest and with better retention - when the work is interesting, fun, and rewarding. It can be physically challenging, yes, but it must also be something the animal (and human) enthusiastically participates in and feels the better for having done so, otherwise it's largely a waste of effort. Periods of rest and reward during training are an essential component of optimal learning.
   The same goes for work in general, even work that is not primarily done for training purposes. To be most productive and least destructive, a period of work must be followed by a period of rest - not necessarily of equal length, but most definitely of equal quality. When the work is thoroughly engaging and the rest equally restorative, wonderful things can come of it - not the least of which is a life well lived.
   And if that isn't enough to convince you, then consider this: more injuries occur in a tired body than in a well-rested, well-prepared body. I'll have much more to say about healthy exercise habits and exercise physiology in future posts.

   This'll be a topic for another time, too, but while we're on the subject of rest and sleep, it's also important to provide a comfortable, safe, and secure place for your animals to rest and sleep. Particularly with herd species such as horses, being isolated - whether literally (i.e. no other horses nearby) or perceptually (i.e. no other friendly horses nearby) - is a real challenge. We all need to feel safe and secure in order to let ourselves fall into a state of deep, restful, restorative sleep.
   Behavioural problems are one of the consequences of lack of sleep in animals, just as they are in humans. In horses, chronic lack of sleep can also lead to sudden loss of consciousness which causes collapse, often with self-injury. Commonly mislabelled narcolepsy, it's a condition that in humans is called inappropriate or excessive daytime sleep (EDS), and it can occur out at pasture, in the stall, and even in cross-ties. Sometimes the reason the horse is not sleeping well is because of a painful condition that makes it difficult for the horse to lie down or get up with ease. But often no such reason can be found, and the solution lies in making the sleeping environment quieter, darker, and safer - from the horse's perspective, not ours.

OK. That's about it for now. Until next time, sleep well!

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Surely it must be simpler than that!

2011-04-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

Before moving on to the next element, I wanted to write a bit more about the path I’m on here.

The principles behind the processes

When I said, “Surely it must be simpler than that,” I mean that I’m on the lookout for the principles which underlie the many different processes, for the very foundations of life and health. Because if we can understand the fundamental principles, we’re better able to work and play with the processes by which those principles are enacted.

I find it frustrating in the extreme that so many of the “healing modalities” used in complementary and alternative medicine – aka holistic medicine, integrative medicine, ONE medicine, and whatever term comes next in the procession – have so very many moving parts. The number of acupuncture points, for example, or the number of homeopathic remedies and medicinal herbs, not to mention their component phytochemicals. Even the number of healing modalities or philosophies is astounding. The same complexity is true in conventional medical science as well. Molecular biology is where it’s at, and the cast of characters is mindboggling.

Surely it must be simpler than that? Yes. It is.

Life (and therefore health) just cannot be that complicated. Not at its core. Otherwise it would have expired long since, having ground to a halt at a single tricky step and collapsed under the enormous weight of its own complexity.

Life is characterised by diversity, yes. It is also incredibly intricate as we follow it down from planetary systems to planets to species to populations to individuals to organs to cells to subcellular organelles to molecules to atoms to subatomic particles to ... An infinite number and variety of moving parts! And yet, at its core life is a very simple process, and one that is inherently self-regulating and self-perpetuating.

There’s very little we need do in order to sustain life. By the same token, there’s very little we can do to sustain life when life itself has decided otherwise, and very little point in trying.

In other words, we have less control than we like to think. The good news, though, is that we need control life less than we seem to think. That is very good news, because it frees us to actually get on with living our lives and enjoying them, worrying less about managing our lives and the lives of those we love.

That's all for now. More soon,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Eat when you’re hungry, drink when you’re thirsty, stop when you’re full.

2011-04-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

Hello, world.
   It's been awhile since I've posted here. The past several months have been really rough, to say the least, but all the turmoil has made me get really clear on what I think and what I want to be doing with myself.
   For years now, I've had a recurring thought whenever I'd hear or read something about health: Surely it must be simpler than that. Whether it be acupuncture or astrophysics, herbal lore or phytopharmacology, we've managed to make it so darn complicated that it takes a lifetime to thoroughly learn just one of these philosophies.
   And in the process, we get so caught up in all the details - many of which are fascinating, to be sure - that we fail to see the simple truth that, at its core, life takes care of itself. Despite all its intricate moving parts, life is fundamentally a very simple process. Mysterious, yes; but simple, too. Good health likewise is fundamentally very simple.
   That's because bodies - all bodies - are inherently designed to be self maintaining, self regulating, and self repairing, over a lifetime. And then they stop. Simple as that. Animals and plants don't know that, in the way we customarily think of knowing something. They just do it. Spontaneously. And simply. They just go about the business of living with a simplicity and directness that humbles - and at times humiliates - this exalted human mind.
   The funny thing about this realisation is that it renders me redundant! except in my own life and that of my dog (whose feeding and other basic care is my responsibility). It really is quite ironic, if not actually humorous, given how I've been trying to make my living (as a veterinarian).
   Redundant - unless my role changes from "healthcare provider" (what an absurd term!) to teacher or coach. LIFE coach, in the fullest sense of the term. Another thing that has slowly dawned on me is how many of us have lost the ability to take good basic care of ourselves. We rely so much on others to tell us how to live and what to do to restore our health when - inevitably! - it fails that in one sense we're more helpless now than when we were babies. Have you noticed, for example, that there are now classes, books, and DVDs on how to breathe properly? On how to breathe! Good god, we've forgotten how to breathe!! That's a sad commentary on modern "life."
   So, if you will permit me to shift gears a little, it will be my great delight to share with you what I'm learning about life, from life. The theme is SIMPLICITY.

Eat when you’re hungry, drink when you’re thirsty, stop when you’re full.

This course in simplicity is going to take the form of a series of simple phrases. Things you could fit on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt. The point, after all, is simplicity.
   This first one is fundamentally about listening to your body. The body has some very sophisticated mechanisms for regulating its intake of food and water. But the "sophisticated" human mind thinks it knows better or that it doesn't need to pay attention to such primitive and pesky things. We've even made the mental over-rides of our body's signals part of our common language.
   "Lunchtime," for example. There is no such thing in all of nature. There's sunrise, there's sunset, and somewhere in between there's the middle of the day; but there is no fixed time of day when a meal should be eaten. Personally, I'm seldom hungry at lunchtime. That's because I'm seldom hungry at breakfast-time, so I seldom eat breakfast until mid- to late-morning. In fact, I'm happy with just two meals a day. That's all my body wants, so as often as I possibly can, that's how I eat: when I'm hungry, and until I'm not hungry anymore.
   We've become accustomed to feeding our animals the same way we eat - at set times of the day - when they would be healthiest and happiest if we would give them as much freedom as possible in choosing when and how much to eat and drink. Although, there is a trap to be avoided here, and that's the influence of boredom and stress on eating and drinking habits. The quality and quantity of the diet is important, too, as I'll discuss in later posts. Obesity is a very serious health problem in domestic animals, just as it is in domestic humans.
   But please don't let the challenges stop you from trying. Please give some thought to how you might move a little closer to nature's way of feeding her own in your particular circumstances. And then move a little closer still. This issue is an ongoing challenge for me, and I continue to tinker with it. It's easy enough for me to eat when I'm hungry, but I'm also responsible for feeding a dog. Here are my thoughts on feeding domestic dogs on a more natural "timetable" (knowing there's no such thing).
   By nature, dogs are rather opportunistic feeders. They eat their fill when food is available, even what you or I might call overeating if the food supply has been spotty. When food is scarce, they either hunt or scavenge, eating whatever they can find until their hunger is satisfied.
   What I do with that basic physiological and psychological template for Ms. Lilly is still a work in progress. The variety and opportunity components are easy enough, as I've been making a point of feeding her lots of different things, including leftovers from my dinner. (I may also share part of my meal with her if it's something she likes. Inexplicably, salads remain a "no sale" :-).
   The timing element remains a challenge, though. For now, I address the "eat when you're hungry" by paying attention to her. For example, when she comes up to me and politely asks for my attention while I'm down the rabbit hole of the computer screen, I'm getting better at noticing, asking her what she wants, and hearing that she's hungry and wants to eat. It's her choice, not mine. Because she's tuned in to her body, while I was on the computer, not even tuned in to my own :-)
   Another way I'm trying to address it is to feed her a large enough meal that I'm replicating what happens when a wild dog eats its fill at a fresh carcass or other food source. The dog is then satisfied for several hours. Dogs seem to prefer to be meal-feeders, not grazers, and their digestive systems would appear to be set up for meal feeding, although they certainly may "graze" or forage for food if a single meal doesn't satisfy. So, generally I feed Ms. Lilly a satisfying meal at least once a day (usually of an evening, as I've discussed before). Although on weekends especially, we may both "graze" our way lightly through the day. Short fasts from time to time are a natural thing.
   I also don't begrudge her the occasional "found object" when we're out on walks. Discarded hamburger buns, french fries, and DQ shakes may not be good for the body, but they sure are good for the soul. Dog manna! I'm almost as happy for her as she is when she scores such a find :-) Because scavenging for food is a natural thing for dogs.

   "Drink when you're thirsty" is easy enough with our animals. I just wanted to share some human-specific thoughts on this subject, as I've been both vexed and amused at the admonition by "health experts" for us to 'drink at least eight 8-oz glasses of water a day.' The advice continues that we should drink even when we're not thirsty, because by the time we register thirst, we're already dehydrated.
   Well, duh! The point of replenishing one's body fluids by drinking is to correct de-hydration; in other words, to re-hydrate. Drinking when you're not thirsty is the same as eating when you're not hungry: you'll end up taking in more than your body needs, which is not healthy. In fact, hyperhydration (excessive fluid intake) can be every bit as problematic as dehydration.
   There is nothing wrong with being mildly and transiently dehydrated. It's a normal physiological state, one that is corrected simply by drinking some water. It is neither necessary nor healthy to try to pre-empt dehydration by drinking in advance of one's need. Our bodies don't work that way; we can't store water in our humps! What happens instead is that we pee out the excess water within minutes of overhydrating - along with electrolytes, vitamins, and other small water-soluble molecules our bodies need to function well.

I once tried drinking the requisite 64 oz. of water per day. I spent the day going to the bathroom every 30 minutes, peeing like a racehorse. Now, that may not cause any serious health problems if it's for just one day. But over time, such a practice may interfere with the body's ability to regulate its own water balance. Healthy kidneys use a concentration gradient of electrolytes (sodium and potassium, in particular) across their tubules to concentrate the urine and thus regulate the body's water balance. With excessive drinking comes excessive urine production, which weakens that concentration gradient, so over time the kidney becomes less able to concentrate the urine. It's a condition called renal medullary washout, and it can be a serious problem if it's not corrected.

   Here's another fun fact about this obsessive water drinking from veterinary medicine: In animals, there is a condition of confinement (boredom and/or stress) called psychogenic polydipsia. Decoded, that means excessive water drinking - i.e. water intake beyond one's physiological needs - caused by a mental/emotional disorder. The animal drinks excessively (and therefore pees excessively), not because there is anything wrong with the kidneys or with the central regulation of thirst, but because of a psychological disorder.
   In my view, humans who drink when they are not thirsty and continue to drink beyond the point of satiety are exhibiting the primary symptom of psychogenic polydipsia.
   (Have you cottoned yet to the fact that I'm an iconoclast? ... :-)

Homeostasis is not a static state; it is a dynamic process, a continual see-sawing around a theoretical stillpoint. It is not the stillpoint itself, but rather the process of maintaining balance in the face of change. To never be dehydrated is to never be alive.

Why must we pathologise everything our bodies do?

If we were to simply listen to our bodies, we would eat when we're hungry, drink when we're thirsty, and stop when we've had enough. Let's figure out some simple ways that allow the animals in our care to do the same. Please share any simple strategies you come up with to address this principle, and I'll pass them on to everyone else.

That's it for now. Until next time,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 15

2010-08-03T18:13:00.000-07:00

OK, I think I have this nut cracked now. Last evening's fishy veggies were such a hit, last night and again tonight, that there's none left and all the bowls, plates, and pots are clean of every last morsel. (Once again, my kitchen suddenly filled with dogs as I was preparing Ms. Lilly's dinner [see below]. We currently number 7 dogs among we 4 neighbours, so I'm usually scrambling to find enough bowls and plates for everyone to get a little of Ms. Lilly's dinner. As I said at the start, "everyone eats.") I think from now on I'll reserve the sardines and kippers I've been feeding as mono-meals (most often as breakfast) for "meating up" the veggies when I'm not using ground meat.

But until I get in more supplies, I'll have to use up what I have on hand. For breakfast this morning, I decided to give Ms. Lilly the remainder of the raw beef heart (probably about 6 oz) and then a beef marrow bone. I probably could have left the bone another day, calcium-wise, but I was going to be out for much of the day today and I like to leave Ms. Lilly with something to chew on when I have a long day away. Also, the bone was starting to smell a bit "ripe." That's generally not a problem for healthy dogs. In fact, Ms. Lilly sometimes buries bones until they're all green and slimy, and only then does she dig them up and eat them. So unless they look and smell absolutely disgusting, I'll still offer smelly bones and let Ms. Lilly choose whether or not to eat them. This morning she ate it. With great enthusiasm. And is none the worse for it this evening.

For dinner tonight I gave her the rest of the fishy veggies (cold; it's been a warmish day) and some raw chicken hearts (also cold). All up, she got about 2 cups of veggies and 1 cup of chicken hearts. Her dog friends got the rest.

Someone asked me yesterday just how many dogs I have here! Just one: The Splendid Miss Tiger Lilly. She's the only dog I'm fully responsible for. But I'm in the happy position of being on a corner lot and having wonderful neighbours adjacent to me. We've set up a cool little community here in which we've opened up the interior fences which separate our yards, making one huge yard for our dogs to run and play in. Currently, we total 7 dogs, as one of my neighbours is taking care of her mum's dog for awhile. At times you may actually be able to hear the noise from there, but overall it's a peaceful, happy, well-adjusted group of dogs we have here. Such fun! And we all have an open-door policy with dogs and neighbours, so the dogs freely drift among our houses. Hence, my kitchen often is full of dogs, even when there's no food on offer.

I'm living on a really tight budget at the moment, as so many people are, and still I can afford to feed Ms. Lilly the way I've been describing - AND share some of this great food with the neighbour dogs. As I've said before, I can't afford NOT to feed her this way. If I can manage it, chances are you can, too. And as a bonus, feeding more veggies than meat helps keep the cost down. That's not the main reason I'm doing it, but it's a great side benefit.

Oh, and here's another little thing I've noticed since paying much more attention to Ms. Lilly's diet, committing to feeding her this way, and noticing her health and well-being improve: I'm feeding myself better, too! I see that in my clients as well when they start home-preparing for their dogs and cats, and it makes me smile. If this is what it takes to get you to start taking good care of yourself... :-)

OK. That's about it for today, I think.

More tomorrow,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 14, again

2010-08-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

Success!! So, here's what I ended up doing: I steamed a big pot of veggies, added some kippers for meaty flavour, fed that first, and then fed Ms. Lilly a big chunk of raw beef heart for "afters."

Ingredients:

* 1 medium-large zucchini, grated (but sliced would have worked just as well)
* 1 medium carrot, grated
* 1 medium leek, sliced
* 1/3 large cauliflower, coarsely chopped
* salt, pepper, and herbs to taste (today I used dried thyme, dried oregano, and fresh rosemary)
- kippers, 1 can (3 oz.)

Notes:

1. Finally my garden has some zucchinis ready for picking. I use zucchini a lot in Ms. Lilly's food prep, as it has very little flavour, so it's a good "filler" veggie. It has a high water content, so it's not as nutrient-dense as leafy greens and the root veggies, but it can come in really handy when feeding a hungry dog.

However, last year I think I overdid it, as my garden produced an embarrassment of riches in zucchinis. Poor Ms. Lilly started to throw up from all the zucchini I was adding to her food. Lesson learned: a body can become intolerant of any food if it's used improperly. I gave her a break from zucchini, and now she tolerates it just fine - in moderation.

2. Leeks are in the onion family, which we're told are a no-no for dogs. But I love the onion group - onions, spring onions, leeks, garlic, shallots - and I use them a lot in my own food prep. Ms. Lilly has been eating them with me for years, without a problem (except for the time I accidentally poisoned her with garlic... for the longest time she refused anything with garlic in it; now she'll eat it - in moderation). Noticing a theme here? All things in moderation (even chocolate - yep; chocolate).

Oh, and I added the leek to tonight's veggie medley because it just didn't look or smell right until the leeks went in. (The onions add such a savoury flavour.) Before I added the kippers, I tasted the steamed veggies and tinkered with the flavour, adding salt, pepper, and finally a splash of white wine vinegar, until it tasted just right. It was delicious, even before the fish went in. (And then it stank to high heaven - to my nostrils, anyway. The dogs, however, thought otherwise. Before I could turn around, my kitchen was filled with dogs!)

Directions:

* steam the veggies in a small amount of lightly salted water (I like Himalayan pink salt, for its lovely taste and all its trace minerals) until just tender
* add any dried herbs at the start of cooking; add any fresh herbs near or at the end of cooking
* once the veggies are tender, let them cool a little (when I'm in a hurry, I'll stand the hot pot in a few inches of cold water in the sink, and stir the veggies to speed cooling)
* whizz the veggies in a food processor or blender (I prefer the food processor, as it leaves the veggies with some texture)
* add salt, pepper, herbs, etc. to taste
* add the kippers (or other flavourful meat), mix thoroughly so that the meat flavour is thoroughly infused

I gave Ms. Lilly about a cup and a half of this "fishyssoise," which she gobbled down. (Yay!) She even licked her bowl clean!

Although I must admit that there may have been a modicum of the "cousin Mandy" effect at play here. That happens quite a lot when the neighbour dogs are over. I'm one of 6 kids, but my cousin Mandy is an only child. Whenever she'd come spend a week with us during the summer holidays, her mum would give my mum a list of all the things Mandy wouldn't eat. My mum would listen politely and then completely ignore the careful instructions on how to feed the delicate and oh-so-fussy Mandy. Cousin Mandy was served everything we kids were fed, and she ate everything on her plate, learning quickly that if she didn't clean her plate or if she took her sweet time doing so, there would be no seconds. Competition can be a good thing with a fussy eater :-)

Anyway, after Ms. Lilly ate her veggies, I gave her a big chunk of raw beef heart, close to 8 oz. (roughly a quarter of an almost 2-lb slab of heart). So, for dinner tonight I achieved my goal of getting the meat portion of her diet below 50%, while still ensuring a happy and well-fed dog. (The neighbour dogs are not as happy, however. While they thoroughly enjoyed the fishy veggies, they were outraged at not getting any beef heart for afters. Try as I might, they just won't wear it that Ms. Lilly is special :-)

Lots of fishy veggies left over for tomorrow's meals.

More then,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 14 (I think)

2010-08-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

My apologies for the radio silence over the weekend. Sometimes I just need a break from my computer...

I think we left off at breakfast on Saturday. After breakfast, Ms. Lilly got another bone, as my wonderful neighbour gave all of the dogs a beef marrow bone to keep them occupied while she was gone for the day.

Now, Ms. Lilly will never turn down a good bone - and neither would I want her to. But another thing I've noticed over the years is that marrow bones can contain quite a bit of fat. (Bone marrow itself can be very fatty tissue, particularly in a mature animal.) Being a suburban dog at present, Ms. Lilly starts to get a bit "sludgy" when I'm too heavy-handed with the animal fats.

So when, on Saturday evening, I noticed that her breath smelled a bit "fatty" (hard to describe, but imagine how you'd be feeling and how your breath would smell if you'd eaten a whole bag of pork rinds - the family size), I decided that dinner should be a very light affair. I wasn't all that hungry either, so we shared some scrambled eggs with parsley, chives, and an abundance of salad greens fresh from the garden.

You might be questioning the choice of eggs, the yolks being quite fatty. But eggs are also high in protein, vitamins, and minerals - close to a complete food, in fact - and with the greens mixed in to what probably amounted to only 2 eggs, it was still a very light meal. I scrambled 6 eggs, but I had at least 2 egg's worth myself, and three of the neighbour dogs each got some, so Ms. Lilly ate barely 2 eggs, and lots of greens.

By the morning, she smelled good again (her breath seldom smells bad - and she never has "dog breath" - morning breath, yes, but don't we all :-). Even so, breakfast was just a few pieces of beef jerky, as I try to eat very lightly on the weekends myself, and I usually do the same for Ms. Lilly.

Various natural health experts, including some in the veterinary community, recommend fasting once a week. I don't do well with fasting myself, and Ms. Lilly doesn't seem to appreciate it, either. But we can do very well with - and even feel better for - skipping a meal here and there. Usually breakfast, but not always.

I just don't subscribe to the tenet, "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." I'm more of the "eat when you're hungry" school of management. Well, that's easy enough for me to do myself, but making that decision for my dog takes quite a bit of care. As long as I'm paying attention - real attention - and listening to her, I'm less likely to get it wrong. We go along swimmingly, her telling me when she's hungry, what she'd like to eat of the available options, when she really needs more, etc. - when I'm paying the right sort of attention.

It's fun to watch what happens when I tell her "dinner will be another half an hour": she'll go back outside or back to her bed, only to come back 30 minutes later, on the dot, ready for dinner. And, having accidentally burned her tongue more than once by putting down food that was too hot, I can tell her "it's still too hot; let me cool it down first" and she'll wait for about 10 minutes, then return and tuck into her now "just right" dinner.

(BTW, I'm re-reading "Kinship with All Life" by J. Allen Boone. I highly recommend this marvelous little book for all its wonderful stories on this sort of interspecies communication. Such fun!!)

Over the weekend I've been pondering the veggie dilemma some more. How can I get more veggies into Ms. Lilly's diet, while still satisfying her need for animal source nutrients and still feeding the various meats in large pieces when possible? As a result, dinner on Sunday evening consisted of some white beans I cooked up for my vegetarian self (with some extra for Ms. Lilly) and some large chunks of raw beef heart mixed in. I "meated up" the beans with some of the blood from the package of beef heart. I think that's going to be the key with Ms. Lilly, the meat-loving omnivore: make the veggies worth eating by adding meaty flavours.

Alas, I am not blessed with one of those dogs who will eat raw broccoli or carrots. No. If I don't meat them up or whizz them up in the blender with something tasty, I'll find them strewn about on the kitchen floor, she evidently having tossed them from her bowl in disgust. The neighbour dogs eat them with great delight, but that rather misses the point - and the target. I love my dog friends and I'll happily feed them a little of what Lilly is eating, but I want her to eat her veggies!!!

(Is this one of my childhood transgressions coming back to haunt me? I HATED brussels sprouts when I was a kid. I didn't particularly like carrots, either. But brussels sprouts were positively vile! Well do I recall having an abscess on my hand that I wouldn't let anyone touch. It got so bad that there was a red streak progressing up my arm - "blood poisoning!" But still I wouldn't let anyone touch my hand. Until mum promised that if I let her lance the abscess, she'd let me leave my brussels sprouts on my plate, uneaten. Deal!!)

Funny thing is that now I love brussels sprouts (as long as they're not overcooked).

I rather despair of Ms. Lilly "growing up" to love her veggies, though. I guess I'll have to live with having to hide the veggies in with the meat.

Dinner tonight: steamed zucchini (fresh from the garden) and carrots, with more of that lovely raw beef heart. Recipe to follow. For now: to the kitchen!

More soon,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day ??

2010-07-30T18:35:00.000-07:00

... let me see... where was I? Dinner yesterday evening, I think.

So, for dinner yesterday evening Ms. Lilly had some raw lamb liver and steamed cabbage. I mentioned earlier that liver isn't her favourite organ meat. But one thing I've found works every time is when I marinate the liver in walnut oil and curry powder for a few minutes before adding it to the veggies.

It doesn't have to be walnut oil; that's just the oil I prefer to use for my own food prep, as it's high in omega-3 fatty acids. Olive oil would work just as well as a vehicle for the curry powder. The curry I use is a mild one (called Muchi curry, and found at Whole Foods), and the dogs seem to love it.

So, while the cabbage was steaming (one medium-size nappa cabbage, coarsely shredded), I added about a tablespoon of walnut oil to the bottom of a flat pan, added some curry powder (I don't know how much; several shakes of the bottle; "to taste" according to my preference), added a little Himalayan pink salt (because it's yummy, and contains about 80 different trace minerals), mixed it up so that the curry and salt were evenly distributed through the oil, and then added the slices of liver. I mixed it about a bit, and flipped each piece of liver over so that both sides were flavoured, and then let it sit in the curried oil while the cabbage finished steaming and then while it cooled in the sink.

I forgot to look at the package to see how much liver I used, but I'm guessing it was just shy of a pound. So, given the size of the cabbage, this meal was probably about 50:50 meat to veg, maybe more like 40:60, as it was a decent-size cabbage.

The reason I'm bringing up this issue of meat-veg ratio again is because yesterday morning I was reminded of something I'd forgotten: Ms. Lilly is more friendly when I keep her diet at least 50% veggies. She has a tendency to be aggressive toward other dogs; territorial is probably a better word, as she feels it necessary to police along the fence line and growl at anyone who is walking by along the road. That behaviour is worse when her diet is predominantly meat, as it has been this past week, and it lessens when I add more veggies. As I said at the beginning of this thread, she's fine (both physically and psychologically) with lots of veggies, as long as I don't drop below about 30% meat.

The other thing I've noticed in the past week or so, as I've gotten a bit lazy about including lots of veggies in her diet (the organ meats have been excellent, and so easy to feed...), is that she's become very grabby about food that I give her by hand. For example, I'll hand her an entire lamb heart rather than putting it in her food bowl. She used to be very good at taking food gently from my hand, but since our ranks have swelled to 7 dogs (one visitor for the past few weeks) and I've slackened off on the veggies, she's become very grabby with food.

When I don't feed her bones often enough, she goes all "shark eyes" when I give her a bone. (If you're a Shark Week fan, you'll know what I mean: when sharks go to bite at their prey, their eyes get all wide and stare-y. That's what Ms. Lilly does if she's not getting enough meat and bones in her diet. Shark eyes.) Lately she's been doing shark eyes with anything I give her by hand, and I think it's partly because she feels she's having to compete too much with the other dogs, even though everyone is well fed, much loved, and gets lots of attention. I'll need to work on that with her. I always take care to feed her first. "Lilly first," is what I tell all of the dogs, including Ms. Lilly. But evidently I need to be a little more proactive there. And get back to adding lots of veggies to her diet.

OK. So, that was yesterday. This morning I fed her the rest of the chicken hearts (raw) from the other night. About 4 oz. I'd guess. She also got a couple of pieces of the beef jerky I made for her last weekend. Just because. Nutritionally, it's not much (thin slices of beef, rendered even thinner by drying). But good for the soul, if not for the body.

Dinner this evening was some raw turkey giblets (a liver, a gizzard, and a heart I think) and a raw lamb heart. The turkey giblets were nice and fresh, and it's been weeks since she's had any turkey, so in the interest of variety, dinner was turkey innards and a lamb heart that was sitting in the fridge and needed to be eaten. Later, when the other dogs are off doing something else, I'll give her a beef bone. It's been a few days since she's had a fresh bone, so she's due a new bone for calcium. But I really must figure out this veggie thing. I think it'll come down to "meating up" some veggies, perhaps with some flavourful fish, so that I can continue to give her whole hearts and other organs in large pieces, and still get plenty of veggies into her.

One final thought before I sign off. I've had people tell me "I can't afford to feed my dog that way!" Well, I don't think I can afford not to. I can't afford for her to have a serious illness which requires expensive diagnostic tests and medical or surgical treatment. I'd far rather pay to keep her healthy, and bet on it being the far lesser expense.

Oh, and a big THANK YOU! to Barbara, the wonderful "butcher lady" at PCC in Issaquah, for ordering us so many great organ meats and bones for our dogs. Thanks to Barbara, my neighbour and I can now buy beef heart, liver, kidneys, tongue, tail, and marrow bones; lamb heart, liver, kidneys, and often neck bones; whole chickens with their giblets, as well as separate chicken hearts, livers, and occasionally chicken necks, backs, and feet; occasionally turkey giblets and turkey necks and backs; and probably some other things I'm not thinking of right now. And I'm leaving out the various pig products, bison, rabbit, and all the fish and seafood. So, thank you Barbara and the other meat buyers at PCC for sourcing such excellent quality meats and providing us with a great variety of organ meats.

That's about it for tonight, I think.

Until tomorrow,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 10, evening

2010-07-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

Just a short post this evening. Dinner for Ms. Lilly was the rest of last night's lamb & veggies (about 1-1/2 cupsful) and some raw chicken hearts (6 oz. or so).

I was thinking, as I watched Ms. Lilly romping in the yard today, how very good she looks since I got serious about adding lots of veggies and organ meats to her diet. She really does look great, for any age, but especially for a "senior" dog.

Actually, I object to the current convention in vet med of calling any dog over the age of 7 "senior," which is a thinly veiled euphemism for "geriatric." What a miserable admission that the average domestic dog's lifespan is barely more than 10 years. It should be somewhere around 18 or 20. Heck; I'll settle for 15 or 16 years with my beloved Ms. Lilly, given that most of her contemporaries are barely making it to 12.

I don't want to put any limits on what's possible for Ms. Lilly, but neither do I want to set unrealistic goals. It is said that nowadays we're all living in a toxic soup of polluted air, water, seas, and soils. Perhaps it's an occupational hazard, but almost daily the thought occurs to me that I won't have Ms. Lilly forever. That lump she had on her flank (until recently...) reminds me that my best efforts for her may still not be good enough.

Anyway, all that makes me cherish her all the more, and want to take the best possible care of her, starting with the food I give her, the filtered water I use for her drinking water, the time I spend with her (which admittedly is too little), the walks, the hikes, the hugs, the shared treats - a shared life, really. I think that's the point: we're traveling through this part of our lives together, friends and companions.

Speaking of traveling, I have a long day on the road tomorrow, so I probably won't post again until Friday.

Until then,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 10

2010-07-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

Big grin on my face this morning... I had quite a bit of last night's lamb & veggie debacle left over, so I decided to see if Ms. Lilly would eat some of it for breakfast, fully expecting to get The Look (you know the one, that only a well-fed and much-loved dog can give when presented with something entirely unacceptable :-)

Success!! She ate an entire cupful and looked for more. Either the greens had mellowed a bit overnight or Ms. Lilly was really hungry this morning. Perhaps a bit of both. I still have enough for part of dinner tonight, and a cupful was plenty for breakfast, so I didn't give her any more. Instead, I gave her a couple of large pieces of beef jerky I made on the weekend. It's a happy dog I have now.

See how easy this is?

More later,

-Dr. Chris King-
Nature's Apprentice
www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 9, evening

2010-07-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

'Evening. Seems it's time to illustrate that not all of my meals for Ms. Lilly are a smashing success. Tonight's was rather a flop...

I'd thawed some more of those lovely, grass-fed lamb hearts for her dinner, but as it's been a few days since she's had any veggies, I decided to make her up a lamb heart and veggie combo. I already had the food processor out, as I'd just prepared a batch of sprouted-grain crackers for myself, so I decided to steam some of the veggies in the fridge that needed to be eaten, and then whizz them up with a raw lamb heart and some of the fresh salad greens I'd picked from the garden a few days ago. Mistake!

No problem with the steamed veggies (white cabbage, cauliflower, carrot). She's eaten all of them many times before without complaint; and steaming them lightly makes them more palatable to her. But today I decided to leave the fresh salad greens raw (I usually steam them for her), ostensibly so that they'd be more nutritious and would still have some beneficial soil microbes on them. (I talked about soil microbes and digestive health a few days ago. Sorry; can't remember which day, but it's here somewhere.)

Trouble is that the raw salad greens were just a little too bitter for her liking. It's a lovely mesclun mix that I grow for myself. But some of the constituents are a little... shall we say, piquant? I love 'em, but if I let the greens get a little too long, as I did this time, then they can be rather too stimulating to the salivary glands, as it were. Perhaps I'd have gotten away with using less. I was trying to use up what had been sitting in the fridge for days. (Still nice and crisp, but with more ready for harvesting in the garden, I wanted to use up what I'd already cut.)

The lesson here is to not use Ms. Lilly's food bowl as an alternative to the compost bucket! All of the veggies were in good shape, but still... I talked the other day about dogs being opportunists when it comes to food. But in this instance it was taking that concept a little too far to empty my crisper drawer into her food bowl just because I didn't want to waste good food. It all would have kept another day.

Anyway, she did eventually eat this weird goop. As a reward, and for the reasons I've already discussed about feeding raw meat in large chunks, she also got a whole lamb heart before and another one with the lamb & veggie slop. So, I'm happy: she ate her veggies. And she's happy: she got some "proper dog food" (i.e. MEAT! :-)

Until tomorrow,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 9

2010-07-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

... so what I ended up pulling out of the freezer for Ms. Lilly's dinner yesterday was a package of lamb kidneys. I let them thaw at room temperature (yes, I know; that's supposed to be a big no-no with meat; but I've never encountered any problems doing it, as long as the meat is good to begin with) and then fed the kidneys raw.

Clearly, these kidneys were super-fresh when they were frozen, because they thawed to look, feel, and smell like fresh kidneys, and there was fresh-looking blood in the package they came in. That's one of the hidden benefits of buying meats from small producers who are processing their own livestock on-site and packaging the meats right away: it's fresh!

Ms. Lilly got 4 kidneys to start with, but they were such a hit that I gave her 2 more. The neighbour dogs were going wild for a taste, too, so I gave them one each. Alas, no leftovers! All up, Ms. Lilly probably got about 12 oz. of lamb kidneys.

This morning for breakfast I had nothing thawed or leftover, so I fed her a can of kippers, to which I added some Vitality Canid. I was pleased to see that she wasn't terribly hungry. She liked the fish, and she ate it, but not as if she was starving. I've noticed a number of times now how well satisfied she seems to be when she feasts on organ meats. Sometimes we can skip breakfast altogether the next day, because she just doesn't seem to need it. Fine by me. I'm all for eating when your hungry, and not eating when you're not.

-Dr. Chris King

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 8

2010-07-26T10:43:00.001-07:00

Let me see... where were we... breakfast yesterday, I think.

So, dinner for Ms. Lilly yesterday evening was some raw beef liver mixed with a lovely rice-and-lentil pilaf I made for myself. The base of the pilaf was brown rice, wild rice, a couple of varieties of lentils, and some split peas. I kept the base pretty simple and just added some garam marsala, balsamic vinegar, and salt once it was done cooking. For Ms. Lilly, I mixed in the raw liver, 3 generous slices all up.

Although I'm big on feeding a variety of organ meats, I don't often feed liver, as Ms. Lilly doesn't like it. I have to hide it in other things to get her to eat it. I find that really interesting, as the liver is one of the most prized parts of the prey for wild canids. I got to wondering whether the livers of farmed animals, even grass-fed livestock, are having to deal with much more junk than are their wild counterparts, so the livers of domestic animals taste different from those of wild animals. I have noticed that Ms. Lilly loves wild rabbit (e.g. a freshly killed rabbit we found on the side of the road one day was like manna!), but she turns her nose up at farmed rabbit. Maybe it's simply that wild herbivores taste more "gamey"; I don't know what it is, but the wild stuff certainly gets more stars than the farmed stuff.

Fortunately, heart, kidney, and other innards when I can get them are a consistent hit with Ms. Lilly. For breakfast this morning, I gave her the last of the lamb hearts I'd thawed for use over the weekend. And then another beef marrow bone, as my neighbour had generously bought enough bones for all of the dogs. So, the yard is nice and quiet this morning, as everyone settles down to work on their marrow bones.

It's been a week for marrow bones, this past week. While I mostly use beef bones for Ms. Lilly, I do like to vary things a bit whenever I find some nice lamb bones, and I sometimes feed raw chicken that includes the bones (e.g. a leg quarter or the wing tips if I've bought an entire chicken). I'm trying to balance variety with quality (whatever bones I buy, they've gotta be good) and suitability (especially matching the size of the bones to the size of the dog). I've had no serious problems feeding raw bones to Ms. Lilly, but when I first started feeding her raw bones, I took the precaution of giving her the bone after her meal, so that she'd take her time and eat it properly.

That's it for now, I think. I'd better go look in the freezer and pull something out to thaw for dinner tonight.

Until then,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 7

2010-07-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

For dinner last night and breakfast this morning, Ms. Lilly had some raw lamb hearts, two hearts for dinner and one for breakfast. Each heart must have weighed approximately 6 oz., if I've done my sums right.

The hearts came frozen, but once thawed they looked very fresh. My preference is always for fresh over frozen foods, but sometimes frozen is the best option if the food was frozen immediately after harvest and it has to travel a good distance from farm to store - which was the case with this excellent, grass-fed, Oregon-grown lamb. I don't always make it to our local farmers market to get local produce, so, all else being equal, regional is next best.

I fed the hearts whole. For one thing, it saves me the trouble of cutting them up. But that's a minor consideration (although not to be sneezed at, given the issue of simplicity and ease I talked about earlier). The main reason I leave them whole is so that Ms. Lilly has to chew on them. When presented with large pieces of meat, dogs naturally gnaw on the meat with their large carnassial teeth (last upper premolar/first lower molar), taking maybe a few chews before swallowing it in large chunks. It's a happy dog I have when I give her a large piece of meat, such as a big slab of beef heart or a whole lamb heart, and leave her to gnaw it into submission.

Perhaps it's because the dog's dentition and the rest of her digestive system is designed for such eating behaviour, but I have had no problems whatsoever with feeding her this way. In fact, she seems to remain satisfied for longer after eating large chunks of meat than when I use ground meats. That makes sense: it would take longer for large pieces of food to be digested than for small pieces. I love the convenience of ground meats, and I will continue to include some in her meals each week and keep some in the freezer for whenever. But I'm also mindful of how much she likes to gnaw on her food and how well she seems to do when I feed her meat in chunks or large pieces.

Until tomorrow,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 6, morning

2010-07-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

Is it day 6 already?! Hmm. I think I'll keep going with this awhile longer, as I have yet to cycle through all of my favourite recipes for Ms. Lilly, which is the whole point of the exercise -- to show you how easy it is to feed your dog a healthy, fresh-food diet, and how few hard-and-fast rules there really are.

This morning, breakfast was an ad hoc affair. I was in charge of feeding three of the neighbour dogs this morning, as their people were away overnight. These dogs are on a mostly kibble diet, and although I will feed them as requested what their people prepared for them, I wanted to add a little fresh food to their bowls as well. I had a half a pound of ground beef in the fridge from the other night, so I mixed in some Vitality Canid, added some warm water to make a nice thick "soup" (mostly so the small amount of beef would go further), and shared it among Ms. Lilly and our three guests. Ms. Lilly got the lion's share (probably ~6 oz. of beef), but as that wasn't much of a meal, I followed it with another marrow bone. I don't usually feed marrow bones two days in a row, but I felt she needed a bit more substance than what was in her breakfast bowl, and she does love her bones. I'm thawing some whole lamb hearts for her dinner, so she'll feast later on today.

As you may have gathered by now, not all of Ms. Lilly's meals are "nutritionally complete and balanced." But neither are yours or mine. Given the body's remarkable economy and ability to store more than it immediately needs, it does not appear necessary to take in the full complement of nutrients we're told we need, in every meal, or even in every day.

I can be as lazy as the next person, so sometimes a meal for Ms. Lilly is whatever is in the fridge or on the shelf. And I think it needs to be like that for most of us. If it's not easy to do or somewhat flexible, then we're probably not going to keep it up long-term. There's got to be some wiggle room in the programme for "less than ideal" when you're in a hurry, too tired, or the cupboard is bare.

The cool thing is that dogs in general are opportunists when it comes to food. Yes, wild canids will hunt, kill, and eat fresh prey; but they also scavenge and will eat all sorts of other things, from rotting carcasses to insects and berries.

That's not to say it doesn't matter what you feed your dog. The whole point of this current blog series is that it DOES matter. It just doesn't matter that you get it PERFECT every single time. If that were the litmus test, then I would fail.

And while most veterinary nutritionists would likely be apoplectic over how I'm feeding Ms. Lilly, the proof is in the pudding: a healthy, happy dog.

More later,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 5, evening

2010-07-23T17:12:00.001-07:00

Early afternoon Ms. Lilly and the other dogs each got a marrow bone.

For dinner tonight, Ms. Lilly ate about a half a pound of raw chicken hearts. They're one of her favourite things. Sometimes, if they've been sitting in the fridge for a few days, I'll cook them lightly, as any part of a chicken - but especially the innards - is rather more contaminated with undesirables (potentially pathogenic bacteria) than the equivalent mammal parts. But if it's nice and fresh (i.e. good colour, shiny, no odour), I've not had any problems feeding Ms. Lilly raw poultry, not even innards. The other dogs love chicken hearts, too. They're our version of chicken nuggets. Always a hit with the kids :-)

I didn't bother adding any veggies to Ms. Lilly's dinner tonight. I don't always. Sometimes her meals are 100% meat; sometimes 100% vegetarian (e.g. the crustless quiche we shared yesterday, the lentil soup that is one of our favourites, and the yummy pilaf I make to which I add peas and cashews). Over the course of a week, she averages the ratios I talked about earlier. And the variety keeps it interesting. So many reasons to get lots of variety into our diets!

There was something I wanted to comment on today, but I've forgotten what it was. I'm sure it'll come back to me - it the middle of the night!

Until tomorrow,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 5, morning

2010-07-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

'mornin' all. For breakfast this morning, Ms. Lilly enjoyed a small can of sardines, about 5 fish bodies all up. As I mentioned the other day, when I'm feeding "mono-meals" such as this, I usually add a little Vitality Canid for something green and to supply a few extra micronutrients.

Grocery shopping this morning was a bonanza, as the butcher at PCC had ordered various organ meats for me. I came home with chicken hearts; lamb hearts, liver, and kidneys; beef marrow bones; and some thinly sliced beef I'm making into jerky for treats.

(I bought a small food dehydrator last year, and now I'm a drying fool! In addition to making jerky for Ms. Lilly and her dog friends, I make some wonderful raw-food crackers for myself. The dogs love them, too. This weekend I may attempt a dog-specific variation - if there's any left over from the crackers I want to make for myself! :-)

More this evening.

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 4, evening

2010-07-22T16:59:00.000-07:00

For dinner this evening, Ms. Lilly shared a veggie frittata I made for us. This dish is really just a crustless quiche - a lazy cook's quiche.

As it's not primarily dog food, I won't bother detailing the ingredients and instructions. But in case you're interested, I saute a leek and some grated carrot in an oven-proof pan on medium heat, toss in some chopped veggies (whatever is in the fridge on the day before grocery day; tonight it was cauliflower and green cabbage), mix well. While the veggies are cooking a little, I whisk up 6 eggs and a splash of water, add some salt, pepper, and nutmeg (just a light sprinkling, but it's the secret ingredient that'll make any egg dish taste fantastic!), and then add this savoury custard to the veggies. The pan goes in the oven for 30 minutes, by which time the "quiche" is set.

I let it cool and then Lilly and I split it; I get around two-thirds and she gets about one-third. The neighbour dogs always show up right before the oven timer goes off (it's uncanny!), but tonight I selfishly kept all but the pan for Ms. Lilly and myself. As I'm typing, one of the labs (of course) has settled herself on the kitchen floor in sphinx position, the pan held proprietorily between her forelegs, and is carefully licking every inch of the pan for any bits that might come loose. It's one of their (our) favourite meals.

Grocery day tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be bringing home some juicy marrow bones and lots of other goodies. The butcher at PCC has promised to have some heart, liver, and kidney in stock...

Until then,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 4, morning

2010-07-22T11:17:00.001-07:00

Last night, after I finished logging Ms. Lilly's evening meal, I noticed her eating another dog's poop out in the yard. She does this from time to time, as many dogs do. Eating the faeces of other animals is, in my opinion, a normal behaviour for a dog. I suspect it is a simple and direct way of replenishing one's gut microbes when needed.

Even so, it disgusts me, and I just can't stand to see her doing it. So, last night I gave her (and the bunch of other dogs who piled into my kitchen) the rest of last night's beef & veggies, in which I mixed a couple of scoops of Primal Defense.

Primal Defense (PD) is my favourite probiotic product because it is the closest I've found yet to being physiologically sound. For one thing, it is a blend of about a dozen different species of beneficial bacteria. Most other probiotic products on the market contain only a handful of species, if that; some contain only one (typically, Lactobacillus acidophilus). The microbial population of the healthy digestive tract is extremely diverse. There are several hundred different bacterial species in there, probably more. So, it strikes me as absurd that a commercial probiotic product would contain only a few different species, when what is natural is many.

Another thing I like about the PD is that the bacterial species it contains are what the manufacturer describes as "homeostatic soil organisms." These are the types of microbes we'd naturally be getting on/in our food, were we to be living a more natural lifestyle, growing our own food, and eating it fresh from the garden. That is the way nature designed for us to maintain a thriving, diverse microbial ecosystem in our digestive tracts - on/in our food.

But because most of the veggies in Ms. Lilly's diet are cooked (for better palatability and digestibility), and as she is not getting to eat the whole animal, digestive tract and all, in the nonsterile environment in which most prey are consumed, from time to time I add some PD to her meals. I'm not a believer in adding a probiotic every day for weeks or months on end, as some people do. In my opinion, that's a great recipe for creating a chronic disorder of the gut microflora (a condition called dysbiosis). It's forcing microbial species or variants on the system which may not be species- or diet-appropriate for that body. And it's generally a very heavy-handed approach, too, with dosages in the billions of colony-forming units (CFU) per day, rather than in the hundreds or thousands which is more physiologically appropriate.

(Note: I do sometimes prescribe daily probiotic use - but only for a specific medical purpose, and only for short periods of time. My aim is always to return the system to a state of self-maintenance in which artificial probiotics are not needed every day.)

So, that was her impromptu supper last night: a little more of the beef & veg, with a little PD. No digestive upsets; no other problems with her; just that little red flag of poop eating.

This morning we both got off to a slow start and have yet to really get moving. We've been in a changeable weather pattern for the past week or so, and today's cool and overcast weather is quite a change from yesterday's warm sunshine. I was interested to see that the neighbour dogs are taking it easy today, too. So, I decided we should skip breakfast and have an early dinner instead.

That's something I do quite often, for both of us: extend the overnight "fast" by a few extra hours and just take it easy through the first half of the day.

One of the important lessons I've learned from living with dogs is to rest when you're tired. Today feels like a good day to just be tired and rest. So that's what we're going to do.

Dinner tonight: a veggie frittata, I think.

I'm off for a nap. More later,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 3, evening

2010-07-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

Today Ms. Lilly and her dog friends got some beef rib bones. As I said in an earlier post, I feed raw bones a few times a week to supply Ms. Lilly with the calcium that would otherwise be lacking in her meat & veg diet. I like to feed raw bones to dogs for two other reasons: it helps keep their teeth and gums healthy, and it satisfies their presumptively primal need to gnaw on their prey. Bones can also be a wonderful anti-boredom device for dogs with too little to do.

Sometimes I buy short ribs, as they have a lot more meat on them than back ribs. But today I bought a sheet of back ribs, as I was planning on feeding ground beef for dinner tonight. I divided the sheet of ribs into single ribs by cutting down between the ribs. Ms. Lilly got 2 ribs and her dog friends got one each. (Tears and recriminations if the number of bones does not = the number of dogs :-)

Tonight for dinner, Ms. Lilly had ground beef and veggies (red cabbage and carrots).

Ingredients:

* red cabbage, half a medium-size head of cabbage, shredded

* carrot, one large carrot, grated

* apple cider vinegar, a generous splash (1-2 tbsp)

* fresh thyme, a couple of small sprigs, finely chopped

* lean ground beef, approx. 8 oz.

Notes:

1. Cabbage. I wrote about cabbage at length yesterday evening. I particularly like red cabbage for its colour. As a general rule, brightly coloured veggies contain more antioxidant nutrients than pale veggies. However, the red cabbage leaves are thicker than the garden-variety white/green cabbage, so not only does red cabbage take longer to cook, but it probably is not as well digested as the finer leafed varieties. For that reason, I generally feed it to Ms. Lilly only once a week or so. Fortunately, cabbages keep very well in the fridge, even once cut.

I seldom measure when I'm preparing food, going mostly by sight, smell, and taste. But today I measured how much cabbage and carrot I used, just to see how close I was to the proportions I espoused yesterday. The above ingredient list resulted in a meat:veg ratio of about 30:70. Yay! My eyeball cooking method is right on the mark - at least for today :-)

2. Lean beef. The lean ground beef I used was organic, grass-fed beef, which is supposed to be higher in omega-3 fatty acids than lot-fed beef. This particular package was 16% fat, although when I can find it I prefer the 9% fat beef. As I mentioned yesterday, Ms. Lilly is a middle-aged, currently suburban dog, so her daily calorie needs are not that much higher than the basic maintenance requirement (i.e. that needed to maintain body weight in a sedentary adult). As long as I use lean meats, I don't have to worry about her weight; she maintains a healthy lean weight and good muscle mass on her current diet and exercise regimen.

Directions:

1. Steam the cabbage in a small amount of water, to which the vinegar is added; cook until the thickest parts of the cabbage are just tender (about 15 minutes).

2. Add the carrot in the last 5 minutes of cooking.

3. Turn off the heat, and let the veggies steam in the lidded pot for another 5 minutes or so.

4. Cool the pot in the sink (see last night's post).

5. Mix in the ground beef.

6. Add any additional flavourings if desired (tonight I added a little fresh thyme from the garden, just because)

Ms. Lilly got a generous 2 cups of the beef & veggie mix for dinner. Actually, it was probably a little more than that, as red cabbage has quite a lot of texture, even when steamed, so the mix was rather bulky. But had I pressed it lightly into a cup measure, it would have been no more than about 2 cupsful.

There is plenty left over for breakfast, even though 2 of the neighbour dogs bellied up for some this evening.

Until tomorrow,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 3, morning

2010-07-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

For breakfast this morning, Ms. Lilly had the rest of last night's lamb-lentil stew, which had thickened nicely overnight in the fridge. She got maybe a cupful this morning, as I held a little back for Ms. Bella, one of the neighbor dogs (who has the most uncanny sense of what's going on in my kitchen and showed up right on time to get a little lamb & lentils this morning).

Last night, after I finished logging Ms. Lilly's evening meal, we shared some raw almonds. I eat nuts quite often, and if Ms. Lilly is around, she usually gets some, too. We mostly eat raw cashews, almonds, walnuts, and pecans. Sometimes peanuts, but not very often.

Granted, Ms. Lilly doesn't make the best use of nuts, as dogs don't chew their food more than a couple of times before swallowing it. And it can't be pleasant, passing poop with chunks of nut in it! But still, we enjoy this little ritual of sharing food, and she likely gets some benefit from the softer nuts. And if her poop is nice and bulky, which it generally is when her meals contain ample veggies, then she seems to have no trouble passing it, even with bits of nut in it.

I didn't count them, but Ms. Lilly got maybe a small handful of almonds all up. I make sure I give them to her one or two at a time, so that she doesn't swallow them whole.

"Your dog eats better than I do!"

I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard that! My response usually is some variation of "Shame on you!" I'll say it with a smile, but I really do mean it. Why are you not feeding yourself well? How on earth do you think you can stay healthy like that?

I'll also explain my philosophy, which is that you can either spend the money now on good food and greatly increase the chances of your dog having a long and healthy life, or you can spend it later on vet bills, medications, surgery, and likely premature euthanasia for one or more of the chronic degenerative diseases for which poor diet is a strong causal or contributing factor.

There is not yet a lot of solid science in veterinary medicine to back up what for me is a patently obvious relationship - food and health. So, I've been conducting my own little experiment with Ms. Lilly. It started back in 2002 when I first got her, and despite a lot of twists and turns (it was a steep learning curve for me), the results are very encouraging.

Ms. Lilly is now at least 9 years old. She may be as old as 10 or 11; I just don't know, as she was a stray. Although she has slowed down a bit in her middle years, she still has boundless energy and keeps up with the young dogs and can out-hike me. And she has no signs of arthritis, heart disease, tooth and gum disease, cataracts, kidney disease, or any of the other chronic degenerative diseases commonly associated with aging in dogs. She did have a small, presumptively benign skin tumor on her flank - until a few weeks ago, when it spontaneously started to regress. (I promise to write more about that another time. Such an interesting topic!)

And while it does cost a bit more than conventional dog food to feed Ms. Lilly this fresh-food diet, I'm able to economize by supplementing the premium-grade muscle meats with organ meats (heart, liver, kidneys, marrow bones), which typically cost less per pound than muscle meat, and by adding veggies at the aforementioned ratios. Pound for pound, it costs me no more to feed Ms. Lilly this way than it does to feed myself.

As I said, I'd rather be spending the money now on good food than spending it later on medical care for chronic and largely preventable diseases. That's also the way I'm approaching my own health. So far, so good.

Until this evening,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - day 2

2010-07-20T18:23:00.000-07:00

If you're just now joining our program already in progress, I'm logging everything I feed my dog, Miss Tiger Lilly, for a week. (Scroll down two postings for the start of this thread.)

Tonight Ms. Lilly had curried lentils and lamb. It was a hit!

Ingredients:

* 2-3 cups cooked lentils (see recipe below)

* 8 oz. ground lamb (see earlier post)

* mild curry powder, to taste

Directions:

1. Cook the dry lentils (details below) or open a 16-oz can of lentils

2. Add a splash of white wine vinegar (either when cooking the lentils or later)

3. Add curry powder and salt to taste (Note: taste it before adding the raw lamb!)

4. Mix in the lamb

I gave Ms. Lilly almost 3 cups of the lamb-lentil mixture, as it was quite soupy in consistency, and I wanted to make sure she got enough calories and other nutrients, as well as feeling nice and full.

The neighbour dogs were here again and licked everyone's bowls clean; not a single lentil left anywhere. And my floor is now nice and clean.

Cooking lentils

Lentils, beans, and other legumes are perfectly OK for dogs to have occasionally - as long as they're properly cooked. I use cooked lentils or beans in Ms. Lilly's meals once a week or so. I eat them much more often myself, but I'm a vegetarian, and legumes are an important source of protein for me.

I sometimes use canned lentils and beans, but with all the debate about the safety of the linings used in many canned foods these days, I prefer not to use them. When I can (and these days I'm making a serious effort to feed myself and Ms. Lilly well), I prefer to buy dried legumes (organic, of course) and cook them myself.

Here are some tips for cooking dried lentils (and beans) properly, learned the hard way (and you know what I mean... :-):

* soak the lentils for several hours before cooking; cover the lentils with water and let them sit at room temperature to soak for at least 4 hrs, and preferably for 6-8 hrs

* rinse the soaked lentils thoroughly (at least 3 times) before cooking; this step is important if you want to avoid gas; rinse until there is no longer any froth on the rinse water (froth now = gas later)

* put the lentils in the cooking pot, cover with water (about 2 cups of water for every 1 cup of lentils); the lentils are already soaked and partially rehydrated, so you need less water than if starting here with dry lentils; keep an eye on your lentils as they're cooking, though, and add a little hot water if they appear to be drying out and in danger of burning

* add a generous splash of vinegar at the start of cooking (or later if you forget); 1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar usually is ample for 1 cup of lentils in 2 cups of water; this step is also important for avoiding gas

* cook the lentils per instructions on the package or bulk bin; for the tiny French lentils (which I love, and used for Ms. Lilly's dinner tonight), it takes only 45 minutes; for the regular green lentils, it may take 50-60 minutes

* test them for "done" before turning off the heat, as undercooking is another recipe for gas

* flavour to taste with salt, pepper, and whatever herbs, spices, or other flavourings you like; I especially like balsamic vinegar in lentils, and will often add it once the lentils have finished cooking, even though I've cooked the lentils in a little vinegar; Ms. Lilly likes balsamic vinegar, too; thyme goes particularly well with lentils and beans; curry is another of our favourite additions to lentils; I can also recommend a light sprinkling of chipotle powder (that's a smoky chili powder with a medium kick).

Enjoy!

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly - how much?

2010-07-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

...I forgot to mention how much of the lamb & veggies I fed Ms. Lilly last night.

For her evening meal (which I typically make the larger meal of the day), I usually give her 2-3 cups of whatever I've made. She got about 2 cups of the lamb & veg mixture last night. I would have had plenty of leftovers for her breakfast this morning, had I not shared the rest of the lamb with 5 of the neighbour dogs.

Had I kept some leftovers, I'd have fed her a scant cupful of the lamb mixture for breakfast. This lamb dog food is quite fatty. That's perfectly appropriate for a dog, who should be getting the bulk of her calorie needs from animal fats and proteins. But presently Ms. Lilly is a suburban dog and is now in her middle years. While we do go for walks most days and she has a very large yard and dog friends to romp with during the day, she's not as active as when she was younger and we had more space to roam.

(Mostly as a matter of personal preference, I feed Ms. Lilly more at night than in the morning. The reason is that I want her sacked out of an evening, digesting her dinner, when I'm on the couch doing the same. But you can certainly feed equal amounts morning and evening, feed a larger meal in the morning, or feed just once a day. It's up to you and what works best with your routine and for your dog.)

Rule of thumb

The general rule of thumb for how much to feed is to offer food at a rate of about 2% of ideal body weight per day. For a 50-lb dog (which is what Ms. Lilly weighs), that's about 1 lb, or 2 cups, per day. But that's just a starting point; some need more and others need less to maintain a healthy lean weight. It's a highly individual thing.

Also note: that 2% figure is on a dry-matter basis, meaning that it does not factor in the water content of the food. If you're feeding kibble, which should be >90% dry matter, you can proceed as if it's 100% dry matter, and feed a 50-lb dog about 1 lb of that food/day. (Although I do not recommend feeding kibble.)

Fresh foods such as meats and veggies may be at least 70% water, so unless the food is very high in calories, you'll need to feed more than 1 lb/day to satisfy a 50-lb dog when you're feeding fresh foods. As a starting point, feed half as much again (e.g. 1.5 lbs, or 3 cups, per day for a 50-lb dog), then go up or down from there as needed.

Don't get too caught up in the numbers, though. That's not how you and I eat, and it's not the best way to feed a dog. Be guided by your dog's appetite, body condition (aim for lean yet well muscled), and brightness/energy for work and play when determining how much to feed her each day.

Have fun!

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Feeding Miss Lilly

2010-07-20T15:34:00.000-07:00

Lately I’ve found myself having the same conversation over and over, about how to home-prepare food for dogs and cats. Awhile back I wrote an article for my web site on how to feed dogs a great nature-inspired diet, in which I describe how I feed my own dog, the splendid Miss Tiger Lilly. (Here is the link: www.animavet.com/feeding-dogs.html.)

But evidently, questions still remain about the practical, day-to-day issues of shopping and food prep, so I figured it might be useful for me to start blogging about how I feed Ms. Lilly. I don’t know where this is gonna go, but let’s see...

Last night, Ms. Lilly had lamb and veggies for dinner.

Ingredients:

* nappa cabbage - 1 medium-size cabbage

* red bell pepper – approx. 1/2 a large bell pepper (it was left-over strips of bell pepper from my dinner the night before)

* ground lamb, approx. 8 oz.

Notes:

1. Cabbage. I use cabbage a lot in Ms. Lilly’s meals, as it’s inexpensive, available year-round, comes in several different varieties (I’m big on variety), and it’s nutritious. I have read/heard that one should not overfeed cabbage and other cruciferous veggies, as the entire Brassica family (including cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale) can interfere with thyroid function. However, both Ms. Lilly and I eat lots of these veggies—I both use them often and am generous with the quantities—and have not had any such problems.

Cabbage is also a great “filler” vegetable, as it’s bulky, so it helps me meet the “satiety quotient” (i.e. Ms. Lilly feels satisfied after she’s eaten). But cabbage not just filler; it’s food, as it’s high in nutrients and in digestible fiber, which is great bug food. The “good bugs” (beneficial microbes) in the large intestine thrive on digestible fiber, and the body thrives when its gut microflora thrives.

In fact, lightly steamed cabbage and some lightly steamed white fish (i.e. some type of low-fat fish) is my favourite meal for dogs with digestive upsets. It is practically miraculous at settling things down. (Vastly superior to the conventional standby: boiled rice and chicken!)

Speaking of stinky things, as long as the cabbage is properly cooked, I haven’t had any problems with unpleasant gas. The trick is to cook it “just right.” If you undercook cabbage, your dog will stink; but if you overcook cabbage, your kitchen will stink. To cook it “just right,” cook it just until the thickest parts of the leaf (the base and ribs) are soft, but before any part of the cabbage becomes mushy. For a nappa cabbage, that may be no more than 5–7 minutes. For savoy cabbage (which has a little more robust leaf), 7–10 minutes; and for regular white and red cabbage varieties, perhaps 10–15 minutes.

By the way, I often add a splash of vinegar when I’m cooking cabbage. Whether and what I use depends on what I’m making. I have a lovely, raw organic apple cider vinegar, a very nice white wine vinegar, and an absolutely lucious balsamic vinegar. Regardless of which I use, the vinegar goes down a treat with the dogs.

I keep meaning to write an article on gut microbes, as they’re so important to our health. For now, let me just say that some dogs need a little time and perhaps some probiotic help in order to re/create a healthy gut microflora that can deal with a diet that includes veggies. However, it is not a difficult transition, and it is one that pays off immediately in better health and well-being. If you have any immediate questions about transitioning your dog or cat onto a home-made diet, call or e-mail me, as it may be a little while longer before I get my microbe article written...

2. Red bell pepper. I love, love, love! bell peppers (or capsicums, as we call them in Australia). I especially love the red ones, but I also like the yellow and orange varieties. Ms. Lilly, on the other hand, doesn’t care for any of them. If I don’t chop them finely, I’ll find them strewn about on the floor beside her food bowl, from where the neighbour dogs eventually clean them up.

For the most part, I listen to her preferences and don’t often add bell peppers to her food. But last night I did, as I had some left-over sliced peppers that needed to be used up, and because I wanted to add some colourful veggie to her dinner and didn’t want to use carrots again. I like carrots and use them often, but variety is hugely important, so I keep looking for ways to get more variety of foods into Ms. Lilly’s diet. I’m also big on not wasting good food, so in went the red bell peppers—just finely diced, so that she’d have trouble picking them out (kinda like hiding the broccoli in the pizza sauce).

Awhile back, I attended a lecture on food therapy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), adapted for veterinary patients. I was very interested to see bell peppers included in some of the recipes. I don’t recall what their particular properties were, in TCM terms. I just remember thinking, “Oh, good; they’re not toxic to dogs!” (Ms. Lilly’s aversion to them had me concerned...) Turns out, she’s just very decided in her taste preferences, and bell peppers don’t make her list of “acceptable foods.”

I do take her preferences into consideration when preparing food for her. But as I said, I’ll also try to use up left-overs whenever I can. Even though my compost pile loves to be fed as well, it’s perfectly content with scraps.

3. Lamb. The lamb I used is a ground mix of muscle meat, heart, and liver that I buy from PCC (a natural-foods market here in the Seattle area). It is labelled as “lamb pet food” and it is found in the freezer case. The lamb is grass-fed, from the Umpqua Valley in Oregon. So, while it’s not quite local, it is at least regional. I do try to support local and regional producers whenever possible, although I will go further afield to meet the “variety quotient” when necessary.

As I mention briefly in the article on feeding dogs, I’m currently experimenting with the meat-to-veg ratio of Ms. Lilly’s diet. Although dogs are generally described as carnivores, when one considers the variety of foodstuffs both wild and domestic canids eat, dogs could just as well be described as omnivores with a carnivorous bent. (I think I know some humans like that!) On that basis, I’ve begun steadily dropping the meat portion of her diet. She does very well with a meat:veg as low as 40:60, although she prefers at least 50:50.

As long as I use high-quality meats and veggies, I can go as low as 20:80, but I think that's pushing it—and not adequately respecting her carnivorous physiology and psychology at that low a meat intake. If I can stay around 30:70 to 40:60 (i.e. 30–40% meat), and the meat includes various organ meats, then I think we can both live very well with that figure.

Lilly, of course, would happily live on a diet of 100% rabbits and other beasts. (She is quite the carnivore, and an avid hunter.) I, on the other hand, would like to reduce my use of farmed animals as much as possible. So, I’ve been looking for the middle ground that satisfies both of us. I think I’ve found it here. She loves her food, licks her bowl clean every meal, seems well satisfied, maintains a healthy body and weight, has plenty of energy—and, what is currently fascinating me, a benign skin tumour on her flank has been slowly disappearing before my eyes. (More on that another time.)

Directions:

1. Shred the cabbage and steam it in a small amount of lightly salted water until the thickest parts are just softening.

2. Dice the bell pepper and add it to the cabbage in the last minute or two of cooking.

3. Once the cabbage is properly cooked, take the pot off the heat and cool it in the sink. (Fill the sink with a couple of inches of cold water, and set the hot pot without lid in the water, so that cooking is stopped and the veggies cool to edible temperature quickly. Hungry dogs don't like to wait. Stir to speed cooling of the veggies.)

4. Add a splash of vinegar or other culinary flavoring, such as herbs or spices. (I used balsamic vinegar.)

5. Once the veggies have cooled down a bit, add the ground lamb, raw, and mix in well. (I put on the rubber gloves I use for washing dishes and mix the ground meat with the veg by hand. You can certainly use bare hands if you want; I just prefer not to smell like raw lamb all evening.)

6. Serve at body/room temperature. (Takes maybe 2–3 minutes once the veggies come off the stove if you cool the pot in the sink and add the lamb straight out of the fridge; the lamb warms as the veggies cool.)

7. Put any leftovers straight into the fridge. They can be served right out of the fridge the next day; no need to heat (although you can if you want).

Notes:

1. I often feed the veggies lightly cooked and the meat raw. Dogs don't make the best use of raw vegetables unless the veggies are practically ground to a pulp in a blender, food processor, or juicer. While lightly cooking the veggies results in the loss of some of the more delicate nutrients (e.g. heat-sensitive enzymes), cooking can considerably improve the digestibility of veggies for this omnivorous/carnivorous species.

As for feeding raw meat, dogs are designed to eat their prey raw. I discuss this briefly in my article on feeding dogs, and I will explore it further in my next book ("Eating our way back to health"). For now, let me just note that I have not had any problems with feeding human-grade meats raw in healthy dogs.

2. I’ll often add culinary herbs and spices to Ms. Lilly’s food. While almost all culinary herbs have some nutritional and medicinal properties, I primarily use them for flavor, to add to the “variety quotient” of Ms. Lilly’s diet and keep it interesting. She especially loves Indian spices, although she also likes Italian herbs and even a little hot chili (which still amazes me). Last night I added a splash of balsamic vinegar once the veggies came off the heat. The cabbage & peppers looked like they needed a little something, and the balsamic vinegar seemed just the thing. A kitchen full of dogs, licked-clean dinner bowls, and “any more?” expressions told me it was a good choice.

3. I seldom have left-over dog food (unless I plan for it), as the neighbour dogs know my routine and are usually begging for some of Ms. Lilly’s food at dinnertime. She won’t share, but I will. My motto for dinnertime is “everybody eats,” so whoever is in my kitchen at dinnertime gets at least a little bit of whatever I’ve made. I’m a hit! (But lest my head get too big, the commercial dog food at the neighbours’ is a hit with Ms. Lilly. The grass is always greener... )

4. You may have noticed that there was no calcium added to last night’s fare. Calcium is one of the nutrients that needs to be added to a home-made diet that is meat-based. But I have that covered, as I feed raw bones at least a couple of times a week. Ms. Lilly and all the neighbour dogs each got a big marrow bone to work on the night before, and a good bone every 2–3 days seems to be plenty for Ms. Lilly.

Breakfast this morning consisted of a small can of kippers, with a sprinkling of Vitality Canid.

Notes:

1. Kippers. I feed kippers or sardines at least a couple of times a week, as they are delicious (well, I don’t think so, but Ms. Lilly does), high in protein and other nutrients, and high in essential fatty acids, particularly the omega-3s.

And to be honest, I also feed canned fish (kippers, sardines, and occasionally salmon) because it’s easy. Sometimes easy is good.

2. Vitality Canid. That is an an all-natural micronutrient supplement I make for dogs. I don’t feed it every day, as I believe that we should be getting most, if not all, of our nutrient needs directly from our food. That’s one of the main reasons I emphasize variety. The more variety we have in our diets, the more likely we are to meet all of our nutrient needs.

But sometimes it pays to have a little insurance, to fill in the theoretical gaps in our diets with a well-formulated supplement. When we’re eating mono-meals (i.e. a meal of just one thing, such as peaches for me or fish for Ms. Lilly), that’s when it makes the most sense to take a little something extra to ensure that we’re meeting all of our micronutrient needs.

Tonight I’ll probably feed the rest of the lamb, along with some curried lentils I’ll be preparing for myself. The lamb pet food comes in 1-lb bags, and I used only half the bag last night. I try to feed a different animal protein every night, but I also try to avoid wastage and to feed the freshest possible foods. As the lamb is already thawed, I’ll use it up while it’s still nice and fresh, and feed something entirely different tomorrow night.

OK; that’s it for now. I’m going to try to keep a log of everything I feed Ms. Lilly for the next week, so that you get the idea, and perhaps some menu ideas and recipes to try. It really is easy, once you get into the habit of feeding your dog (and yourself) this way: a wide variety of fresh foods, freshly prepared.

Enjoy!

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Resisting Change

2010-02-22T16:28:00.000-08:00

It has been said that one definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome. I suspect that that was first said somewhat facetiously, because there is certainly a case to be made for patience and perseverance—in other words, to keep at it until you achieve the desired result.

However, there is also a case to be made for the futility of wanting something to change, but being unwilling to change anything. I see this playing out over and over again in my practice: the person wants her animal to stop being lame or sick or whatever the problem is, but is unwilling to make any substantive changes to what she is doing in regard to the animal. “I just want what I’m doing to work!” is the impossible mandate.

I make this same mistake myself, in various aspects of my life.

I think what is wrong here is a fundamental misunderstanding or a forgetting of our place in the whole. There also seems to be a modicum of arrested development, because as advanced as we think ourselves to be, as enlightened and aware, we are acting like spoiled children when we insist that things work out to our liking.

I sure can understand the seductive pull of the popular “anything is possible; you can have anything you want” credo, promoted in books such as The Secret, Ask and It is Given, and Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer, and even in Shakira’s latest pop hit (anything in the world; “anything you want you can make it yours”). I even believed it myself for a time—until I very nearly came unglued with the most intense frustration I’ve ever experienced in my life!

You see, I think this drivel is just another symptom of that fundamental misunderstanding.

We do not get to have whatever we want. And that’s a good thing, because we just never really know the true purpose of anything. At least, not until much later. Here is a beautiful fragment from one of my favourite authors:

“We make our way through Everything like thread passing through fabric: giving shape to images that we ourselves do not know.”

[Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Ulrich Baer in Letters on Life]

Like thread passing through fabric, giving shape to images we’ll never see, because we’re a formative and inextricable part of them. Gives fresh meaning to that hackneyed phrase, “the rich tapestry of life.” We are each just one single thread in the rich tapestry of life. How absurd to think that we can or should dictate the final image.

What has this to do with resisting change? Everything, because resistance to change is nothing more than insistence on getting our own way. Good luck with that :-)

More soon,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Parasites

2009-11-03T16:04:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking alot about parasites lately. It seems to me that "parasite" is like "weed." A weed is simply a plant we don't have any use for, or that is occupying a space or behaving in a way we don't want it to. Same with a parasite: it's something we don't have any use for, or that is present somewhere or doing something we don't approve of.

But I think that's a very humancentric concept, and a very adversarial, "us vs. them" approach, at that. As with everyone and everything else on the planet, the organisms we call parasites have a place and a purpose.

To put this idea to a rigorous, real-world test, I decided to consider one of the nastiest parasites we have in veterinary medicine: heartworm (Dirofilaria immitis). Its place is inside a dog or some other suitable mammalian host. Its purpose presently eludes me, but I believe it does have one. The adversarial view of life would suggest that its "purpose" on the planet, if it has one at all, is to control the population of dogs. While that may well be part of it, I think this view is fundamentally flawed, not to mention incomplete; it just doesn't include all of the facts. I believe that there can - and even should - be a healthy balance between parasite and host, a dynamic that is mutually beneficial.

The benefit to the parasite is obvious: a warm, well-protected place to live, where food is plentiful - that is, as long as the host stays alive. (Note that there is absolutely no benefit to killing, or even harming, the host; because in so doing, the parasite would sign its own death warrant. The idea of parasites as population control just doesn't hold up.)

But what is the benefit to the host? Not to gross you out, but immunologists are now using pig worms to treat allergic conditions in humans. So, one benefit to the parasite-host relationship evidently involves restoring a more healthy immune system response in the host. Whether the host's immune system needs to develop greater vigor or greater tolerance, the presence of a parasite appears able to facilitate it.

Problems arise when there is a lack of balance between parasite and host, or the parasite winds up out of place (e.g. in the wrong host or in the wrong tissue within the right host). Perhaps instead of focusing on killing the worms, we should be emphasizing host health, in the true sense of the word "health" - including physical, psychological, social, and environmental aspects - and restoring a healthy balance between parasite and host, to our mutual benefit. The same is true for the dynamic between host and resident bacteria. That's a fascinating symbiosis... Perhaps I'll write about that next time.

It is possible for a healthy dog to be heartworm positive, and it is just as possible for a heartworm-positive dog to be healthy. It's all about balance. But isn't that true of almost every facet of life?

Stay tuned,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Viruses

2009-10-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

Viruses have been getting a lot of press lately, so I figured I’d share some of my mental ramblings about them, in case something in these musings is helpful to you.

My thinking on viruses was pretty conventional until I was driving back home from a USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) veterinary accreditation course. The drive was long, and for the first few hours, the scenery was rather boring, so I dropped into that meditative state peculiar to driving on long, flat, straight stretches of highway.

On my mind were the grizzly images I’d seen during the course, of animals afflicted with African horse sickness, foot and mouth disease, and other horrible viral infections. As I wondered what on earth life was up to with such awful things, I eventually had a surprising epiphany.

But first, I began by listing some things I knew about viruses:

* viruses are little more than fragments of DNA or RNA; some have thin coverings (called envelopes) and others do not, but in essence, all viruses are simply code

* specific viruses have an affinity for specific types of cells, and they code for specific cell behaviours, and thus they cause specific symptoms

* viruses can only replicate inside a living cell; in fact, most cannot survive for very long outside the host’s body

* with a few well-publicised exceptions, viruses tend to be highly species-specific

The thought then arose: what if viruses are fragments of ourselves (well, our species, anyway), broken off or left behind for some reason at the time of death or some other big, life-changing event? And what if viral infection is, in effect, that fragmented part of ourselves trying to be reintegrated and thus restored to wholeness; to come home, as it were?

I didn’t tell anyone about this idea; it was too kooky. I simply put it quietly to the test. I didn’t have to look very far for a suitable subject: I have my own resident virus, having suffered from cold sores since I was a teenager. (Herpes viruses, including the herpes simplex viruses that cause cold sores around the mouth, have a habit of latency, reappearing when conditions are suitable.)

The next time I felt that ominous tingling in my lip, I sat quietly and, instead of trying to kill the virus with one thing or another, I invited the virus to “come home,” to reintegrate, be restored—and restore me—to wholeness.

Guess what: I didn’t get that cold sore. And the times I’ve subsequently tried this approach at the first sign of an impending head cold, I didn’t get that cold. I’ve lived long enough to know the warning signs of these common viral infections in my body, how susceptible I am to viral infections, and how long the course of infection usually takes, so the results of this informal little experiment fairly blew my mind. I’ve since played with it in a few of my patients, with delightfully good results. I've also added to the theory...

Thoughts and emotions are perhaps even more infectious than viruses, bacteria, and other microbes, especially the “negative” emotions such as anger and fear. As Dr. Candace Pert lays out in her book Molecules of Emotion, within our bodies our thoughts and emotions use the plethora of messenger molecules (neurotransmitters, hormones, etc.) as their physical vehicles. So, I’m now thinking that every type of virus might represent a specific thought-form (thought-in-form?), a mental or emotional part of ourselves that requires healing or reintegrating, returning us to wholeness.

I also got to wondering what it is that renders one individual susceptible to a particular virus and another individual relatively impervious to that virus. I suspect that the particular virus matches the particular chinks in the individual’s armor; not to get in and cause trouble, but to get in and help restore wholeness.

Depending on how one looks at it, either the virus is highlighting points of weakness that can then be addressed, or it is entering who or where it can in order to be reintegrated. Either way, it should be a mutually beneficial arrangement.

But if that’s true, then why isn’t it what we usually experience? Why do viral infections make so many of us sick? Well, consider how you feel about viruses. For most of us, we could sum it up in one word: adversarial. We use words such as “combat,” “kill,” and “antiviral” when discussing viruses. Is it any wonder that we have an adversarial relationship with viruses?

One could argue that we feel this way about viruses because they make us sick, that the virus’s bad reputation is well-deserved. I can’t argue with that, although it does seem rather chicken-or-egg to me. What if you were to befriend the virus instead, invite it in, or at least be open to hearing what its presence is telling you about yourself and the way you’re living?

When I take the time to shift my perception in this way, I’m invariably the better for it, and the viral infection does not manifest in full.

Just something to think about as “flu season” approaches.

More soon,

Dr. Chris King

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Being changed

2009-09-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking alot lately about how much we humans are in the habit of ordering our world to our liking, and how upset we get when we don’t get our way. Even when it comes to our animals, we want it all our way, even convincing ourselves that the decisions we’re making are on the animal’s behalf, when in reality we are serving our own self-interest. We want everyone and everything to dance to our tune, to do our bidding.

Our secular culture of materialism supports and encourages us. Even the quasispiritual teachings of this new age tell us we can have what we want. What chance do we have of breaking free of this destructive mindset?

The secret, I’m discovering, lies in balance: The balance between the impulsion to create, to grow, to produce something useful, if not novel, and the need to be content, still, and at peace. And the balance between getting what we want and not getting it.

In a recent meditation, I wondered how the natural world of animals and plants and other creatures get what they want and handle it when they don’t get what they want. The answer was so very simple that I still can hardly take it in:

“How do you get what you want?” I asked.

“We go get it,” they replied.

“But what do you do when you don’t get it?” I asked.

“We don’t get it,” they replied.

“Yes, but what if you really want it?” I asked.

“Then we go get it,” they replied.

“Yes, but what if you don’t get it?” I asked.

“Then we don’t get it,” they replied.

On and on like that it went, until I gave up. It’s so obvious, so simple, so patently self-evident that I just couldn’t make it fit with the way I’m used to operating.

Yesterday, after a weekend of happy but tiring work in my garden, I stumbled upon another insight into this balance thing that I hadn’t been seeing: the importance of letting the natural world act upon me, at the same time as I’m acting upon it.

Hard to explain in words, but there is a dynamo effect of endless, renewing flow that feels like life itself which occurs when we both act and allow ourselves to be acted upon; to be changed, even as we are creating change. Which comes first? Does it even matter?

And what does this mean for the way we operate in the physical world, and how we relate to our animals, plants, and other nonhuman beings that we love or value? Still working on that...

More soon,

Dr. Chris King

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Spirit and Matter

2009-09-24T11:46:00.001-07:00

In a brief departure from my original postings, I wanted to share with you a wonderful fragment from the writings of Rudolf Steiner, founder of the biodynamic method of agriculture:

Look to the real, practical, material life,

but look to it so that it does not dull you to the spirit

which is at work in it.

Look to the spirit -

but not for the sake of transcendental enjoyment

or out of supersensible egotism,

but look to it because you want to apply it

selflessly in practical life, in the material world.

Make use of the ancient saying:

"Spirit is never without matter,

Matter, never void of spirit,"

in such a way that you say:

We want to do all material things in the light of the spirit

and we want to look for the light of the spirit in such a way

that warmth springs up for our practical lives.

(from Stella Natura,

2010 Kimberton Hills biodynamic agricultural planting guide & calendar)

Yours in spirit and matter,

Dr. Chris King

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

On starchy foods

2009-09-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

For years now I’ve been recommending a low-starch diet for dogs and cats. (Starchy foods include all grains, as well as certain root veggies such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and tapioca.) Carnivores are adapted to getting the bulk of their calories from animal proteins, fats, and presumably the glycogen stored in their prey’s muscle tissue and liver. They are not well adapted to diets that are rich in starches and other carbohydrates.

It wasn’t until recently that I fully understood the negative impact of feeding a diet that is high in starches (i.e. the typical commercial dog or cat food).

For the past year or two, I’ve kept myself on a mostly raw-food diet (~ 80% raw, 20% cooked). I feel really good when I eat this way; I feel lighter, cleaner, and both calmer and more energised.

But it does take some adjustments in the way I shop and prepare my food. Being the lazy bum that I am, sooner or later I end up slacking off and, to some extent, reverting back to my former way of eating, which is more cooked foods than raw.

When that happens, I start feeling crummy again; I feel heavy, gummy, tired, achey, and grumpy. I wake up in the morning feeling unrested, touchy, sad, and stiff & sore, as if I’m a sickly 80 years old; and I drink lots of fluids, but my skin still seems dehydrated. I even woke up one morning with that line from Garth Brooks’ rodeo song playing in my head: “I’m too damn young to feel this damn old!”

So, this last time I decided to not only recommit to eating mostly raw foods, but to also make a little study of what starchy foods do to my body. I’d remembered hearing some (older) veterinary colleagues discussing their own health issues and one recommending a starch-free diet; and as I said, I’ve been recommending to dog and cat owners for years to take starchy foods out of their pets’ diets. But I was still eating some starchy foods (primarily bread) myself.

Here’s what happened when I stopped eating bread, rice, pasta, and other cooked starches: within 2 or 3 days I felt good again on my mostly-raw diet; and whenever I would break down and buy a sandwich for lunch, I’d start to feel crummy within a couple of hours, and on into the next day. I’ve “tested” the effects several times now, all with the same result. (By the way, I’m having no trouble with sprouted grains eaten raw; just with cooked grains.)

Why is that? Is it because the readily digestible starches are creating large swings in blood glucose (big peaks followed by big drops)? Or is it because some portion of the starch makes it to the large intestine and messes with the microflora there, which has systemic effects on the host (me)? Is there also an effect on the immune system? (With something like 70% of the immune system's cells embedded in the lining of the gut - the gut-associated lymphoid tissue - that certainly must be considered.) I’m not sure exactly.

All I know for sure is this: when I eat a lot of cooked starches, I feel bad. And it’s no stretch for me to correlate what I’m feeling in my own body, with regard to physical symptoms, mood, and energy, with what I see in my patients on commercial dog or cat food diets.

The lesson: feed a species-appropriate diet of fresh, minimally processed foods. For dogs and cats, that means mostly animal sources, and little or no starch. More on feeding dogs and cats in future posts. In the meantime, here’s the link to an article I wrote on how I feed my own dog: www.animavet.com/feedingdogs.html.

(And here’s another on feeding horses: http://www.animavet.com/feedinghorses.html.)

Stay tuned...

Dr. Chris King

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Intro, cont'd (part II)

2009-09-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

My local Whole Foods store is located right across the street from the regional hospital. I was sitting in the cafe area at Whole Foods one day, looking out onto the hospital’s shiny new building, when the paradox represented by those two edifices started to seep into my awareness and the most astonishing thought occurred to me:

We are the only species that, as a matter of course, goes to someone else to fix us when we’re ill or injured.

(It also occurred to me that if we ate a more wholesome diet, we’d need hospitals less, but I'll get to that later.)

Here we are, with these marvelous bodies that are inherently designed to be self-maintaining and self-repairing, and innately wise, and yet most of the time we have absolutely no idea how to take good care of ourselves. (Or we do know, but we just don’t do it...) We seem to live in constant need of the advice of one expert or another, just to do something that the “lower orders,” wild animals especially, instinctively know how to do.

As our societies have evolved, we’ve fragmented ourselves into two groups: the healers/shamans/doctors, and everybody else. We’ve even created an aura of mystique around the knowledge and abilities of those we’ve designated “healers.” (And if you think that sort of superstition is limited to the more simplistic indiginous cultures, then consider the power of the white coat in modern medicine.)

In essence, we’ve abandoned our innate knowledge and ability to sense what our bodies need in order to get and stay well, and we’ve abdicated that responsibility to someone outside ourselves. Often to our immediate benefit (which keeps us doing it), but ultimately to our individual and collective detriment. We’ve forgotten how to be, and how to take good care of ourselves.

Of course, if I have a broken leg, I would be very appreciative of someone x-raying it for me and stabilising the fracture (not to mention dispensing some sort of pain-reliever), rather than me having to hobble around like a wounded gazelle until the bone heals or I die of an ensuing infection, predation, or starvation. I don’t want to belittle the contributions of modern medicine in dealing with medical emergencies. Where it falls down, however, is in the treatment of chronic medical conditions and in maintaining good health for life.

We've even forgotten what good health looks like - and feels like. More on that next.

Stay tuned...

Dr. Chris King

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Intro, cont'd

2009-09-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

A strange thing has been happening to me over the past year or so. I seem to have been hijacked (for want of a better word) by the natural world—and I don’t mind a bit! From where I sit, conventional medicine and the scientific paradigm that underlies it continues to be constricted and contorted into the uninspired, inanimate, and rather ruthless “evidence-based medicine” model of practice, a kind of “medicine by numbers.” Even many of my holistically inclined colleagues have been sucked into playing the Science game, or at least playing by Science’s rules. Whoda thunkit, but the science geeks have become the bullies on the playground!

I find myself inexorably drawn in the opposite direction. It’s as if green tendrils have reached out to me from some place beyond my sight, wrapped themselves around me, and are now drawing me to... I’m not sure what, but I think it’s an apprenticeship with Nature. So, that’s me, the person in the title: Nature’s Apprentice.

Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against science as an approach. In fact, for a long time I was “Science Girl,” complete with the white cape (aka the lab coat). I have an innate mental propensity for the sciences, my entire formal education emphasised the sciences, and the profession I chose is one in which scientific method, currently labelled evidence-based medicine, is considered the standard of practice. So, I’m very comfortable with the scientific approach. I speak the language, I know the terrain. And I will forever be fascinated by how bodies work, in all their amazing and intricate cellular and biochemical detail. I simply object to the concept of science being the only way of seeing and operating sanely in the world. In a way, Science reminds me of the one-eyed man: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Now, doesn’t that perfectly epitomise where we so often find ourselves when it comes to matters of health: feeling completely and utterly blind, and in desperate need of someone to tell us what to do? You’ll find any number of people - well-meaning and otherwise - who are only too willing to do that. What I’d like to do in this book/blog is try to help you regain your own sight. Begin your own apprenticeship with Nature.

Stay tuned...

Dr. Chris King

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com

Intro

2009-09-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Nature's Apprentice...

That's me, Dr. Christine King, wholistically inclined veterinarian, and lately a hapless apprentice to Nature's way of doing things.

The more I look and listen and learn, the more I realise that we humans are getting it all wrong in how we approach health and healing. We're so into doing that we forget about the importance of being, of getting out of the body's way and letting it do what it's designed to do: self-repair and self-maintain.

I'll be exploring this theme here in this blog, looking at the way Nature does things and trying to figure out how to apply her wisdom to our crazy modern lives.

Stay tuned...

Dr. Chris King

Nature's Apprentice