Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food
– Hippocrates

At Harmony Pets, we believe that pets possess a natural intelligence that can be thrown out of balance. Poor nutrition activates disease and influences many behavioral problems; therefore, creating physical and emotional harmony is key to your pet’s well being.

Harmony Pets provides holistic guidance for animals with a gentle, common sense healing approach that awakens your pet’s natural vitality and balance through:

Nutritional Counseling

The most basic and most important step for the prevention of acute and chronic disease in a healthy pet is the maintenance of a high-level of health. As a veterinary technician working in a clinical setting I saw time after time veterinarians treating a problem after it had developed. Many times, these problems could have been easily prevented had the person only known a few simple facts. Achieving a high-level of health is all the more important in an animal that is already manifesting illness.

Constitutional Homeopathic Treatment

By following the recommendations below regarding nutrition, you can prevent the development of numerous health problems in your pet over the long haul. While taking these measures strip harmful influences from your pet, there are elusive disorders and constitutional weaknesses that puppies and kittens inherit from their parents. These problems are inherited, chronic disease, which tend to be progressive and eventually lead to the development of symptoms. Vaccination, drug suppression, and other harmful influences tend to accelerate this progression.

However, inherited disease when recognized in its early stages, and, with appropriate nutrition and homeopathic treatment, can be addressed before symptoms develop. This is the highest level of preventive medicine. Skilled natural treatment goes beyond removing toxic influences – it improves the baseline health of the patient on a deep level, in fact, at the source.

I hope that these recommendations will help your pet to enjoy a longer, happier, and healthier life.

What’s in your pet’s food?

Incidences of obesity, skin and organ problems, behavioral symptoms, and chronic health disorders are on the rise among our dogs and cats. And it’s no wonder – just about anything is fair game for use in commercial pet food, and our companion animals are suffering for it. The majority of pet food companies buy their raw materials from companies that supply “rendered material” or dried matter comprised of a wide variety of substances unfit for human consumption due to disease, high levels of drugs, hormones and pesticides. Unfortunately, this material ends up in your pet’s food.

When Ann Martin, author of the investigative book, Food Pets Die For – Shocking Facts About Pet Food (New Sage Press, Troutdale, Oregon) discovered that the commercial food she was feeding her pets was making them ill, she conducted a little research on the pet food industry. Martin’s seven-year investigation revealed that condemned and contaminated by-products from slaughterhouse facilities, road-kill, dead, diseased, disabled, and dying animals, even euthanized companion animals are used in today’s pet foods. And these are just the protein sources, Martin says. “Grains and fats, dregs from the human food chain, are also indicated.” Food labels do not disclose the hidden hazards that lurk in most cans and bags of pet food. Heavy metals, pathogens, hormones, and drugs are just a few of the hidden contaminates; even sodium pentobarbital, a barbiturate used to euthanize dogs and cats also makes its way into Fido’s food dish.

How is this legal, you ask?

The pet food industry is booming -- $14.7 billion in the U.S. alone was spent last year and the competition between the major manufacturers is fierce. Seeking ever-bigger market shares, companies try to snare your business with millions a year spent in advertising, glossy TV commercials, and meaningless and misleading nutrition claims. Cute names line the grocery shelves and pictures of pet food dressed up like gourmet entrees on bags, boxes and cans fuel this competitive scramble. As a result, quality and good nutrition are sacrificed for economies and profit, and while every year companies seek cheaper ingredients to replace more expensive ones, the health and vitality of the pet population declines.

At this juncture there is no government entity regulating quality and standards have not been established. Even though pet owners have the well being of their pets at heart, they also want to feed their pets conveniently and cheaply. But cheap food means cheap ingredients, and what’s saved in pet food expenses now will cost you more in veterinary bills later on. Feeding inferior foods like proteins to you pets taxes the kidneys and liver, which in turn creates a level of toxicity in the system and makes animals vulnerable to disease. 

Lurking culprits

The wild dogs and cats that roamed the Earth thousands of years ago are the direct ancestors of the domesticated critters we share our homes with today. While we have "civilized" them to fit into our lifestyles and cultures, their physiology has remained remarkably unchanged from that of their ancestors. The intestines of the dog and cat are short, the stomach full of strong digestive juices and the teeth sharp for tearing. And yet, commercial pet food is the most highly processed food on the planet, with grains typically listed as the No. 1 ingredient. Add to that chemical additives to create the finished product, including anticaking, antimicrobial, coloring, firming and flavoring agents, pH control, and surface finishing agents, sweeteners, emulsifiers, synergists, sequestrates, texturizers and lubricants.

Food labels speak for themselves. Take a look at the list of ingredients next time you’re in the supermarket or your conventional veterinarian’s office. The highly promoted Hill’s Science Diet, for example, heavily stocked at most vet clinics, uses butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) in most of its dry food product lines with the exception of the Sensitive Stomach formula, which uses vitamins C & E as preservatives. BHA is a preservative and antioxidant considered a human carcinogen that is harmful by ingestion or inhalation. The Animal Protection Institute (API), a national animal advocacy group, says it is associated with stomach and urinary tract cancer, while BHT is associated with esophageal cancer.

One of the biggest culprits in our pets’ food is an antioxidant preservative, ethoxyquin (EQ), which some pet food critics and veterinarians claim is a major cause of disease, skin problems, and infertility in dogs. Originally developed for use in the production of rubber and as an herbicide, this common and cheap preservative is among the compounds suspected of causing severe health problems in dogs. EQ is listed as a pesticide by the Department of Agriculture and OSHA calls it a hazardous chemical rated 3 out of 6: “A compound rated 6 is so potently toxic that 7 drops can cause death.”

According to API, EQ is associated with immune deficiency syndrome, leukemia, blindness, DNA mutations, chromosomal aberrations and many forms of cancer. API has a partial list of pet foods that contain EQ: Hill’s Science Diet, Iams, Ralston One and 9 Lives Friskies. It’s listed in ingredients of cat food such as Whisker Lickens and Whiskas. Even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requested that manufacturers reduce the maximum level of EQ by 50 percent in 1997, the absence of this agent on the label doesn’t mean it isn’t there: Suppliers to the manufacturers may use it in processing meat meal, tallow and fat at rendering facilities. In that case, the manufacturers do not have to list it on their labels. For more information about commercial pet foods, see API’s article: Insider Tips on Pet Food

So, what to do?

Holistic veterinarians are keenly interested in nutrition and diet, using both as primary healing tools. They doubt whether the overcooked, chemical-laden and “scientifically formulated” products you buy in stores and conventional vet hospitals can ever create and maintain a state of harmony in an animal. Food must be more than a combination of proteins, fat, carbohydrates, and added vitamins. Food’s freshness, wholesomeness, energy and digestibility must also be present.

By making a diet switch, even a small one, to a high-quality diet produces a big impact against conditions. A good diet is the foundation of support for a fuller and more vibrant quality of life. But wait a minute, you say: My dog has no problems and all I do is feed it every day from the bag of food I buy at the supermarket. You may be right, because just like the person who smokes, drinks, and eats poorly and yet lives a long life without suffering from chronic illness, many resilient animals thrive and live long lives no matter how poorly the food quality.

“If you have such an animal, you may want to experiment with a better diet and see if you can notch up the level of health,” says Christina Chambreau, DVM, of Sparks, Maryland. “Most animals are hugely benefited by being on a high-quality diet. The benefits show up as increased vitality, improved hair coat, and decreased illness.

Telltale Signs of Eating a Healthy Diet – A Good Food – Bad Food Checklist for Companion Animals

(Courtesy Edmund Dorosz, DVM of Fort MacLeod, Alberta, author of Let’s Cook for Our Dogs)

Making the Switch

Feeding your pet a fresher, more natural diet takes a little more time and effort, and it’s definitely not as easy as opening a bag of kibble. While you are building health one step at a time, one day at a time, and though this is an extra effort, this is much easier than continued health problems with your pet. Imagine eliminating all those trips to the vet for treatments that never quite solve the problem!

Switching to a more wholesome diet and adding supplements can add years to your pet’s life and pack those years full of health and vitality. We’ve all heard vets and pet food manufacturers say feeding pets homemade food and table scraps will ruin a pet’s health. But this really depends on what you are feeding. If you feed junk-food leftovers, then yes, that could ruin your pet’s health. Even if you’re more conscientious than that, it is still easy to be misguided by your own preferences at the dinner table, not realizing that what’s good for you may not be good for your dog or cat. For instance, because they are carnivores (cats are more obligate carnivores than dogs, however), your pets need more protein and calcium on a pound-for-pound basis than humans require.

“Unlike humans or wild animals with free access to natural and varied food supplies, our pets have little choice about what they eat,” Richard Pitcairn, DVM writes in his Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats. “Rarely, if ever, do they get to follow their instincts in selecting individual foods; usually, a number of ingredients are mixed together and it’s a matter of eating all or nothing. Moreover,” he continues, “the instincts of homebound pets are not as finely tuned as the instincts of wild animals. Like us, pets can easily develop a taste for the strong flavors of junk food.”

The most important principle in this do-it-yourself approach to feeding is to aim for variety to ensure a balance of nutrients. Call to set up and appointment for help with: 

• Making the switch to a wholesome diet for your pets;

• Acquiring important information about the use of supplements;

• Creating a successful menu plan that’s within your budget; and

• Targeting specific ailments with whole foods, supplements and herbs

Email us: tina@harmony-pets.com