With so many different types of raw to pick from it can be difficult to know which one you should choose for your dog. Here is our breakdown on the different kinds of raw available and why you may choose to feed them. Remember, every dog is an individual and their needs can change just like ours. Balance is achieved over time and variety is the key to a long and healthy life. Complete – When we talk about complete raw dog food we are saying that it is nutritionally balanced for your dog, it will contain meat, bone and offal plus vegetables, minerals and vitamins as well as oils. A complete raw dog food is one of the easiest ways to feed your dog as the manufacture has done all the hard work for you. Nutritionally balanced and convenient to feed, complete raw dog food is definitely one of the most popular options available. Reasons not to choose this option would be factors like if your dog has allergies or intolerances and you may need to remove elements from their complete raw diet, for example if your dog has yeast build-up and you would want to avoid starchy root vegetables. Cost can also be a factor in choosing a complete raw food, depending on your budget, this option can sometimes be more expensive on a day to day basis than your dog’s previous kibble diet but the long term health benefits often outweigh the short term cost. Dog’s that experience digestive upset, irregular toilet habits and allergies that need regular medication from the vet, often find that once they switch to a fresh raw diet the veterinary costs reduce and their overall health improves. 80/10/10 – You will hear this term a lot in the raw feeding community, 80/10/10 refers to the ratio of ingredients in a raw diet. 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% offal more importantly though it is vegetable free. This is a great option if your dog has sensitives or intolerances to particular ingredients and often a more economical choice for the price conscience pet parent. Many manufactures offer an 80/10/10 range and it is often from as little as a few pence per day but remember not all raw is equal. Quality protein is key to a good raw diet, just because the label says “chicken” does not necessarily mean a good cut of meat so if the raw on offer seems cheap, ask yourself why. Discuss with your family what your daily budget would be and choose the manufacture that best suits. 80/10/10 can sometimes be lacking in essential nutrients when fed exclusively, our dogs are carnivores but until like cats they not obligate carnivores, meaning they eat meat but can also eat fruits and vegetables. in fact, dogs love fruits, nuts, seeds, and greens and we believe they should be fed to our dogs. If you choose to feed an 80/10/10 ensure you offer variety by feeding different proteins, ideally aiming for 5 different ones per week. 80/20 (No Offal) – This is a great option if your dog has a sensitive stomach, those with pancreatitis or prone to forming bladder stones as it contains no offal. Often low in purine and fat which makes it a great option for overweight dogs or if your dog has just been diagnosed with pancreatitis then this can be a great starting point. Dog breeds with a purine metabolism problems like Dalmatians would also find this type of raw very beneficial as it reduces the risk of urate formation especially in the kidneys. Mince – This is a great option if you’re are wanting to make your budget go a little further. Often used by DIY raw feeders as a starting point of a dog’s weekly menu, mince is generally (but not exclusively) minced carcass and can be with and without offal and have a high bone content. Carcasses are a cheap ingredient and as such are a great way to make up your own meals. Mix with a boneless mince, offal and veg or with another protein for a great cost effective raw diet. This is a great option if you want to get hands on with your dog’s diet and are on a budget but the high bone content can be unsuitable for many dogs so we wouldn’t recommend this to a novice feeder. Boneless – Available with and without vegetables, boneless minces are great if your dog is constipated or if they are having their raw meaty bone allowance separately. This option can be used as frequently or infrequently as you prefer as balanced is achieved overtime. Single Protein – This is a very popular choice for pet parents who struggle with their dog’s digestive sensitivities, often available in Complete Raw and 80/10/10 types. Feeding your dog a single protein source is now so convenient and great for dogs that are on an exclusion diet. If you are at the start of your dog’s raw journey and are just starting to eliminate potential food intolerances or you already know what you need to avoid feeding your dog, single protein options make it super easy to make better choices for our dogs. Even if your dog doesn’t have allergies this can still be a great choice. Variety is still key so even if your dog has allergies to chicken for example, there are still many other protein options available that he can have to ensure his diet is nourishing him nose to tail. Chunks –  Chunks of meat are great for offering texture to your dogs meal. These are normally diced muscle meat and are generally sold in 500g and 1kg packs. If your dog enjoys super chunky minces then using diced meat to add more texture is super easy. We would advice caution if you’ve never fed chunks of meat to your dog before though, if your dog has a tendency to not chew their food, cut them down into smaller pieces and build up to bigger chunks. This is the same for smaller dogs, the chunks can be mixed with their normal mince, dehydrated for a treat or used as part of their DIY diet. Either way these are a great way to keep your dog interested in their food in general. Offal – Offal is a fantastic source of many of the important vitamins and minerals that help your dog stay strong and healthy. Vitamins A and B, D, E and K are all readily found in organ meat. The numerous benefits of these include healthy skin, eyes and a strong immune system. Offal also provides a plentiful supply of calcium, iron, and zinc – amongst many other important minerals, which help your pet maintain healthy teeth and bones, as well as supporting muscle growth and repair.Tripe – Tripe is the edible stomach lining from domestic farm animals. Tripe can be sourced from any grass-fed animal.Tripe is high in protein. This protein includes seven important amino acids, which perform several critical functions in your pet’s health – including building muscle, developing their immune system, and aiding digestive health. This, with the added benefits of high levels of calcium and phosphorus, means the green tripe offers a lot of health benefits for your dog.Tripe is also high in levels of ‘good bacteria’. Specifically, the lactobacillus acidophilus – which helps to fend off any harmful bacteria that are present in your dog’s digestive tract. Topping up the levels of beneficial bacteria in your dog’s diet promotes healthy digestion, and minimises the risk of them experiencing an upset stomach.The high levels of natural enzymes present in the tripe also help your dog to break down food more quickly and efficiently, making them better equipped to extract all the useable nutrients from their food.Overall, despite the fact that it might not seem like a particularly appealing foodstuff, adding tripe to your dog’s diet actually offers some major benefits. Whole Prey – Often for the more adventurous feeder, this is the most complete and balanced meal you can feed but certainly not for everyone. There are several possible advantages to choosing to feed your dog using whole prey animals. Firstly, they are surprisingly easy to source – lots of reputable pet food companies now supply whole prey animals, usually frozen, so you can easily store them at home and defrost them as and when you need.A further advantage is that there is absolutely minimal wastage in a whole prey diet. The point of this approach is that it replicates the ancient diets of the wild ancestral dogs that our domestic pets are descended from. These wild canines would eat the entire animal; bones, skin, fur, feathers, blood, guts and all. By replicating this wild diet, your dog can get all of the protein and nutrients it needs from a variety of prey animals, with nothing going to waste. It’s also a considerably more environmentally-friendly option than purchasing highly processed tinned foods – or even grain-laden kibble.By eating the whole animal, your dog can benefit from the complex proteins found in muscle meat, calcium from bones, and minerals such as iron from organs. Ultimately, it provides a balanced, healthy option for your dog’s diet. Bones and Raw Treats – uncooked, edible bones like necks, wings and ribs are the corner stone of any raw diet but they can be daunting if you’ve never fed them before. Safety is always the most important thing when feeding any kind of bone. If you have a puppy or your dog has never had a raw bone before we recommend starting with something like chicken carcass or trachea which are soft and easy to digest, you could even hold it while your dog is eating to ensure they eat safely. Once you are more confident, you could then introduce things like duck wings, lamb ribs or whole gutted frozen fish. It’s also important to remember that cartilage, skin and hide are a fantastic source of calcium, phosphorus and manganese. Manganese is often missing from raw food so we recommend offering your dog a variety of raw meaty bones to ensure they have the best possible health. Bones are fantastic for oral hygiene and can be fed even if your dog is on a dry kibble diet. About the author My Pet HQ is a Morpeth based Pet Shop which specialises in quality, raw pet foods and pet accessories for your furry friends. Establish by Caroline and Diane Coppen in 2015 to provide pet mums and dads with the best products and advice on pet health, nutrition and wellness. The My Pet HQ blog is a knowledge centre where you can find anything out about pet care and if you are still unsure Caroline and Diane and their team of experts are always on hand to help. Just give us a call to talk all things pets!

Pancreatitis is possibly one of the most talked-about, yet least understood diseases we see in the UK today. There are two types: Acute and Chronic. Acute is where a dog is fine all their lives, and the next minute they are fighting for their lives. Chronic is a milder, but a longer-lasting version of the same. Let’s go through some critical aspects of this strange and unwanted disease:  Signs Hunched back Repeated vomiting – a key symptom Pain or distention of the abdomen (dog appears uncomfortable or bloated) Diarrhoea Loss of appetite Dehydration Weakness/lethargy Fever (occasionally) Causes  Not entirely clear  A high-fat diet is often blamed, yet sled dogs who eat high-fat diets are not pre-disposed.  A history of dietary indiscretion (a medical term for saying your dog will basically eat anything) Rancid fats and inferior quality ingredients in food.  Obesity – 70% dogs in UK overweight/obese, so this is a significant driver. Pancreatitis was rare, now common, like obesity in dogs.  Hypothyroidism (or other endocrine diseases) Severe blunt trauma, e.g. Road traffic accident.  Diabetes mellitus – sugar diabetes.  Certain medications or other toxins These include steroids, cholinesterase inhibitors, calcium, potassium bromide, phenobarbital, l-asparaginase, estrogen, salicylates, azathioprine, thiazide diuretics, and vinca alkaloids. There may be a genetic predisposition Autoimmune disease Raw fed dogs can get pancreatitis if overweight, but generally less common in them, even on high-fat diets.   Treatment  Treatment is mainly focused on keeping the dog hydrated and managing the pain:  Fluids – dogs don’t drink when in pain Pain killers, but not steroids. Often opiates or paracetamol Sometimes omeprazole etc. to reduce acid from stomach stimulating the pancreas Probiotics – some papers say they are beneficial, some not. I generally use them in my practice. Digestive enzymes definitely if pancreas not working well after an illness can give the pancreas a ‘holiday’ during and after a flare-up very safe  Bone broths with fat removed. Holistic vets will often rely on this in recovery from many disease processes, as well as pancreatitis.   Thoughts from a Raw Feeding Vet When I was at college, pancreatitis was really rare. Now I discuss it weekly. We used to think fat fed to dogs caused the problem, but now we’re suspicious it’s actually high carb foods like dry kibbles. Studies done on dogs fed raw food, then switched to a dry, high-carb kibble show the dogs have more fats (triglycerides) in their blood when on the lower fat, dry kibble! Yes, the high-fat raw diets gave less fat in the blood, giving less stress to the pancreas!  If you combine these studies with the observation that high-fat-fed sled dogs don’t get pancreatitis any more then the average population and that pancreatitis been increasing for the last thirty years while the food corporations have been carefully minimising fat in food because of the obesity epidemic, it all suddenly makes sense; don’t feed ultra-processed foods and treats!  The only choice, for me, is to go raw. Then you’re feeding your dog a low-carb, fresh diet with quality fats and ingredients. It won’t guarantee you’ll never see pancreatitis, as you can see from our long list of causes, but it will sure stack the healthy pancreas cards in your dog’s favour!  About the author Nick Thompson is a vet. He has been fighting for responsible, species-appropriate raw food feeding for pets for 25 years. His tireless drive for healthy pets from birth to graceful old age brought him to raw feeding in the mid-1990s.Nick is Founding President of the international Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (www.rfvs.info) and has co-authored a pioneering worldwide survey of 79 vets and their experiences feeding raw food. He has co-organised international raw food conferences for the RFVS since 2012.In 1999, Nick established his specialist practice, Holisticvet (www.holisticvet.co.uk). Now based in Corsham, near Bath, he offers homeopathy, natural nutrition and herbal medicine and a lot of good old-fashioned common sense for dogs and horses.His pet topics are gastroenterology and the microbiome and the misuse of pharmaceuticals in medicine. He loves researching all aspects of human and animal nutrition.Nick also shares his passion for raw feeding with a nutritional consultancy service to the premier raw pet food companies in the UK and Europe. He has lectured and consulted in Raw Food, Nutrition and Medicine throughout the UK, Eire, Northern Ireland, Finland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium and the Netherlands.Nick is embracing Social Media to spread his message: Facebook: Holisticvet Ltd; FB Public Figure: Dr Nick Thompson; Instagram: holisticvetuk.Nick is married to Elly and has two children, Arthur and Ophelia, and lives in Wiltshire, UK with chickens a Snowshoe cat called Ziggy and a Whippet-Italian Greyhound cross (mongrel), Bluebell.When not trying to convert the world to a species-appropriate diet, Nick runs barefoot, swims and eating real food. Not all at the same time.

There are so many stories I could share with you about how a dog’s health, behaviour and…well…even how their toilet habits have changed since eating a raw food diet. From the west highland terrier who would be violently sick even if she had the smallest piece of food, to the malamute who had projectile diarrhoea; from the shy and anxious collie to the labrador with red, inflamed and itchy skin. All of these cases were resolved from a simple change in the dog’s diet – a change from processed food to raw! Canines, which your dog is, have been eating raw food since their paws touched this earth. Yet, there is still much controversy, ill advice and reluctance to feed our dogs a food source that their body knows and has a deep acceptance of.  From what we see in the supermarkets, hear on the radio, watch on the television and see on the shelves at our local veterinary centre, everywhere we go we are sent clear messages that dog food in a bag or a can is what our dog needs and should be eating. But is it? A recent news report told the story of a sixteen-year old boy who had gone deaf and blind because of his diet! This boy ate nothing but white bread, crisps and pasta – all processed food! In addition, there are hundreds of books, studies and reports on human nutrition and food stating the obvious – that processed food causes anything and everything from depression to digestion issues. You see, anything and everything you put in to or on to a dogs body is interacting with the body as a whole. So, diet can interfere with the external parts of your dog, like skin growth, as well as the internal parts of your dog, like hormone balance and chemical balance.  So, the food we feed our dogs affects the whole dog – from their skin to their cells.   This is why feeding our dogs the right diet for their growth, health, behaviour and life is so important. Even if our dog looks good on the outside, we have no clue how it is affecting the dog on the inside and the damage it may be causing. Ok, so lets break it down a little. Your dog is who s/he is from their nose to the tip of their tail due to cells. We are all made up of trillions of cells and cells become specialised to create different parts of an animal – nose, hair, teeth, organs, blood, muscles etc. Everything is made up of cells. In fact, you might want to see your dog as a walking, breathing, drooling mass of cells. The reason why I mention cells here is because the cells that make up your dog rely on the correct nutrition so that they can function and do the job they are supposed to do and do it well. Without the correct nutrition, the cells of the body can’t do their job as efficiently or effectively. Signs of this might include dry skin, poor coat condition, oily coat, drop in stamina over the day, poor hair growth, digestive discomfort, flatulence, heightened anxiety, over-wieght, loose and/or smelly stools to name but a few. Over time, this may lead to more serious issues such as IBS, skin sores, ear infections or even cancer. It is suggested that many diseases we see in our dogs today are partly a result of nutritional distress. So, to provide a long and healthy life for our dogs and one where we can help in keeping visits to the vets at a minimum, it’s important that we know what we should be feeding our dogs so that they have happy cells! Happy cells make for happy dog guardians! Are you ready… Quite simply, living beings need living food. Of course, this doesn’t mean encouraging your dog to chase a deer across a field and eat it there and then! What it does mean is that living beings, like your dog, require food sources that are fresh, wholesome, authentic (meaning they have not had anything added to them in any way) and unprocessed (they are in their natural form). Food that is processed and created for a long shelf life can be taxing for your dog’s body to recognise, break down, digest, absorb and be used in a way food should be – for fuel, repair, functioning and life. This means that your dog’s body has to work extra hard in not only recognising the food as food, but also how to use it in the body, meaning resources needed for growth and support are used up simply in just digesting and breaking down the food. So, what is meant by living food? As has been previously mentioned, it’s food that is in its natural form – fresh, wholesome and raw. Yes! Raw! Our dogs have a long history and evolution of eating raw food and their mouth, teeth and digestive system are still replicable to that of a canine that would hunt and eat prey. Irrespective of this, we want to feed a dog a food source that supports their entire being – starting with their cells. Feeding your dog a raw food diet is super easy and super fun. You can start by keeping it simple and, as you become more confident, begin to explore what you can add to your dog’s food! You won’t look at your dog’s food the same again and you will become creative in trying all manner of fresh foods to feed your dog. Just WAIT until you learn about self selection (but that’s for another time). Oh, and make sure you stay away from those food sources that can be toxic to some dogs, like raw onion, raisins, grapes, dark chocolate. To get started all you really need is to find a raw dog food company that appeals to you and buy their complete food mixes. See, I told you it was easy! A complete food means that this can be the only food you feed your dog and his/her nutritional requirements are met. Although, complete foods do not contain fur, brain or eyeballs, which are all important for your dog to consume too, complete foods contain muscle meat, organ meat, bone and some companies also add vegetables and herbs to their food. There’ll be a separate post all about fruit, vegetables and herbs later. There is one important thing about starting your dog on a complete food created by a raw food company. That is, the food is coarsely minced. When people hear or read about feeding their dog raw food they conjure up images of half a deer leg hanging out the side of their dog’s mouth and are inclined to visit their local supermarket or butcher and buy a meaty bone for their dog. This is not wrong, but for a dog that has been fed processed food for its life so far, the digestive system can have a bit of a shock in being activated in to doing what it does best – digesting raw food. You see, for dogs, digestion begins in the stomach. For humans, digestion begins in the mouth, as soon as we start to chew food. Where a dog has been fed a processed food, the activity of the digestive system can remain more dormant, stagnant and become sluggish – yet another reason why to avoid feeding your dog processed food. Then, when all of a sudden the dog’s digestive system is met with a raw meaty bone to digest, it can create a shock to the system and cause the body to simply abort the food – through vomiting or diarrhoea. After you have fed your dog a raw complete food for about 3-4.5 weeks you can begin to offer your dog’s raw meaty bones, such as lamb ribs, turkey necks, chicken carcass etc. Feeding your dog a raw meaty bone is not classed as a complete or balanced meal. Don’t panic though, as Einstein said “time is nature’s way of making sure everything doesn’t happen all at once,” and it is the same with a balanced diet. So long as you are balancing your dog’s food over time, the food will be balanced. For example, you may want to feed your dog meaty bones 2-3 times a week and the rest of the week feed your dog a complete food from a raw dog food company. What you don’t want to do is feed your dog too much bone. This can cause a problem for dogs that are fed chunks of bone on a daily or regular basis. Bone that has not been coarsely ground can take a few days to fully digest. Thus, if a dog is being fed chunks of bone on a regular basis, this can create compaction in the digestive system – something we certainly want to avoid. Sticking to rule of meaty bone 2-3 times a week will not create this risk.       For some dogs that are already fed a processed food, or whose closet relatives had been (e.g. mother, father, grandparents), they may have food allergies or intolerances to certain prey or plant foods. There is a difference between allergies and intolerances and the most common ones for dogs include chicken, beef and grains. Unless you are certain that your dog can tolerate chicken or beef, or if you can get organic sources of this, then it might be best to avoid these in your dog’s diet. All you need to know about feeding a complete food from a raw food company is that you want to feed 2-3% of your dog’s body weight. For example, a 30kg dog would be fed 600g a day in total if being fed 2% of it’s body weight and 900g a day if being fed 3% of its body weight. Begin with the 2% measure and if your dog begins to look underweight move up to feeding 3%. You don’t want to go too crazy with the recipe options to begin with, so starting with a simple turkey recipe is recommended. From there, you can then begin to add other recipes to your dog’s diet, such as duck, boar, venison, rabbit etc – all of which can be provided from a raw dog food company.  So, how do you start to feed your dog raw food? You guessed it – it’s easy! There are two routes to introducing your dog to raw food: Slow transition. Complete swap SLOW TRANSITION. If your dog is old (e.g. ten to twelve years of age, or older) or has been prone to digestive upsets, loose stools or has a sensitive stomach then a slow transition to raw food might be the best route. Assuming your dog is fed twice a day, with a slow transition you feed your dog their normal food on a morning and the new raw food on an evening. You can do this for seven to ten days before feeding your dog just the raw food. It is sometimes best to do a slow transition because when a dog is fed a processed food, their stomach remains largely inactive. For dogs, digestion begins in the stomach. When a dog is fed a processed food there is very little for the stomach to break down meaning the incorrect levels of digestive enzymes, gastric juices and stomach acids are created. It is often the reason why dogs that are fed processed food can develop sensitive stomachs and pick up bacterial infections within the digestive tract. Digestive health is imperative for your dog’s health and correct functioning of the immune system. For some dogs, if they are not given a slow transition on to raw food, this can create a shock to the stomach and digestive system, causing a dog to have sickness and diarrhoea. This is not because the raw food has made your dog sick, or indeed that your dog is unwell, it is your dog’s digestive system being stimulated in to now having to create the correct enzymes, substances and performance to digest raw food – this is GREAT for your dog! After seven to ten days of feeding your dog their usual food on a morning and raw food on an evening, you can begin to feed you dog just the raw food. N.B. it is advised to not feed raw and processed food at the same meal because the biological requirements needed to digest raw compared to processed food are suggested to be different, although there remains some debate about this. COMPLETE SWAP. If your dog does not have a sensitive stomach or digestive issues then you can do a straight swap. Stop feeding your dog their normal food and begin to feed your dog the raw food. If your dog does have sickness and diarrhoea for more than their first feed of raw, go to feeding raw using the slow transition method. Below are some steps about how to feed a raw diet to your dog using a complete food from a raw dog food company. Allow the food (per tub) to defrost completely before feeding to your dog. Store in the fridge when defrosted.  When fully feeding raw (i.e. your dog is not being fed a processed food) give your dog 2-3% of its body weight. When doing a slow transition feed half of what you would normally give (e.g. 1-1.5% of raw). When feeding the raw food to your dog, take it out of the fridge about 1.5 hours before feeding. This will allow the food to be at room temperature before you feed. Too much cold or chilled food can cause digestive disturbances. This means that a dog being fed 2% of its body weight and on a complete swap to raw would be fed 300g on a morning and 300g on an evening. For a dog that is having the slow transition, the dog would be fed its normal food on a morning and 300g of the raw on an evening. If your dog does not eat the raw at first you may need to quickly flash fry it in a pan or pour a little boiling water on the raw food (allow food to cool before giving it to your dog). This allows for the smell of the food to be released, which some dogs need to smell before they will eat it. NEVER feed COOKED BONES to your dog. Once your dog has been on the raw food FULLY for 4 to 6 weeks, you can begin to change the prey source (e.g. turkey, organic beef, venison etc) and also begin to add raw meaty bone (e.g. turkey neck, duck neck, lamb ribs, organic beef bones etc). When offering raw meaty bones it is advisable to hold part of the bone so your dog chews it rather than swallows it whole. Some dogs are so used to having processed food that they have to realise that the bone needs to be chewed. Feed raw meaty bones 2-3 times a week (more often than this may cause compaction unless you are feeding a fur or whole prey, but you would add miss feed days to this) Once your dog is eating raw meaty bones, has been on the raw food for four to six weeks and you are comfortable with what you are doing, you can begin to add DIY days to your dog’s meals. This is still raw food but where you may choose to buy your own to make a meal for your dog. For example, you can buy lamb bones, lamb heart, lamb liver, goat’s cheese, pomegranate, broccoli and cauliflower and this can be a meal for your dog. You would want an 80:10:10 or 70:20:10 split of raw meat, organs and bones (with some fruit and vegetable added). Your dog does not need to have a balanced meal every day, but if you do decide to feed a DIY diet every day you will have to ensure what you feed is balanced over time. On the days where you are feeding raw food you can add other food to your dog’s bowl. For example, you can take off 10g of your dog’s raw food and add melon, almonds, goat’s yogurt, goat’s cheese, half a tin of sardines, goji berries, cranberries, grated apple, grated vegetables, raspberries, blueberries etc. As an example, with the food my dogs get I always feed a little less of the raw food and add something to the bowl. Today I did sliced courgette, cucumber, chia seeds, blackberries and raspberries. That’s it! You now have the basics of what you need to get started on feeding your dog a raw food diet and a knowing that with every mouthful you are feeding your dog and his/her cells another step (or paw) towards health, longevity and optimum functioning. Have fun! About the author Dr Isla Fishburn owns Kachina Canine. Her focus is on ecosystem health from the individual level up. She combines science with indigenous wisdom to better the life of dogs in all aspects of their wellness, including how the wellness state of a dog's human can effect the dog. Isla focuses on deepening the connection of a human to live intuitively so that their dog will operate from a place of energetic alignment. Isla combines her knowledge as a zoologist, conservation biologist, shamanic practitioner and wolf handler to bring teachings about how to improve the emotional, physical, spiritual, nutritional and mental state of a dog. She is deeply focused on teaching and exploring the importance of vibrational health and living from a place of authenticity.

All dogs can get loose stools (the definition of diarrhoea) after ‘dietary indiscretion’ (also known as raiding the bins or picking up offensive material off the grass on walks!). This short-term looseness usually sorts itself out with bland food for a few days. It can happen to raw and kibble fed dogs, alike.  The more worrying issue is where the runny poos go on for some time – anything over two weeks or so is considered to be ‘chronic’ or long-term. You may be surprised to hear that a remarkably high number of dogs produce less than perfect stools, sometimes for years and years. Their owners are used to seeing a sticky mess coming out of their dog. They assume it’s normal. It’s not. IBD or Irritable Bowel Disease is often diagnosed in these dogs after infections and liver, and bowel problems have been ruled out. Most IBD is related to changes in the gut microbiome after being disrupted by food sensitivities.  All dogs have particular food they obviously can’t handle. For some it’s chicken, for others it’s lamb etc. For some, it’s those pink ‘treats’ that don’t look like they were even made on this planet. If the gut is disrupted enough, it can get to a place where it can’t rescue itself as it might usually. Then you have a permanent condition – IBD.  At my practice, we use the Thompson Stool Score system to assess, note and communicate about stool quality. Here’s an introduction:  The Thompson Stool Score for Dogs and Cats 0 – Water/Soup 3 – Thin, but will hold together on the ground without dribbling everywhere — uncooked thin cookie dough.  5 – Blancmange – neither liquid or solid. Scoopable, but leaves a mess. 7 – Formed but soft. Very soft sponge cake. Not pickupable, but perhaps cleanly scoopable. 10 – Perfect cigar or torpedo. Pickupable between two fingers. It’s that simple. (I find food analogies are useful because they are so memorable, if unappetising!) You can add helpful detail like colour, smell and uniformity (lumpiness) for added information. Beware of making things too complicated.   The most common cause of IBD or chronic diarrhoea and the easiest to fix is due to dietary sensitivity to one or more components in the diet. If you’re feeding a kibble or a tinned formula, there are usually ten or more ingredients, and you can’t separate them. If you feed a home-prepared or complete raw single protein food, you are more in control of what you feed your pet. You can strip the diet down to one protein source (meat) at a time and see what effect this has on stool quality. It’s a straightforward but effective way to investigate these things yourself. Wheat, beef and chicken are the most common foods that cause sensitivity/intolerance. Why? Because they are the most commonly used in foods and have been for decades. They are the cheapest meat ingredients, maximising profits for the processed food corporations.  If your dog or cat produces a 7/10 stool, you might be ok with this, but if you think about it, they are 30% down on a perfect poo (if the poos were 5/10, they’d be 50% down on perfect). They either have a degree of gut inflammation, hindering fluid absorption from stool, or their microbiome is disordered. Of course, there are diseases like cancer, hepatitis and worms that can also give poor stool quality, so if you have any concerns, contact your vet who can run some tests to rule these more severe diseases out.  Take-Home Message The ‘take-home’ is that your dog or cat should be producing great, easily pickupable 10/10 poos almost all the time. If they are not, you’ve got some work to do. If they’re bad, get to the vet, if they’re not, get down to your trusted raw pet shop and discuss doing some protein trials with them.  Raw food is fantastic for treating IBD and diarrhoea. Of course it is – dogs have been eating it for hundreds of thousands of years!  About the author Nick Thompson is a vet. He has been fighting for responsible, species-appropriate raw food feeding for pets for 25 years. His tireless drive for healthy pets from birth to graceful old age brought him to raw feeding in the mid-1990s.Nick is Founding President of the international Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (www.rfvs.info) and has co-authored a pioneering worldwide survey of 79 vets and their experiences feeding raw food. He has co-organised international raw food conferences for the RFVS since 2012.In 1999, Nick established his specialist practice, Holisticvet (www.holisticvet.co.uk). Now based in Corsham, near Bath, he offers homeopathy, natural nutrition and herbal medicine and a lot of good old-fashioned common sense for dogs and horses.His pet topics are gastroenterology and the microbiome and the misuse of pharmaceuticals in medicine. He loves researching all aspects of human and animal nutrition.Nick also shares his passion for raw feeding with a nutritional consultancy service to the premier raw pet food companies in the UK and Europe. He has lectured and consulted in Raw Food, Nutrition and Medicine throughout the UK, Eire, Northern Ireland, Finland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium and the Netherlands.Nick is embracing Social Media to spread his message: Facebook: Holisticvet Ltd; FB Public Figure: Dr Nick Thompson; Instagram: holisticvetuk.Nick is married to Elly and has two children, Arthur and Ophelia, and lives in Wiltshire, UK with chickens a Snowshoe cat called Ziggy and a Whippet-Italian Greyhound cross (mongrel), Bluebell.When not trying to convert the world to a species-appropriate diet, Nick runs barefoot, swims and eating real food. Not all at the same time.

Dora is a four-year-old Collie X. Bright as a button, great in every way. She has a raw diet and looks great for it; great teeth, skin, gut and poos. Molly, her owner, is very proud. But she had a long course of antibiotics for an infected leg two years ago. Now, if she gets hold of the slightest whiff of chicken, be it raw, cooked, smoked, sliced, kibbled or tinned, she’s liable to redecorate the kitchen overnight. What’s going on, and what can Molly do about it? Food reactions are divided, in vet medicine, into three categories. Two are simple; Allergy and Intolerance; the first rare and dramatic, second common and mild. In between is Food Sensitivity, which is poorly understood, but equally causes uncomfortable and ugly scenes! Food Allergy In humans, think strawberries, seafood or peanuts. Remember that scene in Mrs Doubtfire with Robin Williams? Where Piers Brosnan chokes on his prawn that the hero has just dowsed in Cayenne pepper? Then Mrs D. has to do the Heimlich manoeuvre to save him from choking? You got it. That’s the drama of food allergy. It’s an immunoglobulin E, IgE, reaction for those who want to do a little Googling. Dogs are not allergic to many things, but if they are, you usually get rapid onset face swelling, coughing, dribbling. A dose of Piriton or similar dog-safe anti-histamine will often do the trick. If in doubt, pop to the vet’s and they’ll give them a shot. Food Intolerance Again, in humans, this is a pretty mild, but usually a life-long issue. Some races around the world, and some individuals, cannot digest lactose in cows milk. They lack a gene or an enzyme, meaning they can no longer ‘tolerate’ that foodstuff to digest it. Similarly, in dogs, these are food that the dog has never been able to tolerate from a puppy; a thing they’re just born with. And the treatment is to just avoid that thing. Simples. Food Sensitivity The reaction that everyone’s talking about. And most likely, it describes Dora’s ‘sensitivity’. What happens in food sensitivity is that you (meaning you or your dog) gradually develops a reaction to a food as it passes through the gut. You’re not born with the problem, as with intolerance, and you and dog don’t do a Mrs Doubtfire every time you eat a wee bit of the offending grub. Typically with digestion, food is broken down, mixes and feeds the microbiome, your gut bugs, is absorbed and then waste passed out the back.  In sensitivity problems, there is a change in the gut bugs (dysbiosis), long-term inflammation of the gut (Irritable Bowel Disease and ‘Leaky Gut’ issues) or sometimes IBS: Irritable Bowel Syndrome.  IBS is where the gut looks completely normal, but all things digestion are disrupted regularly. IBS is not what Dora’s got as she’s okay if she doesn’t see chicken meat. And if she does, she just gets the over-night squits which aren’t an immediate threat. We think food sensitivity is an issue due to the delicate balance of the gut-microbiome interaction being disrupted, like their telecommunications are jammed somehow.  Dora’s problems happened after antibiotics, so it’s possible that the tablets killed a few too many friendly bugs and changed the balance – dysbiosis.  Unsurprisingly, the gut wall and the massive immunological machine hidden there really don’t like their friends, the bugs, being in turmoil. They react, leading gradually to sensitivity. They can also take against specific proteins, even if the biome is in good shape, but this is rarer. The Answer? Avoiding chicken religiously is the obvious answer in the short term. Avoidance prevents nasty morning surprises but also allows the gut wall and gut bugs to get themselves back in shape and to ‘forget’ the chicken issues. If the problem persists, addressing inflammation and Leaky Gut issues is the way forward, using probiotics, raw food, broths and supplements. This is work to do with a raw feeding vet. We’ll cover this in other blogs. Who’d have thought there was so much going on in our dogs’ guts? About the author Nick Thompson is a vet. He has been fighting for responsible, species-appropriate raw food feeding for pets for 25 years. His tireless drive for healthy pets from birth to graceful old age brought him to raw feeding in the mid-1990s.Nick is Founding President of the international Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (www.rfvs.info) and has co-authored a pioneering worldwide survey of 79 vets and their experiences feeding raw food. He has co-organised international raw food conferences for the RFVS since 2012.In 1999, Nick established his specialist practice, Holisticvet (www.holisticvet.co.uk). Now based in Corsham, near Bath, he offers homeopathy, natural nutrition and herbal medicine and a lot of good old-fashioned common sense for dogs and horses.His pet topics are gastroenterology and the microbiome and the misuse of pharmaceuticals in medicine. He loves researching all aspects of human and animal nutrition.Nick also shares his passion for raw feeding with a nutritional consultancy service to the premier raw pet food companies in the UK and Europe. He has lectured and consulted in Raw Food, Nutrition and Medicine throughout the UK, Eire, Northern Ireland, Finland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium and the Netherlands.Nick is embracing Social Media to spread his message: Facebook: Holisticvet Ltd; FB Public Figure: Dr Nick Thompson; Instagram: holisticvetuk.Nick is married to Elly and has two children, Arthur and Ophelia, and lives in Wiltshire, UK with chickens a Snowshoe cat called Ziggy and a Whippet-Italian Greyhound cross (mongrel), Bluebell.When not trying to convert the world to a species-appropriate diet, Nick runs barefoot, swims and eating real food. Not all at the same time.

Obesity is defined in humans as excessive white adipose (fat) tissue. Surveys in people show significantly increased disease (heart disease, diabetes and some cancers) and premature deaths with increasing human body fat. Recent work suggests Japan had a low COVID death toll because obesity in that population is much less common than in the West.  Studies for our pets are more limited, and the even the definition of obesity is more disputed. Dogs are considered ‘overweight’ when their bodymass is more than 15% above ideal. They are ‘obese’ when their weight is more than 30% over ideal.  In vet medicine, we use weighing scales and ‘ideal’ bodyweight charts, depending on the breed of dog to assess plumpness. Vets are also increasingly using Body Condition Scoring – that is, measuring how much body fat the dog has, as well as merely measuring how many kilos they weigh. This makes a lot of sense: if you have a well-muscled and tall Labrador in perfect body condition weighing 40kg, this is very different from the short-backed, small, obese Lab who also weighs 40kg – this illustrates the limitations of just using scales.  Body Condition Score tables are designed and published by Royal Canin, for example. You can find them at https://www.royalcaninhealthyweight.co.uk/pet-obesity. Beware, though, many vet nutritionists think these tables are a bit on the generous side. For example, on a 1-9 scale, 5 is in the middle, suggesting it’s ideal. Most raw feeding vet nutritionists think 4/9 is a healthier ideal using these score charts from a kibble manufacturer.  In the UK, over 70% of dogs are obese or overweight. Obesity used to be considered an inconvenience and somehow ‘cuddly’ or, “well, he’s just got big bones”, and other painful excuses. Canine obesity classed, officially, as a ‘disease’, consistent with its classification in people. It is now considered a chronic illness – that is, a long term issue that needs addressing for the health and welfare of the patient, like heart or kidney disease.  In dogs, obesity is associated with osteoarthritis, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart and respiratory disease, kidney disease, cancer and more. This is really serious stuff if you want a healthy dog to live out their full life potential! And 7/10 dogs have this disease of obesity, mainly due to inappropriate diet. Obese pets are 15-30% more expensive to care for over their lifetime and can live up to 2 years less than a trim sibling!  When I talk to owners about obesity, they will often say ‘Oh, yes, well, he hasn’t been getting as much exercise recently’. This may be so, but science tells us that exercise is only a small part of body weight control, perhaps as little as five per cent, depressingly. Human nutritionists are known to warn, ‘you can’t outrun a bad diet’.  But all is not lost. Changing diet can influence body fat. Using conventional foods, unfortunately, the success rate, even with the most qualified university vets in the UK, is poor. Only 50% of dogs reach target weight on any given processed food. Surprisingly, of those only half remain at ideal weight! That’s a 75% failure rate with the top vets and the top university obesity clinics, using tins and dry kibbled food. Beware.  Vets’ experience up and down the UK, with feeding a species-appropriate fresh or raw diet is much better. We don’t have official figures, but most of us raw feeding vets will assure you that they have a much better success rate when using a good quality raw food diet.  About the author Nick Thompson is a vet. He has been fighting for responsible, species-appropriate raw food feeding for pets for 25 years. His tireless drive for healthy pets from birth to graceful old age brought him to raw feeding in the mid-1990s.Nick is Founding President of the international Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (www.rfvs.info) and has co-authored a pioneering worldwide survey of 79 vets and their experiences feeding raw food. He has co-organised international raw food conferences for the RFVS since 2012.In 1999, Nick established his specialist practice, Holisticvet (www.holisticvet.co.uk). Now based in Corsham, near Bath, he offers homeopathy, natural nutrition and herbal medicine and a lot of good old-fashioned common sense for dogs and horses.His pet topics are gastroenterology and the microbiome and the misuse of pharmaceuticals in medicine. He loves researching all aspects of human and animal nutrition.Nick also shares his passion for raw feeding with a nutritional consultancy service to the premier raw pet food companies in the UK and Europe. He has lectured and consulted in Raw Food, Nutrition and Medicine throughout the UK, Eire, Northern Ireland, Finland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium and the Netherlands.Nick is embracing Social Media to spread his message: Facebook: Holisticvet Ltd; FB Public Figure: Dr Nick Thompson; Instagram: holisticvetuk.Nick is married to Elly and has two children, Arthur and Ophelia, and lives in Wiltshire, UK with chickens a Snowshoe cat called Ziggy and a Whippet-Italian Greyhound cross (mongrel), Bluebell.When not trying to convert the world to a species-appropriate diet, Nick runs barefoot, swims and eating real food. Not all at the same time.

All dogs itch, right? Wrong.  It is the most common reason people take their dogs to the vets, given, but not all dogs itch. Thank goodness.  So, what are the reasons dogs itch? You’ll be pleased to hear we can reduce the million-and-one reasons down to just three categories: parasites, allergies/sensitivities and infection. That’s it. Most itchy dogs are in one of these groups. If they’re unlucky, they may be in more than one or all three. Let’s dive in and have a closer look.  Parasites Fleas are the number one reason dogs itch. They’re easy to get rid of using pesticide spot-ons or tablets from the vet, but I think prevention is better than cure. At my practice, we don’t use drugs on dogs every month if possible, we use essential oil sprays and herbs. Our favourites are Dermadog Insect Defence Spray and Cedarcide spray. We use Billy No Mates herbs in food or the Hedgerow Hounds Nature’s Bounty herb mix. These plant-based treatments can help with ticks, Harvest mites and Walking Dandruff, Chyletiella.  Allergies and Sensitivities   There are four areas to look at here. Three are on the outside: external allergens like tree and grass pollens, indoor allergens, e.g. house dust, house dust mites etc., and contact allergies where a dog might react on the neck to a new collar or harness. One sensitivity is on the inside of the dog, though – food.  Sensitivities (sometimes called ‘allergies’, wrongly) are pretty simple. If your dog comes in contact with the offending allergen, they react. If your dog is pollen allergic, they’ll itch in the spring and summer months, not, or at least less, in the winter. If they’re sensitive to something inside the house, they’ll likely itch all year round, of course. If they are contact sensitive, it’s sometimes obvious because of where they’re itching/chewing.  Food intolerances can be tricky, though. Dogs itch their ears, rears or feet usually, but not exclusively. If you’re feeding your dog a protein they react to, this may explain a persistent or frequently flaring itch in the ears or feet or hot spots on the skin when no other explanation makes sense.  To investigate, find a food that provides all the protein from once source, e.g. rabbit, venison, duck or goat. I almost always go raw for these. Talk to your raw food supplier as they’ll have lots of options.  Do a ‘food trial’. That is, give exclusively one protein source (watch that treats are the same protein as the trail protein!) for 1-2 weeks. If they start itching with any given meat protein, then you have your culprit. Continue with other trials as there are usually more than one. Avoid reactive proteins for at least six months.  Infection When the skin is devitalised or irritated by parasites or allergies, it’s really prone to infection because it becomes hot and/or wet. This is a perfect environment for the bad bugs on the skin to take off into an infection. If the infection is out of control, see your vet.  The three bugs that cause major issues are bacteria, usually Staphylococci, yeast, often our smelly-sock-like ‘Malassezia’ and fungi, ‘Ringworm’ (which generally presents as small bald greyish areas, not round and nothing to do with worms!).  Take-Home Message When presented with an itching dog, this is a sketch of how you can think about what might be happening. Remember, there may be more than one factor at play, e.g. a dog is itching because there’s beef liver in their ‘Chicken’ raw, but they happen to get a dose of fleas mid-summer which then goes on to create a bit of a yeasty secondary infection.  Welcome to the joys of Dermatology. It’s like an Agatha Christie murder mystery. You just have to keep eliminating potential guilty causes until you get down to the rock-bottom cause of your itchy dog.  About the author Nick Thompson is a vet. He has been fighting for responsible, species-appropriate raw food feeding for pets for 25 years. His tireless drive for healthy pets from birth to graceful old age brought him to raw feeding in the mid-1990s.Nick is Founding President of the international Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (www.rfvs.info) and has co-authored a pioneering worldwide survey of 79 vets and their experiences feeding raw food. He has co-organised international raw food conferences for the RFVS since 2012.In 1999, Nick established his specialist practice, Holisticvet (www.holisticvet.co.uk). Now based in Corsham, near Bath, he offers homeopathy, natural nutrition and herbal medicine and a lot of good old-fashioned common sense for dogs and horses.His pet topics are gastroenterology and the microbiome and the misuse of pharmaceuticals in medicine. He loves researching all aspects of human and animal nutrition.Nick also shares his passion for raw feeding with a nutritional consultancy service to the premier raw pet food companies in the UK and Europe. He has lectured and consulted in Raw Food, Nutrition and Medicine throughout the UK, Eire, Northern Ireland, Finland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium and the Netherlands.Nick is embracing Social Media to spread his message: Facebook: Holisticvet Ltd; FB Public Figure: Dr Nick Thompson; Instagram: holisticvetuk.Nick is married to Elly and has two children, Arthur and Ophelia, and lives in Wiltshire, UK with chickens a Snowshoe cat called Ziggy and a Whippet-Italian Greyhound cross (mongrel), Bluebell.When not trying to convert the world to a species-appropriate diet, Nick runs barefoot, swims and eating real food. Not all at the same time.

Most people know that a harness is so much better for your dog than a collar.  There is so much going on in the neck: – nerves, blood vessels, thyroid gland etc.  Why would you want to connect a lead to your dog’s collar?  Would you do that to your child? But are all harnesses good for your dog? Well the answer is no, not all harnesses are good for your dog.  Not all harnesses are ergonomically designed for your dog’s skeleton and some are even designed to be painful to the dog should they pull.  Your dog’s shoulder blades (scapula) unlike humans do not sit on their back but are at the top of their front legs.  So, they are actual on the sides of the dog. Some harnesses have a strap that goes across the front of the dog’s chest.  There are two types of this style; the saddle harness and the step-in figure of 8.  These actually restrict the movement of the dog’s front legs, as the straps go across and around the shoulder blades.  Imagine if you had a strap tied around your chest holding your arms to your sides and then you tried to move your arms backwards and forwards.  I’m sure if wouldn’t feel very comfortable and you could feel vulnerable, due to the restricted movement, in the presence of any perceived danger.  Correctional harness – these have a rope or webbing that create two loops that are placed around the dog’s legs.  If the dog pulls, the loops tighten around the under arm of the dog, causing a lot of pain and potentially damaging the skin and lymph nodes.  Both of the above harnesses can have an effect on the dog’s behaviour and increase reactivity, if they start to associate the discomfort or pain with pulling when they see other dogs, animals or people.  The best style of harness to get is a Y shaped harness.  These have a strap that comes up between the front legs and then the V shape of the Y goes either side of the dog’s neck.  Leaving the shoulders blades completely free to move comfortably.  The base of the V should sit on the dog’s sternum (breast bone) so there is no pressure on the neck area at all.  The lead should be attached to a D ring on the dog’s back.  This also helps to keep the lead falling around the dog’s face, creating a much more pleasurable dog walk.  Clip fastenings on the chest should be avoided as this pulls the dog off balance and can lead to long term physical problems.  This style of harness is also safe to use in the car to keep your dog secure.    Main photo credit: photo@ruffwear About the author Hi I’m Kath Hardington. I’m a fully trained dog behaviourist based in Northumberland. I’m also a full member of the Pet Dog Trainers of Europe (PDTE). I use only kind, scientifically based and up to date training technics. Helping you learn to live in harmony with your dog. I offer classes and one to one sessions, which are tailored to suit you and your dog.