Tigertail Foods is a wholistic pet food and treat company. We use only human-grade
ingredients that come
from trusted sources.
Your pet's health is our first
concern and everything we make is motivated by
the principle
that healthy food helps make healthy pets.
Health Matters
March 6, 2011
We all use the internet to become self-taught experts in any number of fields on any given day; however, how much of what we know is worth knowing? This month Ann goes on a rant about something I'm sure most of you will be able to empathize with - our "brave new world" and the ease we can find information, and how most of it is wrong. Or confusing. Or misleading. She also looks at ways to verify what we've read so we don't march up to a real expert and make fools out of ourselves by starting out a sentence with "I read on the web . . ."
*Standard disclaimer: while we will offer our opinions about how to best achieve optimum health for our animals, we do NOT profess to know what is better for your pet than you or your vet do! Always consult with your vet, then consult with another vet and get a second opinion (because we also believe in having options!).
Information Overload
First of all, let me state up front and in a loud voice, “This is strictly an opinion piece!” It has everything to do with facts, but it is my opinion from start to finish.
When I was a child my parents bought two newspapers a day: the morning news and the evening newspaper. That way they felt they were getting all the news in a timely fashion. When I was a young married, we also took two newspapers, one morning and one evening. Reading them was like living in two separate cities. They might cover the same news, but each gave a totally different slant to the event. I thought it made me “well-rounded” to read both takes of the daily events. Back in the 60's I had a college professor tell me that we were doubling our body of knowledge every ten years and that with the aid of computers, that time was being halved into increasingly shorter periods of time. I wonder if we're doubling our body of knowledge every day now? I know that thanks to the internet and telecommunications technology we are in the midst of an information explosion – more likely information overload. And when we have this much information available to us, we have to be very careful about what we take as fact and what is misinformation.
What does this have to do with health matters? A lot! Have you ever wondered why your vet shakes his head or rolls her eyes when you say, “I researched this condition on the web and understand that there are several possible treatments but I think this one sounds right for Boomer.”? It isn’t that your vet doesn’t appreciate your active participation in your pet’s health management -- in fact, she probably is thrilled to have a client who is passionate about these issues – however, there is so much conflicting, opinion-based and just plain wrong stuff out there that often vets find themselves having to cure an ill pet and deal with a client who has gotten the “facts” from the internet at the same time.
I know firsthand how misleading the internet can be when researching medical conditions and diseases. In the past few months I’ve written about health issues that were way outside my line of experience and expertise, and in doing the research – which until recently has always been a favorite part of writing these columns – I came across an astounding amount of contradictory information . . . or what passes for information. Depending upon your point of view, or even how you phrase your search request, you can find an article somewhere on the web that will substantiate your beliefs with “facts”. If you have no preconceived beliefs and no real facts against which to reconcile your research material, the first article may well be the only article you read on the subject, and you will walk away believing that it is both accurate and complete.
For instance when I began researching canine and feline diabetes, I went to about a dozen websites for information. After reading and taking notes, I discovered discrepancies in my notes and went back to the websites to correct my information, thinking that in my transcription, I had erred. The articles from PetPlace.com and altMD.com stated that “nearly all dogs” “nearly always (99%) of dogs have type I diabetes.” However, Canismajor.com stated that “most canine diabetes . . . is Type II.” Vetmed.wsu.edu doesn't distinguish between Type I and Type II, but instead refers to juvenile versus middle age onset. Nearly all the websites stressed the need for insulin treatment (and one site warned that without insulin treatment you could kill your pet) but at www.diabetesindogs.net I found the following, “While veterinarians may prescribe the best possible mode of treatment for canine diabetes, there are certain natural cures that you can add to your dog's treatment therapy ….” (emphasis mine) Perhaps I'm overreacting to the use of the word cure, but to me that word means something that will take away the problem. There is a difference between a cure and a palliative treatment. One ends suffering and the other eases the suffering. But more importantly, if your pet had been diagnosed with diabetes and you, as a loving and involved pet owner, began to research your pet’s disease can you imagine what kind of damage you might do to your pet if you decided based on this information that a mixture of herbs could take the place of veterinarian prescribed insulin???
To verify that what I am putting out into the electronic universe doesn’t add to the confusion, I have increasingly been relying on and reconciling all other research with Merckvetmanual.com, which is the veterinarian's primary reference. It is hard sledding in some sections because it is written for veterinarians, not the general public. If I were to recommend one source of traditional veterinary information about your pet, whether dog, cat, horse, bird, or fish, it would be this manual. If you are a devotee of natural medicine, there are several worthwhile sites, offering a wealth of knowledge. But, be careful, if they offer a “cure” that is too good to believe, you probably shouldn't.
Meanwhile, if you like your veterinarian, do not try to second guess him. When you offer your opinion, try to remember that he has four years of college education under his belt, generally graduating in one of the hard sciences. Then he went to veterinary school for four more years, followed by a year or more of internship. He sees more sick animals in a week than we probably encounter in our pet-owning lives. He is trained to think of all possible complications and causes. He knows the percentages with each set of circumstances. He understands the chemistry of medicines and how they interact. If he is a really good veterinarian he has kept up with new developments in veterinary medicine and has continued his education throughout his time in practice. A truly outstanding veterinarian knows what he is good at and knows when to send his patient to a specialist. And, he will know that specialist by name and reputation. Your veterinarian is your pet's best ally in life and should be a comforting friend on his final day.
Now that I have professed my love for good veterinarians, let me add a caveat. Veterinarians are, by and large, ignorant of nutrition. Their class in animal nutrition is usually taught by a representative of one of the large commercial pet food manufacturers. They are trained to accept the benefits of commercial food and never question the claims of danger in “home feeding”. If a human doctor, say a pediatrician, told a mother that she wasn't capable of feeding her child and needed to rely on prepared meals from XYZ company, she would run from that doctor as fast as she could. But, pet owners routinely accept their veterinarian's dictate to feed XYZ brand pet food and rarely read the ingredients and question this decision. There is NOTHING mysterious about feeding your pet a species appropriate diet. A little reading is the first step in knowing what is needed to keep your pet in the peak of health. Nature didn't design our pets to eat highly processed foods. They weren't born with lighters in their pockets, so for thousands of years their food was fresh and raw! Their systems are designed to handle the germs associated with real, raw food. When a veterinarian mentions the danger of salmonella, I want to remind him that most animals carry salmonella around in their bodies and it never endangers them. Additionally, dogs who are fed bagged/canned food routinely shed salmonella in their stools. If a veterinarian will grant me this, he goes on to the danger to ME of handling raw food, and I have to ask him how his wife makes his dinner. We handle raw food everyday if we don't eat out for every meal. Have you ever made a hamburger at home? What did you start with? Raw meat! It wasn't scary, just a fact. But doctors of all stripes are so concerned with law suits that they feel a pressing need to caution us about handling food! Come on! We all know that we have to wash our hands before and after handling raw food. That is hardly a news flash. But when we hear it again and again, we begin to think that handling a chicken thigh for our dog's dinner will somehow endanger our family.
For more than fifteen years I have fed my dogs and cats a raw diet and watched them thrive. In this time I have also watched my veterinarians skepticism regarding feeding real, raw food go from actively negative, to grudgingly accepting, and finally one of my veterinarians sent me a client for whom he couldn't find a commercial diet. I have always done Complete Blood Counts as a base line for each pet and routinely do CBCs on my senior pets. My veterinarians are always amazed that my rescue animals are uncommonly healthy and long-lived. I had one veterinarian tell me I was really lucky to have such healthy rescues. I wonder if it ever occurred to her that perhaps their eating habits had anything to do with their exceptional health.
If you were to research dog or cat food you would find so many conflicting articles that you might well come away completely confused. Today there are many sites propounding the excellence of feeding whole, raw foods in a balanced diet. There are just as many sites, many hosted by commercial pet food companies, that extol the safety and convenience of feeding kibble and/or canned food. Purina.com lauds its selection of food and offers nutritional information including a warning from a veterinarian working for them to NOT give your dog a bone. She states that small bones are hazardous as they can be swallowed and large bones can splinter or crack a dog's teeth. On the other side of the coin is Dr. Ian Billinghurst, the Australian veterinarian who has written several books on the subject of feeding raw food, including one entitled, Give Your Dog a Bone and its sequel Grow Your Pups With Bones.
Of course, I firmly believe that real, fresh, as close to nature intended food is the best for pets (as well as people) and encourage owners to move toward raw, natural diet if they haven’t already done so. And while I would love to feed everyone’s pets, I realize that you can make your own pet food at home. You don’t need a specialized expertise, but you do need common sense and to follow some general guidelines. There is a lot of good information out on the web – but using that good common sense, be very careful about what you choose to use. There are plenty of websites offering good information and some even give sample recipes. Don't rely on only one site, go to several. Check the credentials of the authors and see if they are representing a manufacturer or are writing on their own behalf. Two excellent sites to begin with are The Whole Dog Journal, and The Pet Food Project. From there, you can branch out your research into other sites and reading all sorts of raw, natural, BARF-diet forums (which will have your head spinning on contradictory opinions!!!). Remember that feeding your pet should be a balance over time; you don’t have to get every meal absolutely perfect – BUT you cannot just throw any old food into your pet’s bowl and hope for the best.
The reality of our new world is there is information on any subject under the sun available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some of it is right on the money and some of it isn’t worth the electronic space it takes up. You need to judge what you’re reading and weigh it against what you know to be true – and if it’s a topic you are unfamiliar with, take that information and talk it over with an expert . . . and then, if you need to, double-check that with another expert. You can have too much information, but you can never have too many facts.
