Kate Bendix - The Dog Diet: Eight weeks to a happier, healthier dog

For Nikita

Rescue dog, tripe-lover, best friend

In 1973 when I embarked on my career as a vet, I knew quite a lot about how to treat illness in dogs, and I have learnt a lot more over the last forty plus years. But at the time I never gave much thought to the diet my patients were being fed. Vets didnt sell pet food or give much advice on feeding. You got your dogs food from a pet shop, or bought green tripe from the butcher and mixed it with offcuts and scraps from home.

Most dogs were pretty healthy on the whole; most of my work was treating infections and carrying out surgery. Gradually, I noticed an increasing number of dogs with persistent eczema, inflammatory bowel disease, underactive thyroid, diabetes and other chronic, long-term conditions.

In recent years there has been a veritable tidal wave of such cases. Coinciding with this tsunami of chronic disease in dogs has been a massive increase in the incidence of obesity in dogs.

The first thing I now do when I meet a new patient with any persistent health problem is to ask about diet. If, as is mostly the case, the answer is kibble, or a lowgrade canned diet, I suggest that unless the diet is improved, any treatment I give will not be sufficient to make a major difference. And if the client explains that the food is purchased from the local vet (who now has a waiting room stacked from floor to ceiling with bags of kibble) I have to bite my tongue to refrain from saying what I really think!

So if diet is so important, what is the best way to feed a dog? How can you stop your dog becoming obese? What are healthiest foods, treats and supplements? Can you feed your dog a home-cooked diet? Why is kibble a no-no? How do you make sense of the ingredients on pet food labels? Are there natural ways of avoiding fleas and worms? Is raw feeding safe?

The answers to all these questions, and more, are in The Dog Diet. Kate Bendix has somehow managed to pack into this small volume an amazing amount of superbly useful and above all practical information, all in a clear, concise and very readable way.

I tend to rate books on the lettuce scale. Cos (too big and too long), or Iceberg (too dense and boring) Or, like The Dog Diet a Little Gem!

Dr Richard Allport, BVetMed, VetMFHom, MRCVS
Natural Medicine Centre
www.naturalmedicinecentre.co.uk

We have known for decades now that what we eat is crucial to our own long-term health. If we eat poorly a diet high in processed carbohydrates, processed meat, ready-meals and sugar the pounds will start to pile on. Well feel tired and sluggish, with achy joints added for good measure. And we know that, if we carry on eating this way, were heading for chronic diseases further down the line: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease and skin problems.

On the other hand, if we eat a variety of foods, freshly sourced and prepared, and we limit our intake of sugar and carbs, we are likely to remain slimmer and fitter, to sleep better and have more energy. We are what we eat, and, even if weve got ourselves into a middle-aged state of being overweight and lethargic with aching knees (me) we know that by changing how we do things it can all go away and we can stave off chronic, life-shortening disease. (Also me. Lost a stone so far. Yay, go me!)

Unsurprisingly, the same logic applies to our dogs. Millions of them are porkers. Their lives have come to mimic our own too many of them are over-fed, under-exercised and stressed and so it stands to reason that they have started to take on our shape and disease pattern. Over the past 20 years the rise in obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease and skin problems in our dogs has rocketed. Now compare this list to the one above. Notice any similarities?

The truth is we dog owners are sometimes guilty of over-feeding our beloved dogs and perhaps not always feeding them the right things. But we are also the victims of an onslaught of marketing misinformation, which has made it increasingly difficult to know what on earth a healthy canine diet actually looks like. We have grown up feeding our dogs processed cans and kibble, for example, because we believed the myths put about by the food companies: Stick to one food, dont deviate (utter rubbish); grain-free is best (is it, really?); developed with vets (I dont even know what that sentence means).

Luckily, help is at hand. There is enough nutritional advice in this book to put a stop to your dogs weight gain and reverse the downward trend in her health. A good dog diet is not rocket science, I promise you. And it wont cost you a fortune, or eat into your precious down time. More to the point, your dog will love it. So lets learn from ourselves and help our dogs back to health.

Now Im not saying you, or your dog, is fat, I wouldnt dare to presume. But, with 62% of men and women in the UK in 2014 being overweight or obese Im guessing that some of you reading this book are. I am, and Im writing the thing, for crying out loud!

The problem is that most of us just dont recognise our dogs for what they are: fat. We are doggy dysmorphic, blinkered. In our minds eye our dog is hurtling through the tall grass that sways in the warm summer breeze. Her coat is sleek and glossy, she has a waist Audrey Hepburn could only have dreamt of and a set of teeth white enough to make an A-lister weep. Meanwhile, back to reality if we carry on the way we are going, just five years from now the number of overweight dogs in the UK will outweigh (sorry!) the number of healthy dogs. The simple truth is we are in denial.

If the vet tells you your dog is overweight, in your head they are being critical and you hear, You are a failure, your dog is overweight, what were you thinking? You feel guilty, and as if youve lost control, which brings on denial and self-loathing. The denial and self-loathing then trigger the same action that made you feel bad in the first place overfeeding your dog and the degradation continues. Now youre in a shame spiral. Its a cycle that repeats itself over and over.

You cant beat Denial, though; its a great destination. All cosy, dark and snuggly like a posh spa, without the relaxing music. Nothing bad ever happens in Denial. Thats because nothing ever happens at all! If you heave the dog on to the vets table only to be told, Ms Smith, if Millicent is ever to see her feet again she needs to lose weight, it feels like a personal attack, as if you let your dog get into this state on purpose. So we stick our fingers in our ears, sing a happy tune and deny, deny, deny. Whereas if we choose to hear it and most importantly not beat ourselves up about it, then we can finally take action.

Apart from re-fuelling, for many of us eating is a pleasurable experience. Feeding our dogs is equally pleasing a loving thing to do. We project our emotions around food and the pleasure it gives us on to our dogs. As we graze, so shall they. A passing piece of cheese here, whats left at the bottom of the Weetabix bowl there It becomes a habit. We sit on the beach with our fish and chips and the dog gets a bit. Its Saturday, she looks at you with those soulful eyes and gets half your toast and jam. Its a regular thing, another bond between you, sharing toast of a morning. I can hear you saying that they only get the odd