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Superior nutrition for all cats and dogs because prevention is better than cure!

Pilot Study – Effects Of Pet Plus On Pet Oral Health

Researchers

  • Susanna McIntyre (Penman) BVSc MRCVS
  • Max Tuck BVetMed MRCVS

Summary

This pilot study involved 13 cats and 2 dogs. The animals involved were all suffering from a degree of periodontal disease which required treatment.

One of the cats involved had gingivitis/stomatitis complex. All the animals which were provided with the active enzyme supplement showed significant improvements in their oral health compared with the unsupplemented control group. The most notable was the dramatic improvement in the cat with gingivitis/stomatitis complex.

As a result of these very encouraging findings, we are continuing to use Pet Plus in practice. Since this pilot study was completed in 1997, thousands of dogs and cats have benefited from the inclusion of Pet Plus in their diet.

Introduction To The Oral Study

The modern diet of domesticated dogs and cats is very different from that of their wild counterparts. Cats have evolved as carnivores and in their wild state will catch and kill their own prey, eating the meat, bones, intestinal tract and offal. Dogs are more adaptable and, by nature, scavengers, but their natural diet is also raw, like that of the cat, although it usually contains more vegetation.

There have been several studies showing improvements in oral health following a change from a processed food diet to a raw food diet in both dogs and cats. One of the major differences between these two diets is their enzymatic activity. As processed foods are produced at high temperatures, any active enzymes which may have been present in the original raw ingredients are destroyed.

This study explores the effects of adding a concentrated multiple micronutrient and active enzyme supplement (Pet Plus for Dogs or Pet Plus for Cats) to processed pet food diets on the oral health of dogs and cats.

Materials and Methods

All cats and dogs were examined while under general anaesthesia, induced by Rapinovet and maintained by Halothane, nitrous oxide and oxygen, standard practice in 1997. Photographs were taken and the degree of gingivitis assessed using the following gingivitis index:
• I mild with no bleeding on probing
• II moderate with no bleeding on probing
• III severe with bleeding on probing
• IV severe with swelling or ulceration and spontaneous bleeding.

A thorough prophylaxis was performed with the details recorded on a dental chart. Further photographs were taken. All animals were discharged on 5 days of Synulox. The supplemented group commenced the daily enzyme supplement immediately upon discharge. The control group had no supplement.

Post-operatively, all animals were re-assessed on days 5, 14, 21 and 28, updating the dental records. Photographs were taken at 28 day intervals in most cases. Home-care was specifically not implemented in order to minimize the variables.

Oral Study Results

The results are very interesting, with the improvements gained being maintained throughout the period of supplementation. Most of these animals have remained on the supplement and are planning to continue for life.

  1. Gingivitis in all supplemented animals improved and in some cases resolved. These changes were evident 5 days postoperatively and continued after withdrawal of antibiotic therapy.
  2. Gingivitis in the unsupplemented animals improved in most cases up to day 14, but with no home care and only a processed proprietary diet, the gingivitis had started to worsen by day 21; one cat had reverted to its original grade III gingivitis.
  3. Two unsupplemented cats showed no significant improvement by day 5 so further antibiotic therapy was implemented. This was continued up to day 21. Unfortunately one of these cats was withdrawn from the trial, but the other, after no improvement on 3 weeks of Synulox and an 8-day long-acting corticosteroid injection, joined the supplemented group, where his condition has greatly improved.
  4. The cat with gingivitis-stomatitis complex was in the supplemented group. At the start of the trial, the gingivitis was classified as grade IV with spontaneous bleeding of the gingival tissue. Pharyngeal ulceration was also present. Improvement to grade III gingivitis was noted by day 5 and by day 28 the examination and repeat photographs showed a grade I gingivitis with resolution of approximately half the area of pharyngeal ulceration.

Discussion

The preliminary findings of this study suggest that the micronutrient and enzyme activity of the food plays a significant role in the state of oral health. Recent research in the human field (I.L.C. Chapple et al) has shown that serum antioxidant levels are directly related to periodontal health. In addition, the other exposed epithelial surfaces (e.g. cervix and lungs) are affected in the same way.

This emphasizes the importance of a thorough oral examination at every consultation as the state of oral health reflects the degree of health of the whole body. If oral health is poor, a natural whole food supplement is required to redress the balance of micronutrients which will provide the body with the ingredients it needs to effect repair and maintain health.

Pet Plus, the natural whole food nutritional supplement used in this study, contains active enzymes, antioxidants, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, probiotics and prebiotics all from dehydrated, concentrated raw food. It is having a positive impact on the overall health of dogs and cats all over the world.

Micronutrients

It has long been realised that micronutrients (especially live, active enzymes) play an important role in the proper functioning of all living things. Only recently have we begun to understand that unless these are present in the diet, body systems begin to fail. This results in degenerative diseases, especially cancer and heart disease, and allergies, which are becoming increasingly common in the human and domestic animal populations of the developed world.

Why Are Active Micronutrients So Important?

1 – Free Radical Pathology

Free radical pathology is now largely accepted as a major cause of degenerative disease. It is estimated that every cell is exposed to free radical attack 10,000 times a day.
Antioxidants offer the major protection against these molecules.
Free radicals are unbalanced molecules which need an electron to regain their neutral balanced status. If this electron is taken from a cell, the cell is damaged, which is the beginning of free radical pathology.

Antioxidants work synergistically to provide the necessary electron to neutralize the free radical, thus protecting the cells.

The Antioxidant Recycling Cascade

That antioxidant is now short of an electron and effectively behaves like a free radical. It needs to be repaired by other antioxidants, phytonutrients and enzymes found in whole food sources but missing from isolated vitamin/mineral supplements. This natural antioxidant recycling cascade cannot work effectively when vitamins are given in isolation or in large amounts (e.g.1000mg vitamin C), because the damaged antioxidant is left unrepaired doing as much damage as the original free radical.
There are now known to be over 15,000 micronutrients in whole raw food all of which are required to maintain the fine natural synergistic balance of health.

2 – Enzymes

Enzymes are essential catalysts for all metabolic processes. Without enzymes, there would be no metabolic processes and hence no life. These are only available from a whole raw food source as it is essential to have all the enzymes together so they can work synergistically in an efficient natural balance. They are destroyed by heat and processing.

Micronutrients are used up during the process of living. They constantly need to be replaced. The only source is raw food. Without an adequate supply, the body gradually runs out of enzymes, antioxidants, phytonutrients, probiotics, prebiotics and other essential micronutrients resulting in a reduction of both the function and the protection of the body organs. Consequently degenerative disease is initiated. To prevent this, it is essential to provide a natural nutritional supplement, like Pet Plus, which provides all these nutrients.

In the developed world, we have moved away from raw food towards processed foods of enormous variety for ourselves and our pets. We are largely loathe to return to the perceived inconvenience of raw food.

A new era of nutritional supplements has evolved made from the raw food on which the animal is designed to live, being bio-available, bio-active and rich in active micronutrients which work together synergistically, but do not work properly in isolation. In this way, the essential elements of raw food, most of which have not yet been identified, are provided without the inconvenience, when added to the animal’s normal diet.

Human Research

  • Since 1992, several medical trials have been completed on people using Juice Plus, with very positive results including:
  • huge increases in antioxidant levels with concomitant decreases in lipid peroxides (a measure of cellular free radical damage) (Wise J A et al, Leeds A.R. et al)
  • 66% reduction in DNA damage (Smith M J et al)
  • enhanced immunity (Inserra P.F. et al)
  • improved muscle to fat ratio (Ray M et al)
  • reduced plasma homocysteine (instrumental in the pathogenesis of heart disease) (Samman S et al, Panuzio M.F. et al)
  • a reduction in the vasoconstriction which normally follows a fatty meal (Plotnick G.D. et al).

Clinically, one of the notable improvements is in the health of the oral tissues, a trial on which is currently running at Birmingham University Dental School, UK, under Professor Iain Chapple. It is due to be published in 2011.

Conclusion

The initial findings of this pilot study indicate that the micronutrient activity of food, its bio-availability and the synergistic actions of its components play an important role in the oral health of cats and dogs. Since the completion of this study in 1997, thousands of dogs and cats have been taking Pet Plus with excellent improvements in overall health and vitality.

References

Alpha-tocopherol, Beta-carotene, Cancer Prevention Study Group. The effect of vitamin E and beta-carotene on the incidence of lung cancer and other cancers in male smokers. New England Journal of Medicine. 1994;330:1455-1456

Chapple I.L.C. et al. Glutathione in gingival crevicular fluid and its relation to local antioxidant capacity in periodontal health and disease. Journal of Clinical Pathology: Molecular Pathology 2002:55:367-373

Inserra P F et al. Immune function in elderly smokers and nonsmokers improves during supplementation with fruit and vegetable extracts. Integrative Medicine 1999; 2(1); 3-10

Leeds A.R. et al. Availability of micronutrients from dried, encapsulated fruit and vegetable preparartions: a study in healthy volunteers. J Hum Nutr Dietet 2000; 13; 21-27

Panuzio M.F. et al. Supplementation with fruit and vegetable concentrate decreases plasma homocysteine levels in a dietary controlled trial. Nutrition Research: 2003; 23(9); 1221-1228

Plotnick G.D. et al. Effects of supplemental phytonutritents on the impairment of the flow-mediated brachial artery vasoactivity after a single high fat meal. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2003; 41: 1744-1749

Ray M. et al. Positive effects of nutritional supplements on body composition biomarkers of aging during a weight loss program. Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association, March 1998

Samman S et al. Supplementation with mixed fruit and vegetable concentrate increases plasma antioxidant vitamins and lowers plasma homocysteine in men. Nutrition. 2003;133:2188-93

Smith M J et al. Supplementation with fruit and vegetable extracts may decrease DNA damage in the peripheral lymphocytes of an elderly population. Nutrition Research. 1999;19 (10):1507-1518

Wise J A et al. Changes in plasma carotenoids, alpha tocopherol and lipid peroxide levels in response to supplementation with concentrated fruit and vegetable extracts: a pilot study. Current Therapeutic Research 1996;57:445-461.

Further Reading

Billingshurst, I. (1993). Give Your Dog a Bone. I. Billingshurst, Lithgow.

Howell, E. (1985). Enzyme Nutrition; The Food Enzyme Concept. Avery Publishing Group Inc. Wayne, New Jersey. ISBN 0-89529-221-1

Lonsdale, T. (1995). Peiodontal disease and leucopenia. Journal of Small Animal Practice, 36, p542-546.

Pottenger, F.M. Jnr. (1995). Pottenger’s Cats. Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, San Diego, California.

DuBois Dr. R E. Oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of disease and ageing: an opportunity for intervention. 2003.

Original paper published in BVDAJ, 2000, page 7

Feline Miliary Dermatitis is a general term and is often also called Miliary Eczema. Affected cats suffer from a combination of the following clinical signs :

  • numerous tiny scabs,
  • hair loss,
  • hypersensitivity to touch,
  • scratching,
  • excessive licking, biting and scratching and
  • irritation.

The cause is usually an allergy to flea bites. Even just a single bite from a flea – it does not take a flea infestation – will produce this terrible allergic reaction.

I avoid the use of drugs wherever possible as they generally get rid of the symptoms without addressing the underlying cause.

Some drugs only treat symptoms and not the underlying causes of disease, but can still be used to make the patient more comfortable while proper nutrition fixes the problem.

Allergies are not cortisone or antihistamine deficiencies any more than a headache is an aspirin deficiency! I use nutrition as the most important part of any treatment.

However for serious cases, some form of anti-inflammatory may be necessary to control the symptoms and relieve the distress while you change the diet to prevent recurrence.

Natural anti-inflammatories include Aloe Vera (I use Pukka), omega 3 oils and turmeric. All need to be used with care and preferably with the guidance of a holistic vet. Sometimes medication is required short term.

Why Avoid Drugs Where Possible?

The foundation of health is nutrition. Nutrition provides the nutrients needed for the body to continuously repair and regenerate used and damaged cells.

Remember, the body is made of cells, each with its own special function. For example, liver cells are all clustered together in an orderly manner to form the liver, each cell performing its task in conjunction with other liver cells.

Poor nutrition over a lifetime leads to a slow degeneration of the body

If the nutrients consumed are of poor quality, the repair and regeneration of cells will be of the same poor quality, so the body gradually degenerates. The regulatory mechanisms also start to malfunction and all sorts of bizarre reactions result, allergies being one such reaction.

It is not natural for cats to have fleas nor is it natural for them to have a violent reaction to a flea bite, which can lead them to lick off their own fur and scratch themselves raw.

These symptoms are evidence that something is desperately wrong, so something has to change!

Treatment Of Feline Miliary Dermatitis

Many severely affected cats are given steroids and other anti-inflammatory drugs to control the symptoms. But if the cat’s environment isn’t improved, the symptoms will recur as soon as the anti-inflammatory action wears off.

So while your cat is less itchy, use this time wisely to make some changes to diet and environment.It is essential to ensure there are no fleas either on the cat or in the environment. There are various natural products available to provide flea control and flea treatment.

I tend to suggest dusting the cat with Diatomaceous Earth, thoroughly vacuuming the whole house and all furniture, especially the areas the cat frequents, then dust it all with Diatomaceous Earth.

Billy No Mates Herbal Mix for Cats and Dogs is another useful product. I avoid the potent chemicals wherever possible, especially any oral treatment designed to treat a skin invader!

Feed a raw diet and include PET Plus. I cannot emphasise the importance of this enough.

It’s Very Important To Feed Raw Food

The first thing to do is to change the food. Feed your cats with raw meat and bone mixed with a teaspoon of liquidised greens (some cats just won’t accept the greens) and 1/4 teaspoon of PET Plus.

Feeding raw is definitely the best thing to do … without doubt. The best way is to buy wild rabbits (or the equivalent) which are shot cleanly. Find the shot and remove it. Put the whole rabbit through the mincer so you get the right balance of meat, bone, organs … delicious for the cats. The downside is that this is a pretty vile exercise for us to have to do it. Try asking a butcher to do it for you. They sometimes like doing specials for customers. 

Any remaining fleas will usually go. The cat’s immune system will gradually recover, the skin will be able to repair and the excessive scratching and licking will cease.

It takes time for this recovery to take place. The last cat I treated had been on steroids and various other anti-inflammatories for many months.

With the last injection from her vet, the cat’s symptoms didn’t go away as effectively as on previous occasions, so the owner sought a different approach.

The cat still licked herself all the time. After 3 weeks on PET Plus, the owner noticed signs of improvement which continued until she had recovered completely in 2 months.

Her fur is still growing back, so it’ll be a while before she looks completely normal, as she had licked off nearly all her fur over the many months of failing medical treatments, poor thing.

Also, the owner couldn’t believe that such simple changes could make any difference, so she was a bit slow to get onto 100% raw food!

Her cat was relying on the PET Plus for the first few weeks as she was still receiving processed food. As soon as the owner saw the improvements in her cat after 3 weeks of adding the PET Plus for Cats to the processed food, she changed her onto raw food with the PET Plus.

Prevention Of Disease

Wouldn’t it be better to feed raw food and PET Plus from the start and prevent these horrible ailments and food allergies? Just do it!! You know it makes sense!

How Do I Feed Raw?

There are numerous frozen minced meat and bone mixtures available both online and from the pet shop.

Natures Menu is one you can buy in pet shops. Cats tend to like the rabbit, chicken, tripe (just once a week!), fish and lamb.

The tripe has no bone in it, but it is rich in other nutrients and really smells!! Great for the cat, not so good for the house!

Online, you can get raw meat and bone minces from numerous raw food manufactures. Search for a provider local to you.

Cats also thrive on raw chicken wings which you can give every day along with the minced meat and bone, liquidised greens (which some cats just won’t eat, mine included!) and PET Plus.

This helps to keep their teeth in good health. It’s good to give them some raw heart, liver and kidneys (offal) once a week too. Please see the dietary sheet for more details.

PET Plus (for cats and dogs) was originally made by the brilliant company that makes Juice Plus for humans. The products used to be called

  • Juice Plus for Dogs and
  • Juice Plus for Cats.

They have stopped making the Juice Plus for pets so they can focus on the human version, which the humans in our family have been taking since 1993! It’s brilliant. You can find more on this by visiting my Juice Plus web site.

As a naturopathic, holistic veterinary surgeon, I really valued the enormous benefits Juice Plus for Dogs and Cats brought to all the dogs and cats I treated. So I decided to manufacture it myself. I renamed it PET Plus for Dogs and PET Plus for Cats in 1997 when I first brought it to Europe.

Fantastic Health Improvements

In 1996-7 Max Tuck and I ran a Pilot Study to explore the effects of PET Plus on cats and dogs with periodontal disease. We were staggered by the results.

Even those poor cats with Chronic Feline Stomatitis and Gingivitis Complex gradually returned to normal, without the barbaric extraction of their teeth. Since then, numerous veterinary practices, pet health food shops and individuals have been telling me of the excellent results they are seeing with dogs and cats on PET Plus.

You Are What You Eat

Good nutrition is the foundation of good health. How can we expect our pets to be healthy when we feed them the same old biscuits or the same old tinned meat every day? Would we feed our children like that? Would we eat that kind of food ourselves, every single day? Of course not!

All the nutrients are destroyed in the processing of these foods so as time goes on, your poor old pet gradually deteriorates. Adding PET Plus to their food puts all the essential, delicate nutrients back, enabling your pet to digest their food and maintain youthful health and vitality.

Better still, feed the food carnivores like dogs and cats are designed to eat! Have a think about what they would eat in the wild. Whole, fresh herbivores, like mice and rabbits.

They eat the meat, bone, fur, guts, organs, toenails….the whole lot! We can come close to providing the same nutritional value as their wild diet by feeding raw meat and bone, liquidised greens and PET Plus, which supplies the nutrients and probiotics they would otherwise gain from eating the herbivore’s guts.

PET Plus

I am committed to providing the very best nutritional support for our dogs and cats in PET Plus! As the benefits of other fabulous, important, natural whole food nutrients are discovered, I am constantly updating the ingredients and improving the formulation, thus ensuring PET Plus is always the very best!

Probiotics are the healthy bacteria which live in the intestines of all mammals. They are essential for the proper digestion and assimilation of food as well as helping to regulate the gut.

Even the immune system depends on a healthy bacterial population in the body. Probiotics live in the gut, the mouth, on the skin and in all orifices, where they help to maintain health.

Why Use Probiotics?

Most holistic practitioners, like me, have been using probiotics for decades, but it is only now that our colleagues in the ‘normal’ allopathic veterinary world have realized their importance. The enormous range of benefits is only just being discovered by scientists, doctors and vets.

This week, there was an article in the Veterinary Times entitled ‘Probiotics: the new treatment for acute diarrhoea in cats and dogs’.

PET Plus has been an essential part of my treatment for acute and chronic diarrhoea since its creation in 1996. You may have already read my article about Chester, a Golden Retriever who had diarrhoea for 6 years!

He’s completely healthy now and has his PET Plus every single day! There are hundreds of dogs and cats with intestinal troubles, all related to diet, all sorted by adding PET Plus to their food. The probiotics are definitely part of the story.

Probiotics are involved in so many areas of the body that their inclusion in any diet is now regarded as essential. By colonizing most of the body’s surfaces, they help to prevent pathogenic, bad bacteria and yeasts from invading.

How Many Different Bacteria Are Needed?

There is a lot of discussion on this topic and no real conclusion. Some people think it is beneficial to have loads of different healthy bacteria. It is also thought that if there are lots of different types of bacteria all trying to colonize the one place, they will be competing against each other.

The ‘strongest’ one will win and the ‘weaker’ colonizers will be lost. That is why we have chosen the ‘strongest’ one, Lactobacillus acidophilus.

It is generally accepted that at least 500,000,000 CFU are needed to maintain an effective presence. Currently in PET Plus, we have 750,000,000 CFU (Colony Forming Units) which has proved to be very effective over the years.

Which Bacteria Are The Best Probiotics?

A lot of the drug companies that have suddenly realized there’s a huge market in probiotics are using Enterococcus faecium.

The world leading manufacturer of nutritional supplements that I have chosen to make PET Plus refuses to use Enterococcus faecium because they regard it as a contaminant! They know that it readily transfers antibiotic resistance and as such is dangerous.

Lactobacillus acidophilus has been used for decades and is well established as a completely safe and extremely effective probiotic. It is found naturally in the intestines of dogs and cats as well as the herbivores they would eat in the wild.

Being the best colonizer, it also creates a slightly acidic environment which repels the pathogens and enables it to survive transit through the stomach.

Probiotics are not found in pet food. They are very delicate and so could not survive the processing involved in the manufacture of pet food. Unless you are feeding whole herbivores to your dogs and cats, probiotics will also be missing from a raw food diet comprising meat and bone.

Dogs can supplement their diet by eating herbivore faeces. Cats can gain probiotics by catching herbivores and eating them whole. But these are rather unreliable! Adding PET Plus ensures that our pets are getting the probiotics, prebiotics and a host of other fantastic nutrients every day.

What Are Prebiotics?

Probiotics are living organisms and need food, now known as prebiotics. Fructo-oligo-saccharides (FOS) have recently been identified as the most useful and are found in all sorts of vegetable matter. PET Plus contains plenty in the form of wheat grass, barley grass, alfalfa and even the ground flax seeds act as prebiotics.

We have now included Frutafit Inulin IQ, an excellent, tasteless FOS from chicory, which stimulates the growth of existing healthy gut bacteria as well as promoting the colonization of the Lactobacillus acidophilus in the PET Plus.

It is now thought that the prebiotics are more important in a supplement than the probiotics, as they support the existing healthy bacterial population in the gut. We have both in PET Plus.

In Summary

It is essential to provide a good source of healthy bacteria (probiotics) and support them with the nutrients they need (prebiotics) to maximize the benefits of good quality nutrition. In nature, carnivores would obtain these from the intestines of their prey. We need to provide them for our pets, whether their diet is raw or processed.

BARF stands for Biologically Appropriate Raw Food. Biologically appropriate raw food is simply the food a given animal would have eaten in the wild, out of the way of human intervention.

Such food is clearly raw as animals don’t know how to cook food. Some animals do bury fresh food to allow the enzymes in the food to begin breaking it down, but this is known as predigestion or rotting … not cooking.

What Would Dogs And Cats Eat In The Wild?

In the wild, both dogs and cats would eat other animals, usually herbivores. They would consume virtually everything, comprising mainly meat, bone, gut contents, offal, fat and skin.

Dogs are also scavengers and would eat a range of vegetation as well as any rotting carcasses they found. Both dogs and cats would eat eggs too.

What’s In The Herbivore’s Gut?

Larger herbivores like sheep, cattle, horses and rabbits are designed to eat grass and other equally fibrous, abrasive vegetation.

Smaller animals like mice and birds of the types our carnivore pets might catch also eat vegetation. They eat grass, berries and other fruit. Grain is largely produced by humans and would not be readily available in large quantities in the wild.

However, the survival instinct is great, so opportunistic animals will eat whatever they can.

All this food is well chewed and ground into a pulp. Ruminants regurgitate their food and chew it again many times. This begins the process which releases the nutrients packed inside the cellulose cell walls of all plant matter. It also increases the surface area available for the digestive enzymes to work on.

The herbivore’s gut contains numerous bacteria, probiotics, which are essential for the breakdown of plant material. In ruminants, like sheep and cows, the bacterial fermentation chamber (the rumen) is at the beginning of the digestive tract, one of their four stomachs.

In other herbivores like horses and rabbits, fermentation takes place at the end of the gut, so they have to eat some of their faeces to gain the nutrients they need from the grass they eat, a habit called coprophagia.

How Can We Make Up For Vegetation Missing From Our Pet’s Diets?

We need to do our best to imitate this wild diet.

Raw Meat And Bone

Various frozen minced meat and bone mixes are readily available. I use Nutriment most of the time, and there are now plenty of raw pet food manufacturers like Natural Instinct, Honeys and Natures Menu.

I also feed whole organic chicken carcasses from Riverford Organics 2-3 times a week. When in season (January – May) I buy frozen wild rabbit carcasses from many sources, including Farmer’s Choice and feed these 2-3 times a week alternating with the chicken carcasses.

Offal is included in many of the minces, but I also feed some offal at least once a week. Excess liver can result in hypervitaminosis which is one of the causes of osteoporosis in both people and pets.

For this reason I am very cautious and aim to give it in the proportions it would be found in a wild herbivore, so I give minced offal once a week

Variety is the key. No animal would live on just one type of meat for ever.

Vegetables

Dogs and cats do not chew their food anything like as thoroughly as herbivores, so they are largely unable to access those essential nutrients hiding in plant cells, unless it’s already been eaten by a herbivore first.

The enzymes in the herbivore digestive system are also specifically designed to digest the cellulose cell walls, but carnivores lack these enzymes.

We have put them in PET Plus to help our carnivores to access these important plant nutrients. To emulate the herbivores’ grinding teeth, liquidise or pulverise green vegetables like spinach, broccoli, celery, and parsley. You can even use grass, but be very careful! Ensure any grass you use is clean and free from weedkillers, fertilisers and any other chemicals or pollutants.

Mix this pulp with the minced meat and bone, even if it already contains vegetables, as it is the green leafy vegetables that are important.

Dogs thrive on about 1 part veg to 1 or 2 parts meat and bone mince. For cats, mix a teaspoonful of veg with their meat and bone mince. Some cats just won’t eat their greens, so we have to rely on the greens in PET Plus! I generally prefer to use just the frozen minced meat and bone and add my own freshly pulverised green leafy vegetables.

Green tripe has a lot of green vegetation in amongst the stomach walls that comprise the tripe. It stinks, but both cats and dogs love it raw.

PET Plus is an excellent source of wheat grass, barley grass and alfalfa, so mix this in as well.

Probiotics

Liquidised greens don’t contain everything that would be found in the guts of the herbivore. We need to add probiotics and the very best one is found in PET Plus.

These friendly bacteria contribute hugely to the breakdown of the vegetation and also help to stabilize and protect the gut from pathogens.

BARF Feeding Summary

Raw meat and bone, liquidised greens and PET Plus all mixed together form the mainstay of the raw diet for cats and dogs.

2-3 times a week, give raw meaty bones like chicken wings, chicken drumsticks, chicken carcasses, wild rabbit carcasses but be careful to ensure the bones are raw and well covered with meat.

Green tripe and offal fed once per week is a deliciously smelly, nutritious treat for both cats and dogs.

If you are just beginning, start with the minced meat and bone with liquidized veg and make sure your dog or cat is used to eating raw before you offer them a bone.

If you give raw meaty bones to pets that have been on processed food all their lives, they’ll be so excited at getting real food, they might just wolf it down without chewing it, which might cause a problem. So take the transition one step at a time.

In my last blog post, I discussed how I treated my dog’s Haemolytic Anaemia. She was on medication in total for only four weeks, including two weeks when the dosage was gradually reduced. Most dogs with Haemolytic Anaemia have to stay on cortisone and Azathioprine for many months. Some have a relapse as soon as the medication stops, so have to stay on these drugs for life.

It is now ten days since my dog’s last cortisone tablet, so I decided it was time to do a blood test to see if she really has recovered so incredibly quickly.

It is good news. Her blood count was normal. I was so relieved! As she has made such a rapid and complete recovery from this life-threatening illness and had virtually no side effects from the drugs, I thought you’d like to know what I did in addition to the short spell of the conventional drug-based treatment.

What Did I Do Differently?

I used a combination of conventional and naturopathic or complementary treatments and supported her with natural, raw food and clean, chemical free water.

Food

The vast majority of people feed their pets on processed food which is by definition unnatural and therefore more difficult for the body to deal with. When anyone is critically ill, they need instant access to perfect nutrients with as little effort as possible. Every extra bit of work the body has to do to access those nutrients and convert them into something usable is valuable energy wasted. The energy would be better spent on repair and recovery!

Raw food is so much easier to digest and provides unadulterated nutrients which can rapidly be put to good use. Processing destroys enzymes which are necessary for digesting, absorbing and using the food. So the pancreas has to create new enzymes which uses up a lot of energy. Adding PET Plus provides those enzymes so that at least takes the load off the very energy expensive enzyme production system and makes the food more accessible.

In any case, there is no condition which benefits from poor nutrition!

Water

We have a whole house water filter which removes the chemicals like chlorine from our water supply. This clean water is then more readily available to the body as it doesn’t need to deal with the chemicals first. Wasting the body’s energy detoxifying and eliminating chemicals reduces the amount of energy available for healing and repair.

Again, anyone who’s critically ill cannot afford to throw energy away on unnecessary tasks.We also magnetize and energize our water so that it is more like the water we would naturally drink from a stream.

The Great Outdoors

Every day, I took Rocky out for a gentle stroll in the forest. She hadn’t the energy to go running about at all, but Floss kept her entertained chasing the frisbee, which I also threw to Rocky so she could have the pleasure of catching it too! Sunlight, fresh air, soil and grass underfoot, birds singing. Who knows exactly what these natural elements offer, but they so obviously raise all our spirits which can only be a good thing.

Nutritional Supplements

PET Plus for Dogs was the main nutritional support as it provides everything nature prescribed!
Aloe Vera is a very useful anti-inflammatory and provides many nutrients; I only use it as a treatment as none of us are designed to eat its leaves as part of our daily diet!

Omega 3 is present in the PET Plus, but in Rocky’s situation, extra flax seed oil could help with the stabilisation and repair of cell membranes, especially of her red blood cells.

Samylin contains Milk Thistle and SAMe, both of which help the liver and probably the red blood cell membranes too.
Probiotics are present in vast numbers in the PET Plus, but because she was on antibiotics for a week, I felt it might help to give her even more.

Wheat grass is also in the PET Plus, but again I thought in her critical condition, giving her some extra would be a good idea. It can help with the production of haemoglobin and the regeneration of red blood cells.

Rest, Healing Blanket and TLC!

When we are resting, our bodies are busy with healing and repair, tasks which cannot be performed thoroughly while we are awake and active. Rocky spent a lot of time asleep either curled up in her bed or in the Healing Blanket.

Floss or one of the cats often lay with her which must have been comforting. I’m sure emotional well-being is at least as important as all the other treatments.

Homoeopathy And Cranial Osteopathy

When I found the right homoeopathic remedy for Rocky, I saw a change within minutes of giving it to her. That was certainly one of the factors in her turning the corner and starting to recover. Later on, the cranial osteopathy also had a dramatic effect as her recovery seemed to have reached a plateau.

Straight after the treatment, she was much more energetic and had pinker gums, a good sign of improving circulation. When we went for our gentle stroll in the woods, she actually ran after the frisbee, which she hadn’t done for three weeks.

In Summary

The beauty of complementary therapies is that they work with the body’s natural healing abilities and have no deleterious side effects. At the very least, these treatments can do no harm and at their best, they can do a vast amount of good. I really don’t understand why the medical profession as a whole has failed to embrace these healing modalities with open arms!

Last month, I was saying goodbye to my dogs, Rocky and Floss, on my way out to do a raw food feeding lecture to a group of very enthusiastic dog handlers. Rocky trotted over as usual, but instead of rolling over for a tummy tickle, she fell over. She quickly got up again, but didn’t look quite right. When she stretched herself, she stopped half way and quickly stood up. I thought she’d hurt her back running under our wooden fence on our walk earlier, so I gave her some Arnica. I massaged her which she loved, then gave her tummy a good rub when she rolled over. They both then curled up in their bed and seemed fine.

A few hours later, I came back and was greeted as usual by their wagging tails and exuberant barking. We went out into the woods for a walk, but Rocky started lagging behind, looking sorry for herself. I stopped and had a good look at her. Her gums were really pale. What had happened so suddenly?

The last time I checked her mouth a few days before, her gums looked fine. I could find no source of bleeding, no fluid accumulating in her abdomen, and no coughing, but she was clearly very anaemic. I carried her home thinking she must have had a hemangiosarcoma that had just ruptured. How could this happen to such a fit, healthy, raw food-fed dog?

Veterinary Emergency

I phoned Summerhill Veterinary Surgery, one of the surgeries where I do veterinary dentistry, and took her straight down. An x-ray showed there was nothing abnormal in her abdomen or chest. We took blood samples and checked her haematocrit, made a slide to look at her red blood cells under the microscope and checked all her other blood parameters.

The agglutination test showed a positive diagnosis of Haemolytic Anaemia. I was so relieved it wasn’t a tumour, but horrified to learn that only 50% of affected dogs survive. A guarded prognosis. My own dog. How could this be? Why on earth was she breaking down her own red blood cells?

Treatment For Haemolytic Anaemia

We put her on a drip, gave her some antibiotics, intravenous cortisone (in an effort to stop her immune system from damaging any more red blood cells) and some multivitamins, although I couldn’t imagine she really needed them, but it might help. I never left Rocky’s side! Hannah, Jean, all the other vets and the nurses were fantastic.

I was close to tears the whole time and they all ran around, doing everything for me and Rocky. They even brought me a textbook, opened at the relevant chapter, describing in absolute detail the whole story of Haemolytic Anaemia. I read it whilst cuddling Rocky on the operating table as the drip gradually dripped in.

Was There Obvious Cause For Haemolytic Anaemia?

The only realistic cause out of a huge list was a tick-borne parasite from a tick bite in the summer. For some reason, her immune system had chosen now to destroy it. I have an idea what triggered this!

Two weeks before, our kamikaze kitten, with vertical take-off, knocked a three pound haggis from the top of a wall unit (just under the ceiling) onto the floor, where both cats and both dogs enjoyed an early Burn’s Night supper! I suspect the high fat content of that cooked delicacy was the final straw for her system, which is used to completely raw food.

That Night

Thank goodness I’m a vet so I didn’t have to leave her at the surgery! I could monitor her and the drip myself through the night, so I took her home with the drip still running. She hardly moved all the way home, but as soon as we arrived, she was clearly desperate for a wee; not surprising after all those fluids.

So we set off for a short walk, but Rocky was having none of it. She was feeling so much better, she wanted to go far a walk in the woods! It was a very dark, moonless night! Armed with a torch, holding the drip and lead in the other hand, we set off. I kept thinking she’d be ready to stop at any moment, but no! Up the hill, along the path then down through the forest, sniffing everything with renewed vigour!

I had forgotten about the stile at the bottom, so I picked her up and climbed over with the drip still running! A bit of a crazy thing to do, I know! By the time we got home, I had had time to think a bit.

I gave her some Rescue Remedy then some Arnica, both of which help to reduce inflammation, so should help to stop her immune system’s attack on her red blood cells. She wasn’t impressed when I syringed 20mls of Aloe Vera into her mouth! Never mind, poor thing! It’s a potent anti-inflammatory, so I decided to give her the same 4 times daily.

The drip still had three hours to run, so I moved her bed next to the radiator, fastened the drip to the picture hook above and tied her lead to the radiator. Dozing on a mattress next to her, I was able to remove the drip and cannula at 3am when it finished. Another quick trip out to water the flowerbed, then sleep.

More Ideas

Over the next couple of days, I had some more ideas on treating Rocky and spoke to some of my colleagues. In this picture, she is lying in my Russian Healing Blanket. I put her in it 4 times daily for at least 20 minutes; she usually lay in it for longer and I often got in with her which helped to revive me as well! It was a great time to cuddle her and give her plenty of love and TLC!

Rocky Feeling Unwell

I also gave her Ferr Phos tissue salts, 4 at a time, twice a day. Every morning, I gave her a couple of raw eggs mixed up with PET Plus, extra probiotics, wheat grass powder (to help with the regeneration of haemoglobin), omega 3 oil (flax/linseed) and Samylin (to help to stabilize red blood cell membranes), local raw honey from the hives in our field and aloe vera. She lapped it up!

After the first day, she started eating properly again, so after her egg, she had organic raw liver as well as her usual raw meat and bone with liquidised greens.

She was pretty up and down for the first few days but definitely had pinker gums after each session in the blanket. One of my veterinary homeopathic colleagues suggested Arsenicum Alba or Pulsatilla. I tried the Arsenicum first, but it didn’t appear to have any effect. The next day, I gave her one Pulsatilla and within minutes, she brightened up. It was amazing!

We took blood samples regularly to monitor the situation. After 5 days, she was still breaking down her red blood cells, but there was evidence that she was also making new ones, an amazingly rapid recovery. To help her to stop attacking her own red blood cells, we increased the cortisone to an immunosuppressive dose and added Azothioprine, a seriously immunosuppressive drug.

A few days later, a friend gave her some cranial osteopathy and some healing, then she really rapidly improved. We started reducing the drugs, finishing them a week ago, so she had a month of treatment. We’ll do another blood test tomorrow which I expect will show everything’s fine, as she is back to her normal energetic self. What a month!

Over the last 100 years, cat health problems have increased in diversity and complexity. There are numerous bacterial and viral infections which cats’ immune systems seem unable to combat these days and for which there is apparently no cure with conventional veterinary medicine. The truth is that pathogens can only survive in an unhealthy individual, as Louis Pasteur said on his death bed.

Dental Disease

The commonest health problem in cats is undoubtedly dental disease, affecting not only the teeth but more importantly, the gums and supporting tissues (periodontal disease). More teeth are lost as a result of periodontal disease than for any other reason; the same is true for humans too.

The good news is that this is preventable through proper nutrition and oral hygiene. The raw food cats would normally eat in the wild not only provides the numerous nutrients and micronutrients they require for optimal health, but also exercises their jaws, teeth and periodontal tissues and keeps them entertained.

Tooth Brushing?

Tooth brushing helps to keep the teeth clean but is only required if the cats are fed on processed food, whether that be home prepared cooked food, tinned or dried. When fed on raw food, there are rarely any accumulations of debris on the teeth as all the micro-nutrients are supplied to support the natural self cleaning mechanisms of the mouth and the strongly antibacterial saliva which work together to maintain excellent oral hygiene.

The oral cavity is even healthier when chunks of raw meat and raw meaty bones form part of the diet, providing a physical cleaning of the teeth as they cut through the meat and gristle.

Immune System

Given the correct balance of natural nutrients, clean water, exercise, rest and love, most health issues in cats can be prevented. The immune system is extremely efficient at spotting problems and dealing with them before they get out of hand. Unfortunately, most cats are fed on processed food which gives the immune system a lot of work and does not give it the nutritional support it requires for optimal function.

Eating processed food uses up so many enzymes that the digestive system cannot complete its task, so partially digested food particles are absorbed into the blood where they are recognised as intruders by the immune system.

The white blood cells attack these particles and complete their digestion in the blood, an effect called digestive leucocytosis. While the immune system is kept busy on this unnatural task, any pathogens or cancer cells or other invaders can pass by undetected. This is a major cause of cat health problems today.

Allergies

Allergies are common cat health problems these days, especially asthma, skin irritations and diarrhoea. Why is this? There are many lifestyle factors working together to contribute to these allergic reactions, including over-vaccination and exposure to toxins, such as unnatural chemicals and processed foods, which over-stimulate and over-work the immune system.

We have found that cats fed a raw food diet and PET Plus are much less likely to suffer from allergies or any other problems. When anything the body regards as toxic is absorbed, the body does everything it can to remove the toxin. The liver is the main organ of detoxification; when this is overwhelmed, toxins are excreted through the mucous membranes lining the lungs and intestines, a process known as vicarious elimination. This damages the membrane allowing toxins in and body fluids out, contributing to the complex processes of allergic reactions.

Why does PET Plus work so well? The combination of enzymes in PET Plus helps our pets to digest the food they’re given.

Did you know that without proper enzymes, particles of processed food end up in the bloodstream. Immune systems then think it’s invading foreign bodies.

Why PET Plus Works

The prebiotics (mostly green plants) and probiotics help to keep the digestive system working properly. The essential fatty acids (mostly omega 3 with some omega 6 and 9) help to maintain cell health and a shiny, glossy coat.

The whole formulation provides the nutrients our carnivorous friends would naturally obtain for themselves in the wild by eating whole raw herbivores, especially the gut contents with all that well chewed, partially digested raw plant material!

As our pets rarely eat whole herbivores as they were designed to eat, PET Plus makes up for all the missing enzymes.

How I Feed My Pets

We’re constantly reviewing the formulation and modifying the ingredients as new information is revealed, so we can bring you the very best nutritional support for your pets!

For decades, I fed our dogs and cats on minced raw meat and bone mixed with pulverised greens and Pet Plus. I mixed offal and organ meats with this once or twice a week to mimic the proportions of a whole wild herbivore.

About 3 times a week, I gave them raw chicken carcasses  as well as a small amount of the minced combination. They loved it and were bursting with health and vitality! 

Use Natural Wormer And Anti Tick Methods

I use a natural wormer daily just in case any parasite manages to overcome their fantastic immune systems! I never needed to use any flea treatments at all as fleas just don’t live on these exceptionally healthy animals.

These days, I have a cat who adopted me as a stray tiny kitten in 2021. I invited him to stay as long as he agreed to be vegan. (see article on vegan pets….link please!). He is a very healthy cat and sometimes sadly supplements his diet with rats, mice, lizards and the odd bird. Well, cats will be cats! The number one ace predator.

I am absolutely passionate about this! Our pets deserve better food then they can enjoy better health and we can enjoy their vibrant energy!

I am absolutely passionate about this! Our pets deserve better food then they can enjoy better health and we can enjoy their vibrant energy!

We wouldn’t feed ourselves or our children out of a packet, so why on earth do we do it to our gorgeous, beloved pets? A healthy pet is such a joy. I’m so pleased to be able to bring you this fantastic pet nutritional supplement.

Having started sorting the family’s health by taking Juice Plus and increasing the quantity and quality of raw food in our diets, I realised I was still feeding processed food to our cats.

Raw plant food improved human health – but I was still feeding my pets processed food …

So What About Healthy Eating For Pets?

A friend suggested a source of good quality frozen raw minced meat and bone so I started feeding this to our cats immediately. I was just about to give them their flea treatment as I had seen some on them. But after they’d started on the raw food the change in their health was quite remarkable. Within a couple of days their fleas vanished. I was amazed. I never even used the flea spray!

I created Juice Plus for Cats And Dogs – which later morphed into the PET Plus supplement that you know and love.

The Creation of PET PLus for Cats and Dogs

Then in 1996, PET Plus for Cats and Pet Plus for Dogs was created, first in USA as Juice Plus for Dogs and Juice Plus for Cats. But then I brought it to UK as Pet Plus.

This made it so easy for everyone to improve the quality of their pets’ nutrition by just adding a little powder to their food. The positive benefits to their health were amazing!

PET Plus Transforms Dogs and Cats

I kept getting phone calls from delighted owners telling me their dog’s bowels were working better, their cat’s coat was thicker and more glossy, their dog had so much more energy and seemed like a puppy again, their cat had no fleas, their dog’s gums were healthier and so on.

The positive health results of adding PET Plus to pet food was astonishing.

This still happens as more and more people discover the enormous benefits of healthy nutrition for both themselves and their pets. It’s so exciting!

PET Plus Improves Oral Health Too

Within my speciality of veterinary dentistry, the one oral condition which we were unable to treat effectively was chronic gingivostomatitis in cats (FGS) (and a few breeds of small dog), where their mouths became so inflamed and sore that the poor creatures were virtually unable to eat or groom themselves.

I decided to offer them PET Plus as part of their treatment and was astonished to see the improvements. At last we had a way of treating these poor animals.

A Controlled Medical Trial For PET Plus

So I asked one of my veterinary colleagues, Max Tuck, if she would help me do a controlled trial on the effects of PET Plus on the oral health of dogs and cats.

Half the pets that came in for dental treatment had PET Plus as part of their treatment and half did not. It soon became clear that those on PET Plus were doing much better than those without Pet Plus.

We published the results in a medical journal

We wrote up the results and the paper was published in the British Veterinary Dental Association Journal in 2000 (Penman and Tuck, A pilot study to explore the effects of active enzymes on the oral health of cats and dogs).

In 1990, I gave birth to our daughter, and then 16 months later, I had twin boys.

Coming To Terms With Cerebral Palsy

One night, in the first few weeks, one of the twins stopped breathing and would have been a “cot death”, but fortunately I was able to resuscitate him.

The other developed Kernicterus and subsequently, severe cerebral palsy. It was then that I knew I had to look into complementary medicine.

Food As Medicine

Cranial osteopathy and chiropractic techniques have made an enormous difference to him, but he still suffered constipation and various other challenges. All of us had allergies (asthma and eczema) and I was completely exhausted.

Fresh fruit and vegetables are the most important components of our diet.

Then in 1993, quite by chance, I read about the importance of fruits and vegetables in the diet and came across Juice Plus. Our lives were transformed. My energy levels increased, all our allergies disappeared and our overall health improved dramatically.

Juice Plus Changes Our Lives

I started learning about nutrition and have been studying it and taking Juice Plus ever since. There are now numerous published scientific, peer reviewed studies on Juice Plus showing the

  • increase in antioxidants
  • the concomitant decrease in free radical damage
  • the 66% reduction in DNA damage
  • the improvements in the functioning of the immune system (including increased activity of the cancer killing natural killer cells)
  • the improved muscle to fat ratio
  • the reduction in plasma homocysteine (one of the causes of cardiovascular disease)
  • the reduction in the vasoconstriction which normally follows a fatty meal
  • the reduction in the markers of cell damage during exercise
  • the improvement in skin health and structure and many many more.

Most people and most medical professionals do not recognise the power of fruits and vegetables in the human diet.

Recently, a study was completed at a dental school in the UK showing marked improvements in periodontal (gum) health in people taking Juice Plus: it is in the pipeline for publication in a peer reviewed journal, which always takes ages!

My Introduction to the Hippocrates Health Institute

I also spent 3 weeks at the Hippocrates Health Institute with Max Tuck, a most amazing veterinary surgeon, following their Life Change Programme which was indeed life changing.

I have vastly increased the amount of raw greens in my diet and drink a green juice or smoothie almost every morning. My health and vitality just go on improving.

At about this time, my mother developed ovarian cancer after 12 years on hormone replacement therapy.

Learning About Cancer Treatment

We went to several surgeons who declared her cancer inoperable. I took her to The Bristol Cancer Centre (now Penny Brohn Cancer Care) and learned the importance of a good positive, loving attitude, filtering your water and eating simple, chemical free food.

What would your life be like if you learned that you are more powerful than you have ever been taught?

Dr Bruce Lipton

Importance of Filtered Water for Health

We have filtered our water ever since and now have a whole house water filter, so we not only have chemical free water to drink but also to wash in, an important aspect of clean water that is often neglected. If you cannot do this, then at the very least get a countertop water filter.

Does Disease Run In Your Genes?

My mother did not recover from her cancer and when she died in 1990, I decided that if I ever came across anything that could help prevent cancer in both people and animals, I would promote it.

My father suffered from cardiovascular disease, having several heart attacks and strokes over the years, so genetically, I appeared to be doomed!

My mother had ovarian cancer and my father had heart disease. What chance did I stand?

But it’s not our genes that dictate our health! The genes carry all sorts of information, some good and some bad. It is the environment that surrounds those genes that determines their expression or suppression!

Discovering The Science of Epigenetics

This is the study of epigenetics. Dr Bruce Lipton has been most publicly active in this fascinating and rapidly progressing field.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this fascinating science, you can find Dr Bruce Lipton’s books or audios on Amazon, such as

Epigenetics shows that the nutrients, hormones (messengers of emotion amongst other things), toxins and waste products which surround the cell determine the expression of the genes within.

This is a huge part of the answer to my enduring question of why some people and animals become ill and some don’t.

After a few months working and playing in Kenya (to recover from the university course), I started my first job.

It was in an incredibly busy mixed veterinary practice, seeing all species, from dogs and cats to sheep and cows, at all hours of the day and night. It was a fabulous job! No two days were the same. I loved it! After a few years, I found I was doing more and more of the small animal work and less of the farm work.

One day, a blind man came into the consulting room with his gorgeous Labrador guide dog. She had broken one of her upper canine teeth and was too distracted by it to work reliably, a dangerous situation for both of them.

Root Canal Treatments For Dogs

She was quite young and it occurred to me that there might be something we could do other than extract it (an awful job for both the dog and the vet!). I went across the road to the dentist opposite and he kindly came and had a look.

The dentist said he could perform a root canal operation on a Labrador.

‘I can do a root canal on that’ he said, so the next day, we anaesthetised the Labrador and he did the root canal treatment.

The dog was able to work effectively with her blind owner the next day! If we’d removed the tooth, she would have been in pain for some time afterwards because the root of a dog’s canine tooth is about twice as big as the crown, so you inevitably do some damage when removing it.

That Started My Career In Veterinary Dentistry

From that day on, I studied veterinary dentistry and ended up in Denver, Colorado, USA, studying with the Father of Veterinary Dentistry, Dr Peter Emily.

He offered to teach a course on Veterinary Dentistry in the UK if I organised it, so when I returned to the UK, I did just that. We ran many more courses in the UK, teaching vets how to do better dentistry on their patients.

The British Veterinary Dentistry Association Is Born

We then decided to write an illustrated book describing each technique in intricate detail. The Handbook of Small Animal Dentistry was a great success (now out of print, but you can see the book on Amazon anyway).

People came from all over the country with pet dental problems

Next, I set up the British Veterinary Dental Association and started my Veterinary Dental Referral Service, which I ran here in Wales until I retired from veterinary practice in 2016.

People came from all over the country with their pets’ dental problems. Fortunately, numerous vets have now specialised in Veterinary Dentistry, so there are several referral centres dotted about the country.

Cats are carnivores. They are designed get all the nutrients they need by eating whole herbivorous animals: meat, bones, guts, the whole lot!

PET Plus supplies the missing nutrients, bridging the gap between what they’re designed to eat and what we feed them.

In The Wild

Herbivores spend much of their time chewing vegetable matter into a pulp to improve its digestibility. So herbivore guts are full of very well chewed, partially digested vegetation and numerous healthy bacteria (probiotics).

By consuming the gut contents of these herbivores, cats obtain the vast range of nutrients and micronutrients present in vegetation which would otherwise be inaccessible to them.

Cats are not grazing animals and have neither the teeth nor the digestive system to cope with eating vegetable and fruit matter. That’s why nature has allowed the herbivores do the hard work of chewing, fermenting and digesting grass all day.

A cat will lay in wait, leap out from a bush and catch a tiny herbivore. Evolution has ensured this process if very efficient.

PET Plus And Raw Food

Most cats are fed with commercial processed food. These animals are definitely missing out and suffering from a lack of good nutrition.

However, when we do the best for our cats and feed them raw food, we rarely feed them a whole animal.

This means they too are missing out on nutrients. Raw food fed cats can still be missing out on the gut contents and all those fabulous nutrients and probiotics that come from the predigested vegetable and fruit matter in the stomach of a whole herbivore.

Mixing PET Plus in with their raw meat and bone makes up for this missing nutrition by providing the nutrients, micronutrients and probiotics of this ‘grass soup’ in a more civilised form.

PET Plus And Processed foods

Processed foods are more difficult for cats to digest as most of the nutrients and micronutrients are damaged or lost during processing.

The enzymes in PET Plus help with this digestive process, making the nutrients in the food more accessible to your cat.

Being highly evolved carnivores, cats rely heavily on protein and fat for their metabolism and good health. Unfortunately, most commercial cat foods consist of a combination of cereals, fats and meat proteins, all of which have been damaged by heat processing.

The supplemental enzymes in PET Plus work with your cat’s own digestive enzymes to help ensure that your cat receives the maximum amount of nutrition available from the food eaten.

Cereals

In the wild, cats would only consume cereals in a partially digested state from the guts of their prey, combined with other vegetation and numerous enzymes.

They would not choose to eat cereals themselves and certainly not cooked cereals! The ProCerealase and Amylase enzymes in PET Plus address this need, helping cats to digest these unnatural foods.

Proteins And Fats

Heat processing makes many of the nutrients difficult to digest, especially proteins. The Protease enzymes in PET Plus help with the digestion of these damaged proteins, enabling cats to access these essential nutrients.

Likewise, the Lipase enzymes aid the digestion of the fats. PET Plus also supplies a well balanced, easily assimilated source of omega 3,6 and 9 from flax seed and safflower.

The feline gastrointestinal tract is extremely short. Therefore, ingested foods move quickly through it, making digestibility a highly desirable feature of cat food.

The enzyme formula in PET Plus for Cats provides high potency, multiple enzymes which help to replace the food enzyme activity lost in the cooking and processing of food.

The whole food-based ingredients in PET Plus supply a great range of natural phytonutrients, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals which work synergistically to protect your cat.

Dogs are basically carnivores, but they are also scavengers and can survive eating old carcasses, droppings, ripe fruit, some vegetation, bark, herbs, roots and even insects. Eating the whole fresh carcass, including the guts would be the very best! They thrive on this. But dogs are great survivors and can gain nutrients from a wide range of sources, as long as they are raw! We rarely give our pet dogs the opportunity to find a diet of such variety. Adding PET Plus to their food helps to provide all those nutrients they would otherwise get in the wild.

PET Plus And Raw Food

Feeding raw food is undoubtedly the best way to feed dogs, but we usually give them parts of the animal, missing out the guts. This is where PET Plus steps in by providing those missing micronutrients.

PET Plus And Processed foods

During the processing of dog foods, many of the nutrients and enzymes are irreversibly damaged, making them really hard for dogs to digest. By adding PET Plus, dogs are more able to access the nutrition in the food.

Being fairly adaptable carnivores, dogs can survive on dietary sources of energy derived from plants or animals, as long as the food that they ingest is digested and the nutrients are absorbed. Most commercial dog foods are made from a mixture of grains and animal proteins. Heat processing makes many of the nutrients difficult to digest, especially proteins. Working with your dog’s own digestive enzymes, PET Plus assists your dog in gaining the most nutrients from the food they eat.

Grains

Eating animals that eat grains is the only way dogs would naturally get any grains and those would be partly digested by the prey animal. Cooked grains would not even be available in the wild! To help dogs to deal with these, ProCerealase and Amylase enzymes have been included in PET Plus.

Proteins And Fats

Cooked proteins and fats are particularly badly damaged, so the Protease and Lipase enzymes in PET Plus are essential. As a source of good fats is really important, we have included flax seed and safflower which together supply the right balance of omega 3, 6 and 9.

The inclusion of the whole food blend provides additional natural vitamins and minerals, which are often missing from commercial pet foods, where synthetics are added to account for the loss which occurs with processing.

To Conclude

PET Plus is a valuable addition to both raw and processed food diets as it provides a whole host of nutrients and micronutrients which they might otherwise lack.

My Early Interest In Animals

My name is Susanna McIntyre and from an early age I was brought up with pets. My interest in animals started with two guinea pigs (which suddenly became eight, as they do) followed by a cat, then later, a horse.

I rescued as many injured wild animals as I could in my childhood neighbourhood. This would include animals like hedgehogs caught in fruit netting and tennis nets, or a bat that fell down a neighbour’s chimney, terrifying their young daughter in the sitting room, or birds that flew into people’s closed windows.

I was hoping that one day I would find the cure for rheumatoid arthritis

Dr Susanna McIntyre

What Causes Rheumatoid Arthritis?

I studied sciences all the way through school. At first I planned to do a Biology sandwich course with the year spent out in industry in a disease research lab. I’d hoped to find the cause of rheumatoid arthritis, which is a seriously debilitating disease. I knew about it as it had crippled my best friend’s mother.

Logically, I thought that if I found the cause, I could then work out a cure and better still, a means of preventing it in the first place. At a careers talk from one of these research labs, a vet gave the presentation and told me that if I really wanted to do this type of research, I needed to qualify as a veterinary surgeon.

Work Experience In A Veterinary Practice

I had thought that such a qualification was way out of my reach, but decided to spend some time with our local veterinary practice to see what life as a vet in practice was like. I absolutely loved every minute of it! From that moment on, I worked like mad to get the A level grades I needed to study Veterinary Science at University.

The University of Bristol

I was offered a place at Bristol University and spent the next 5 years studying hard. What a great course it was. I learned about anatomy and physiology in normal, healthy animals, then all the things that contribute to disease. This meant I learned largely parasitology, bacteriology and virology, then all the drugs (pharmacology) and surgical techniques that we use to treat these diseased states.

Why do some animals get ill? Why don’t we all become ill?

But all we are doing is getting rid of symptoms, usually without addressing the underlying cause. There was no mention of prevention, apart from vaccination and the elimination of parasites to prevent the diseases that their presence evokes.

The Link Between Illness And Nutrition

Having qualified, I still had questions to which I am only just discovering answers.

  • Why do some animals and people suffer from ill health in the first place?
  • Why are some more prone to parasitic infestations than others? We are all exposed to the same stuff broadly speaking, but we don’t all get ill. Why?

It was many years before I even scratched the surface on my quest. I started to understand what was going on when I experienced the power of nutrition, emotion, attitude, exercise, rest, sunlight and other natural factors. Then I came across the science of epigenetics.