The Raw Deal: The Wonders Of Raw Food (Wendy And Potato’s Story)

This is a follow-up to the earlier story about Wendy, my friend’s dog: https://myanimalcare.org/2019/12/24/the-wonders-of-raw-food-another-sharing/

Wendy took to raw food (Coco & Joe’s barf) instantly and on that very same day, her 3-times daily seizures stopped. My friend took a risk and after a few days, took the medication off.  Wendy continued eating 100% raw, and until today, it’s been one week of being seizure-free! Wendy has Cushing’s disease which causes an overproduction of cortisols and this leads to seizures.

However, Coco & Joe cautions that sometimes medication is still needed in certain cases. Their analogy is this: Just think of a disease is like a forest fire. If the fire is small then it is easy to put out and the land will regrow. Medication is like the fire extinguisher. BARF is more like to help the land heal.

Food is to heal the body. When the body heals, some diseases might disappear, some might not. It all depends on the severity of the disease. For example, Pole has hyperthyroidism and she requires lifelong medication to keep it under control. But she appears to be well and quite happy despite her condition. Pole is on Cubgrub and Coco & Joe’s.

Now, back to my friend’s dogs. She has a whole family who seem to have the genetic predisposition to Cushing’s disease. To date, she has already lost three dogs to Cushing’s. They had fast-spreading edema and/or seizures.

Now, Wendy’s seizures have disappeared…so far.

Wendy eating Coco & Joe’s for lunch today.

Once transitioned, there was no turning back for Wendy. She did not ask for her “previous food” anymore. No more seizures too!

Potato is also from the same family and a few days ago, he started showing symptoms of Cushing’s. A lump appeared at his neck. Now, Potato was not willing to eat raw food. At the very smell of it, he would run to a corner and cry. Yes, literally….CRY (with tears and whining). But after 4 days of “crying”, he suddenly decided he would eat raw food, after all!

So he did. My friend was overjoyed.

After 4 days of eating raw food, the lump at the neck disappeared!

Unbelievable!

Take a look:

My friend says when she detected the lump at the neck, her heart sank. She knew the signs only too well because she had lost 3 dogs from the same family to Cushing’s, one as quickly as a mere 2 weeks after lumps appeared and started appearing all over the body. Despite immediate medical intervention, the dog passed on in just 2 weeks.

Thankfully, Potato himself decided to eat raw food, and today, there is no more lump! It’s just skin hanging down from that spot. The lump is gone.

That’s just going on raw food for four days!

And Potato is also more cheerful now. Once he started on raw food, like Wendy, there was no turning back for him. He is totally converted now.

In just four days???

And Heidi took a month!!  Cats!!!

Potato and Wendy are both 10 years old.

My friend has seven dogs; so far, five are on raw food now (one on Primal only, four on Coco & Joe’s). Two more are unwilling to eat raw food, but she’s not giving up! It’s only been about 9 days.

Actually, when I first started giving my cats raw food two years ago, I had already shared the wonders of raw food with all my friends. But at that time, I must admit that I wasn’t committed to transitioning all our cats to 100% raw. I also did not understand that “mixing” was not good. I was ignorant.

So at that time, our cats had the “semua taruh” type of diet – raw, canned, homecooked and kibble.  Semua taruh, semua mahu. Only now do I know that that wasn’t healthy because it would just confuse and mess up the digestive system. I didn’t have the privilege of anyone bonking me on the head and telling me to stop doing that at the time.  Maybe the time just wasn’t right. I did not do enough research too.

Now, on hindsight, if I could turn back to the clock, I would have done the transitioning then. Why, if I could turn back the clock to 13 years ago when I first rescued Cow, Bunny and Pole, I would have started them on 100% raw straight away!

But it’s still not too late to do it now and I’m glad I have finally done it. And it only took a month to transition everyone to 100% raw. ONLY a month. But it took a lot of perseverance, patience, commitment and an informed decision and belief.

So now when I personally share the benefit of the barf diet (raw food) to friends, the first thing I do is to send them reliable websites: Please read and then, make an informed choice. As the caregiver and pet parent, if we ourselves are not convinced, if we are half-hearted or we are not properly informed, two things might happen: (1) We will give up easily or (2) Our pets can read our minds and our pets might not share our commitment, so they too couldn’t be bothered to transition. Our pets who are addicted to canned or kibble might also “bully” us (I mean, cats, of course. Dogs are just too kind) and simply refuse to eat raw….at first.

I was bullied by Heidi, Ginger and Indy too!

Heidi was a canned food junkie. She wanted nothing but her canned tuna. It took one month to convert Heidi to 100% raw and the process started with a total hunger strike (boycott) from her when the rest of the cats had raw food. She would walk out of the kitchen in a huff, preferring to starve than smell the raw food. But even she only took one month to convert. But it took a lot of perseverance and also a calm mental attitude on my part – “Oh, you don’t want? That’s okay. No worries, no biggie….” No stress. Just a quiet determination and not giving up.

Ginger was just being difficult and fussy, as usual – he actually likes raw.  He was the first to be willing to eat all kinds of protein – semua mahu! He now eats raw chicken, quail, duck, rabbit and turkey! But the one he likes least of all is chicken. He wants exotic meats – now, that’s tough on the pocket!

Indy was a kibble-king. He loved his kibble. His conversion problem was a case of not liking grinded food. He would happily eat chunks of raw chicken meat and wallop raw chicken liver and drink blood (“The Vampire”), but he did not like grinded food. Until today, he has to be coaxed to eat grinded food. He still prefers his chunks of meat. So I top his grinded food with big chunks of meat (which is good, so that he can chew) or I top it up with chunks of Primal. The reason I want him to eat some grinded food is for the grinded bone (for calcium). It took me more than 2 months before I could persuade Indy to try other proteins. Now, he eats rabbit, duck, turkey and chicken. Once he embarked on protein rotation, his chronic loose stool problem began to heal.

Source: https://myanimalcare.org/2019/12/28/the-raw-deal-the-wonders..

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