Skye's eye view - Weight Control...

HI folks, Skye here. Hope you all enjoyed a Good Christmas. Mine was lovely, but a couple weeks prior I suffered a stroke, thankfully not too serious but enough to turn my world topsy turvy! My eyes were moving in different directions, nystagmas, my balance was affected which made walking very difficult and to top it all I had a right head tilt so all in all a very topsy turvy world!  

Luckily for me my Mum took great care of me and medication helped with the nausea. After about a week I began to feel brighter and thankfully by the Festive period I was able to go for my favourite beach walks. Life is now back to normal thankfully.

Weight Control.

Since changing to NbN Summer and I have had a new lease of life, we have lost about 0.75kg of unwanted weight which makes movement easier for Summer with her arthritic toe, and she has been able to leave off her anti-inflammatory medication. I am able to run much faster and don’t get puffed out so easily!

Being overweight brings a multiple of problems, stress on joints and internal organs. Increased chances of diabetes and urinary problems not to mention intolerance to exercise and poor quality of life. Sadly a lot of owners now perceive normal weight to be underweight, overweight to be normal and obesity to be overweight!

A NbN diet contains no added extras unlike a lot of commercial diets. Fed sensibly and with a good exercise regime all canine and feline lives can be more enjoyable and lives extended.

The New Year is a good time to start afresh, feed for the weight you want, not the weight you have… …………!  Ribs and spine should be easily felt and there should be no rolls of excess at the base of the tail or around the neck area.

Some breeds are predisposed to being overweight but really there should be no excuse.

Lets try to reduce those kilos and have a Happy Healthy New Year .

Rearing a litter on Raw Feeding

A letter from a happy customer:
I have just reared my first litter of puppies on a RMB diet. I breed Whippets in a very small way & only have a litter every 2 years or so. 
Mother Wispa is just 2 years old and this is her 1st litter. She had 5 pups - 4 bitches & 1 dog in 1 hour 20 minutes - no problems.
Wispa fed the litter for 8 weeks, usually my whippets give up at 3/4 weeks when I start feeding the pups. She was just so happy popping in to feed them - she always demanded her meal 1st! She produced so much milk and the pups did not pull her around. At 9 weeks she is still in show condition!
I started feed the pups Nurturing by Nature raw chicken mince at about 3 1/2 weeks only giving a couple of feeds in the first week. Easy puppy rearing - less mess to clear up. 
I just fed Nurturing by Nature minced chicken and bone and Nettie's chicken mix trays plus some liver or Ox heart from the supermarket, then chicken carcass when I though the pups were big enough. I remember one morning I gave half a carcass to Wispa & she was determined to take it to her pups - Mother knows best!!
Now most of the pups have gone to their new homes - I am keeping one. I am happy I gave them the best start I could. I sent them off with packs of Nurturing by Nature minced meats - it is up to the new owners now. 

I know what I shall be feeding mine for her life!

Skye's eye View - Chocolate & Christmas

  SKYE’S EYE VIEW

Hullo everyone, let me introduce myself, I am Skye a 12 year old Westie. My Mum, Summer and I all work together. We are so lucky to go to work with our lovely ‘Mum’.  We live an active life, and live in Dorset, a beautiful part of the country & our walks are just amazing.  I have to admit that I am not as speedy as I used to be and Summer, who lost an eye early this year definitely isn’t as fast as she used to be. Squirrels are safer but we still give them a run for their nuts!

With the approach of Christmas shopping and the Festive season I thought it a good idea to remind all you owners how bad Chocolate is for us canines.

Chocolate poisoning can be fatal and the onset of clinical signs usually occur within 24 hours, effects may last as long as 72 hours.

Theobromine is the toxic agent in chocolate and cocoa powder. The therobromine concentration varies with different types of chocolate.

White chocolate is the least concentrated

Drinking chocolate

Milk chocolate

Plain chocolate

Cocoa powder is the most concentrated

Some of the visible signs are vomiting, excessive drinking, restlessness, salivation, excitability and hyperactivity.In severe cases diarrhoea, urinary incontinence and convulsions as well as muscle rigidity and circulatory failure may occur.

Wow not to be treated lightly! Of course foods such as chocolate muffins, biscuits, cakes and Easter eggs are all to be kept out of our reach!!

If any of us manage to help ourselves to Chocolate please seek Veterinary advice, but the best way to prevent any temptation is to keep all cupboards tightly shut.

Other festives foods to keep out of our reach is;

Christmas cake, mince pies, Dundee cake, all containing huge quantities of dried fruit, NOT GOOD FOR US either.

So luckily for your humans you get to keep all the lovely chocolate and not share it with your four legged friends, for our sake!!

Sniffs & Kisses, Skye xxx

The Beginning, Fred's story

The Beginning

At the age of seven, Fred, my big red boxer, developed a cancerous skin tumour (Mast Cell) which was surgically removed. The following year a needle aspiration on another lump confirmed that he had another Mast Cell Tumour which had infiltrated a large fatty lump on the inside of his hind leg. The surgery required to remove this one proved much more difficult. We were very lucky to have two excellent veterinary surgeons who worked together and successfully removed the tumour but they were unfortunately not able to leave a safe margin on one side. He faced a long recovery .The wound could not be stitched closed due to the vast area of skin that had been lost. It would have to granulate over.

Prior to the second tumour I had become increasingly aware of the bad effects some refined carbohydrates and sugars could have in a dogs' diet, possibly causing cancers and supporting their growth. A couple of leading dog food manufacturers had produced cancer patient support diets which were low carbohydrate and high protein. For the period of his recovery I put Fred on one of them.

Nearly three months later and Fred had completed his difficult convalescence but he had become an old man. My tigger had lost his bounce. He needed help getting into the car. He didn't run - he plodded. He didn't want to play, thank you.

I was unable to find a viable alternative so kept Fred on the same diet. I had become terrified of the possible consequences of carbohydrates.

My other dogs showed no signs of Fred's problem so they were still having a good quality kibble. I did not know what else to do.

I worked as a receptionist and assistant at a veterinary practice during this time. (for a total of nine years)

The following year we had another locum vet join us but he proved to be a bit out of the ordinary.

He was into complementary "stuff"!

One of the things that he recommended to a number of his patients, almost ( it seemed) regardless of their problem was a raw food diet.

In my ignorance I found this faintly amusing, ( I had never heard of this before) but as time went on and his patients made good recoveries, I became more interested and eventually asked him to explain his 'raw diet' to me.

Basically



1/3rd meat



1/3rd vegetable



1/3rd oat


But most important of all as far as I was concerned - carbohydrates were not essential, I could leave the oats out if I wanted too.

One month later, I introduced raw food to my dogs and Nurturing by Nature was born!

Why?

Raw feeding is not a new fad diet! It is an attempt to return to the type of food a dog would naturally eat. Obviously a dog can not be allowed to kill its own prey as his wild cousins do, so we have to give him the constituents to make up the varied meals that hunting and scavenging would provide.

During Great Grandma’s time “dog food” came into being, It was a processed mixture made up largely from the waste products of the bakery trade. Thankfully commercial foods have improved greatly since then but they are still very different from the raw food that dogs evolved to eat. Evolutionary change occurred over thousands of years. Great Grandma lived only a hundred years ago. Yet, commercial dog food has become the norm and is what most dogs are fed on today.