Let's Talk Real & Natural
--Written by: Shari A. Chappell
  Have you ever tried to float something picked up from the doggie dumpsite (or the kitty litter box) in a pail of water? This question may sound ridiculous, but it's the best way to find out if your pet is getting real digestible food, that's actually good for him/her!
  Dr. Richard Patton, a well-known animal nutritionist and consultant, talks about his wondrous find, the "Fecal Densitometer", with both humor and pride. He states the best way to check the pet food's digestibility is by this cost-free water bucket test. If the discharged fecal matter floats like a boat, your current pet food products are more likely to be made of ingredients that are easy to digest. If it sinks, you can bet it stinks-both in its awful smell and type of ingredients--animal health is not the pet food manufacturer's greatest concern, here.
  Have you ever seen a dog or cat, wild or domesticated, run deep into a cornfield to retrieve a cob of corn or two? No, I am sure you haven't. What they are after is surely not corn-it's the real meat that darted in front of them, and they are going to risk exhausting every ounce of energy they have just to chase it down and sink their teeth into it. Impulsive instincts kick into high gear, regardless of how long the dog or cat has been domesticated, but it's poor health may prevent it from catching the prey; mouth-watering real meat and by-products that would have naturally maintained its strength and vitality if it had been a daily diet.
  Why all this talk about corn and poor animal health, and what does it have to do with my pet's food? To answer this question, let's take another look at what we find at the doggie dumpsite and/or litter box. If it helps, pretend you are a research scientist specializing in animal health and wellness. What goes in must come out, right? Many commercial pet foods use corn (and/or other grains as the primary ingredient--low cost fillers to keep pet food prices down). Worse yet, it would be impossible to hold the pellets together without some sort of chemical adhesive because corn and grain just do not naturally stick together.
  In the above scientific research project, you may have found cracked corn, and a goodly amount of it. What if the stool in your first experiment sunk, but you have not found any cracked corn? That's because a multiple number of pet food manufacturers simply adjusted the grinders on the corn and grain machines and ground those grains even finer, so that the primary substance was less identifiable! However, corn and grain are typically not digestible to a dog or cat! That is a scientific fact and, if it is not digestible, your pet is not gaining any nutritional value from it either-filler with no health related function, stuck together with adhesives, and sprayed with animal fat to fool the nose of your pet. Yuck!
  A proper raw meat based diet is highly digestible, with all those valuable nutrients readily absorbed into the body and blood stream; excess fat is replaced by strong and healthy muscle, and a wide array of medical problems disappear. Plus, a well-balanced raw meat based pet food will produce a much smaller amount of stool with very little odor, and be much lighter in weight.
  Let's look at this from a different perspective--a short history lesson… Dogs are direct descendants of the wolf, a carnivore (lupus Canis), thriving in the wild on real meat for eons-and, not as omnivores (eating both meat and vegetation). Then came man, who captured, tamed and used them for benefit and companionship. Breeding upon breeding has provided us with a wide array of domesticated versions, however we have not bred them with plant eaters, have we?
  In the wild, their natural habitat, they thrive on meat (muscle tissue) and on meat by-products (organ meats, blood and bones). Both, large and small prey are wholly consumed, dining on nature's perfectly balanced diet for carnivores. When the pack brings down a large prey, the "Alpha" male and "Beta" female dine first and, almost always begin their feast with the organ meats. When the Alpha and Beta are finished, the rest of the pack ("Omegas") move in to finish the leftovers. (The muscle meat, without the by-products, is just fine for us humans because we ARE omnivores, gaining our nutrients from a wide variety of consumables that we can easily digest.) Sadly, the Omegas will never be as strong and healthy as the Alpha and Beta leaders because they do not get the same powerful nutrients; however, our domesticated carnivores (dogs, cats and confined exotic animals) can, if we feed them the food nature intended all along.
  The truth is, raw meat pet food diets are more complete in vitamin, mineral, fat, carbohydrate and protein content-balancing the all-important calcium/phosphorous ratio carnivores require. Plus manufacturers of such products will be able to control abnormal bacteria counts, unlike the in-home chopping and mixing process conducted by experimental do-it-yourselfers.
  Mr. Gerry Nash is one of the first to successfully research and introduce this wonderful phenomenon of real raw meat diets to animal care industries and pet owners, founding Animal Food Services (AFS) over 30 years ago. In his crusade against animal suffering, Mr. Nash has dedicated more then three decades to educating and informing others about the magic of real raw meat.
  Our beloved pets, our companions (often thought as "family"), can be free of needless suffering and so many of those medical problems caused by malnutrition. Knowledge is the key. If we really want to care for our pets as if they truly are part of our families, wouldn't we want them to benefit from our knowledge?

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