I was reminded early this week how important it is to review and educate our customers and clients on the basics of common sense healthy choices for our pets. You may recall our last conversation in which we took veterinarians and their staffs to task over repeating the mantra drummed forth by the major petfood companies following the never-ending parade of recalls.
Earlier this week, a good client’s pet suffered a health event, a bout of diarrhea. Her regular holistic vet was not in the office so she was seen by an associate who practices conventional medicine. After doing a battery of tests including X-rays, the presumed condition was gas bubbles in the stomach. The cause of this stated to be the fresh food diet that her regular holistic vet recommends. The associate “prescribed” an unnatural, over priced commercial processed food that only they sell. At the supermarket, this is called the house brand.
The point here is that the associate vet contradicted his colleague, causing the client great confusion over the welfare of her pet. While vet has the right to express their opinion, as we all do, they have an obligation to their clients to base their recommendations on factual, scientific information. The facts here were thrown out the window for the sole purpose of selling the client a bag of dog food.
The result of this episode is that our client, like so many others, is confused by the conflicting claims made by the petfood companies, veterinarians, nutritionists, trainers, and other pet care givers. This reminds me of a similar situation from fifty or so years ago, when tobacco companies made similar claim, doctors were actually agreeing with these claims and a lot of innocent consumers were misled and harmed.
I’m asking all of you who own and care for pets to consider what is published before and that is:
After over a year of non-stop recalls, market withdrawals, discontinued products, false advertising claims and corrections by the major pet food companies, you would think that YOUR veterinarian would start looking at the healthy, biologically natural foods and diets that should be given to your pets. Instead, as a business, they put profit first. No matter how much they seem to care, how “nice and compassionate” they seem to be with your pet, if they recommend or insist that you feed these products that are subject to recall after recall, killing thousands of trusting, loving, dependent pets, you really have to question the truth, honesty, and professionalism of these vets.
There is a reason why so many pets don’t eat their kibble. They instinctively know it’s un-natural and unhealthy. While some may argue that our pets have evolved to eat dry food, evolution does not occur in fifty or so years. If so, we would have evolved to the benefits of tobacco.
