These poor kitties had no source of Calcium to offset the high amount of Phosphorus they were consuming in their all meat diets. The result? The bones of these cats were leached of Calcium to make up for the deficiency in the diet. These cats could not stand, could not walk and their bones felt like rubber. It was like a horrific version of Gumby. I cried as I had to put all these beautiful cats to sleep. Their bones were too far damaged to recover. What a waste of incredible beauty and life. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Did this experience make me wary of feeding raw pet food diets? Yes absolutely! I shunned away from raw fed diets for many years as a Conventional Veterinarian. However, after some time, I began to see the benefit of feeding raw. And how well it worked to heal the health of dogs and cats. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n In my opinion, raw fed diets are the healthiest option<\/a> for our pets but (and this is a BIG but) they MUST be balanced<\/strong>. \u00a0This means meat, bones, organ meat (heart\/liver\/spleen) AND veggies\/fruits. \u00a0While the meat and bones provide minerals for your pet, veggies\/fruits are essential to provide vitamins and trace minerals which are not available otherwise.\u00a0 Dogs are carnivores with “omnivorous” tendencies, but not true carnivores like cats. They\u00a0do require vegetables\/fruits as source of nutrients in their diet<\/strong>. \u00a0Because of the short digestive tract of both dogs and cats, \u00a0these vegetables must be pre-digested or very easy to digest.<\/strong> (Think of the wolf eating the stomach of its prey, full of pre-digested grasses, leaves, berries etc). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Simple ways to do this is to blenderize raw veggies\/fruits or to steam and mash them, before adding them to your dog or cat\u2019s raw diet. For dogs, this veggie\/fruit portion should not exceed 25% of the diet. More than this can cause bladder crystals\/stones by making the body too alkaline (dogs are meant to be acidic). <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cats are true carnivores but if you watch a cat eat a mouse or bird, you will again see that it eats the whole prey, including the stomach of the mouse\/bird. Veggies\/fruits can be limited to 10% of the diet for cats, along with meat, bones and organ meats. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n Cats are not able to produce their own Taurine, an essential nutrient, so Taurine must be added to their diet in the way of heart muscle. Lack of Taurine in a cats diet will lead to blindness. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n For dogs and cats, those veggies with high glycemic index like carrots, beets and potatoes, should not be fed in high amounts. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Click on the following link if you want to learn about transitioning to raw pet food in Vancouver<\/a> or just want to shop for raw dog food<\/a> or raw cat food<\/a> at Moonlight Natural Pet Store<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a lot of confusion about raw pet food diets. Here’s a holistic vet’s perspective on raw pet food diets and how to go about doing it right. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[642,641],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dog-cat-health","tag-vet-guide-on-raw-food","tag-vet-recommendation-on-raw-pet-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What do I think of raw pet food diets?<\/h4>\n\n\n
![\"Raw](\"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Dog-eating-raw-300x180.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWhat about cats?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"Tips](\"https:\/\/www.moonlightpetstore.com\/pet-health-pet-nutrition\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Dr-Rehanni-cat-tips-for-feeding-raw-300x220.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n