Healthy Wild…. For Future Generations

In reading over some articles on my Carolina Dog page ( http://www.mycarolinadog.com) I realized that being Healthy Wild is not a goal just for Carolina Dogs, but it should be for ALL dogs, all breeds. 

This is an excerpt from an article I read which got me to thinking. (link to the article is at the end of the excerpt, all credit for this excerpt goes to it’s author Barbara E. Royal, DVM) My thoughts follow:)-

 

“Wild health. Health that is based on defining and fulfilling an animal’s evolutionary needs according to its species.

Animals in their natural surroundings are healthy — chronically healthy. While walking in a forest teeming with robust species, I never ask myself, where are all the aging ravens with their pill boxes? Or the diabetic robins tucking syringes in their nests? Where are the arthritic squirrels, the obese rabbits, and the deer taking puffs from their inhalers?
Yes, survival of the fittest and predation may take the weak and the diseased. But this doesn’t fully account for the vigor of the remaining animals. Nature effortlessly propagates health, but in our civilized world, maintaining health takes effort.” see full article here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-e-royal-dvm/integrative-pet-health_b_845538.html 

I didn’t use to believe this stuff about raw feeding, vaccines, etc I thought that was for the hippies & ‘tree huggers’ but as I researched more & more, I began to look at pets all around me with a new perspective & to see what is really going on!
As the generations go on, & our pets are fed non-species-appropriate diets & inundated with chemicals for their whole lives, they get further & further from healthy wild, more & worse misdiagnosed ailments start showing up….
Dogs with diabetes, allergies, bad hips, Cats with liver disease. How did cats & dogs ever survive for thousands of years without pharmacuticals & vaccines, ‘complete nutrition’ dog food & people to ‘control’ the population?

I am not meaning that one should toss the dog in the yard & throw it some hamburger meat every day, never take it to a vet, or teach it any obedience, or give it any love. Nor am I saying all dogs should run wild, unneutered, and uncared for. SINCE WE HAVE MADE “PETS” OF THEM, WE DO BEAR THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR CARE. Given the increase in pet diseases & ailments, all pet owners should be concerned with why this is happening and what we can do to reverse this trend…..

 

One of the wonderful things about the CD/AD is, as yet they have no inherited physical problems, such as bad hips or cancers or deafness, etc… healthy wild. And one of the concerns should be keeping them that way. Even my pedigreed Carolina Dogs, Cooter and Daisy are only about 4-8 generations removed from their wild ancestors. This is relatively “new” in the dog-breed world. Some AKC breeds, being hundreds or more years (and untold generations) removed from a “wild” dog.

In the wild, dogs would have been subject to ‘survival of the fittest’ and so if one has eaten, for years, say from one trash pile that had whatever dog-poisonous/unhealthy food & it got sick, it would probably die. But Now as a domesticated tame dog, if they get sick, their family (or if caught as a feral, the animal control/shelter that picks them up) treats their symptoms & they may seem to get better, but this may eventually manifest as a physical condition, such as allergies or diabetes or even temperament issues. No one realizes that it is actually from the way that dog has eaten for years.
Look at Labradors, they should be healthy dogs but have all kinds of problems, hips, eyes, allergies… if the 1st few generations of Labs that were bred for work had those problems the breed would never have been carried on this long, but the issues had to come from somewhere… Where?
This is a similar situation to a person who might,for years, eat most of their meals at McDonalds & seem healthy, even fit, then they get high blood pressure. If they quit eating McDonalds & eat healthy, they may lower their BP, but they may continue eating some McDonalds & take BP medicine & say ‘I dont know why my BP is so high, it is probably inherited’ If they had eaten Mcdonalds only occasionally or never, they probably would never have had a problem!
I realize this is not the only reason for all medical problems in dogs, but like fast food, after decades, people are realizing the food is unhealthy for the most part! I just want to say, have an open mind about it.

There are Natural Rearing breeders of many breeds, but compared to the number of conventional rearing breeders, NR breeders are few and far between.  If more breeders do not focus on breeding Naturally Healthy lines of their given breed, those breeds will become so damaged by vaccines, toxins and crap food that a truly healthy specimen of that breed will become extinct. we are seeing this problem already, but most people have their heads in the sand and would like to blame so called “genetic” problems solely on backyard breeders, or too much inbreeding, or line-breeding.  While that may be case in some lines, the foundation for genetic predisposition has not just randomly and magically appeared, it was caused by generations of vaccine damage, inappropriate food and constant exposure to a myriad of toxins. For more in-depth information on this issue please see these articles by Dr Patricia Jordan.   http://www.thedogplace.org/VACCINES/ImmuneSystem-Impact_Jordan-DVM-107.asp and  http://uncensored.co.nz/2009/02/19/the-science-of-vaccine-damage/ 

Dr Jordan and a few others are doing some wonderful work exposing this issue. This is another area where we need to change the paradigm of our thinking and living and raising our pets so they can be healthy, Nature’s Way. 

I breed Naturally Reared UKC Carolina Dogs, I consult/coach natural rearing to carnivore pet owners, with a focus on Naturopathy and the Raw Diet. I live on a mini farm with my husband, dogs and goats and various fowl and in my spare time, I make all natural lotions and enjoy Barn Hunt trials with my dogs.