In this episode, Marisa and Sarah are speaking with Dr. Sasan Haghighat from the Holistic Veterinary Clinic in Newmarket, Ontario to hear his success stories in transforming the health of dogs through the switch to whole foods nutrition!

Puppy Gang Fresh Foods: www.puppygangfreshfoods.com
The Holistic Vet Clinic: holistic-vet.ca/

You can see Bentley's before/after photos as well as read other dog's health transformation stories here: holistic-vet.blogspot.com/

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Yeah, thanks for having me again, on your show.

As you mentioned, we see here over and over tremendous benefits of switching dogs from processed food to whole foods either raw or cooked.

I have many examples to tell you but there's a couple of them that really transformed greatly and they can really be the poster child of of how food can be so beneficial in correcting many problems in dogs.

I have one example that they want to discuss for you today is a dear patient of mine, Bentley.

Bentley is a Vizsla that came to my practice and Bentley was diagnosed with lupus. Lupus is one of a group of autoimmune disease that the immune system starts becoming very overactive in an attacking the different parts of the body. It was attacking part of Bentley's nose, and basically destroying it.

And his guardian did many many attempts. I mean, he was seeing one of the best dermatologist in the country to see return they can control the disease but it wasn't helping.

It was a little bit helpful, but it was just managing it. So  Bentley was suffering from this problem for about a year before they came and saw us we did quite a few things for Bentley but one of the main things that I did was switching Bentley's diet, we put Bentley on originally on a very offending diet that didn't have any meat in it.

So it was mainly green and legumes for a couple of months. And we made sure that we are providing the body with the micronutrients that the body needs and a spirulina product and we put Bentley on a couple of herbs, a couple of herbs and we did an immunotherapy to basically down regulate the immune system.

But the transformation was remarkable. He transformed in three months with the help of food and a couple of other interventions that we did here.

When we turned to totally normal dog and whole lows that part of the nose with the turn of the nose was destroyed by by the immune system. It all grew back.

And well. I have another patient if she was a golden retriever named Candy  and she was older she was about 13 or 14 years old but when she came to a practice.

Candy couldn't hardly walk I had to go with one of my staff we went to the driveway at brought badly we had to carry very badly inside because she was so arthritic so overweight, and so Candy was quite arthritic and overweight, slightly overweight.

Anyway, we brought her inside and with acupuncture to can see we can get some relief at the time she was on pain medication actually too.

And then we changed the diet and had her on a diet of mainly vegetable and some meat and some micronutrients. And again in  nine weeks she transformed. She was walking, walked on her own the clinic and she had few more years, I believe three more good years before she passed at the ripe age of 13, I believe 12 or 13.

Yeah. So it's happening all the time we see that they almost age backward when you when you change the diet.

And so were Bentley and Candy eating healthy foods prior or were they eating kibble?

They were eating kibble.

Okay, yeah, for September, any changing their diet and some of the other interventions that you put in place, it sounds like it really quite quickly made a fundamental impact to them. And I heard you say, for Bentley, in particular, that you almost did a reset in his diet and kind of let his body cleanse. Can you tell us more about that?

Absolutely. The the research is that I believe that, you know, dogs were feeding too much meat to the dogs and dogs do not need so much meat. I mean, dogs are omnivore and too much meat, especially the meters that is in the kibble that is highly processed, most of the time, fifth grade meat that are even more inflammatory.

And they cause lots of inflammation in the body. In most of my autoimmune cases, I put them on a very cleansing diet at the beginning.

So ideally, a diet that doesn't have meat, as long as the dog is in a condition that can take dogs that are very underweight, or some small dogs, you have to be a little bit careful with doing that. But dogs if they're right candidate for that they can go on totally vegetarian diet for at least couple of months to to clean the system and bring the inflammation down.

And also I find it very anti inflammatory.

Do you generally find pet owners want to feed their dogs healthy whole foods?

Do you generally recommend kind of a ratio of 5050 protein to fruits and vegetables?

Yes, you know what my ballpark recommendation is like that is 5050. 

And then you see how the dog is doing, they are the best one that they can tell you how they are. If they are thriving, that's great. You keep going. If you see the you're losing weight, you give them a little bit more if they are gaining weight, you give them a little bit less, and then rotate rotate through the ingredient.

Okay with us, you know, diet, it's not an exact science. We kind of constantly monitor things like age and gender as well as activity level can all influence kind of what you're feeding and how much and maturity and the time of the year, how much sunshine you have.

And yet they are all influencing how your body functions.

Yeah. And that's why it's so important to rotate the diet and don't give the same thing. Let's say even if you do feed whole food, I mean, when in colder seasons, I always recommend to switch either all or some of the feedings to cooked food.

Okay, give them some warm in summer months, you can give them more.
Thank you. It's really amazing to hear how what how much of an impact diet has on animals health, I guess it's similar to us. Right?

You know, we really are what we eat on a cellular level. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I like a lot of you probably know him Michael Pollan, he is a journalist and he has done he has written a couple of books. The most famous one is the the Omnivore's Dilemma.

He has been the best seller list for his books. And one of his famous recommendation. I mean, he was saying that, if he wants to really break down his recommendation to how to eat, it says,

He says, eat food, mostly plant and not too much sometimes at something like that. So. So that's what I recommend normally.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I think that was really interesting for our listeners. To see the success stories and the impact that good food can really make to their dogs. So thank you so much for sharing that information.