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It's been a long day, but you're almost home, where you'll be greeted by a bundle of unconditional love wrapped in fur with a wagging tail and a wet tongue filled with tons of licks designed to tell you you're the greatest thing that ever came into this precious being's life.

How blessed we are to be able to share our lives with animal companions that live just to love and protect us. These animals really are man's best friend—and they deserve man to be their best friend too!

Every time someone says, "It's just a dog..." or, "It's only an animal..." the world gets a little colder. Our domestic companions rely on us completely for their every need. They give us every ounce of love they can possibly produce. And, like us, they need warmth, companionship, water, food, exercise, comfort, and especially love. Yet, in our busy lives, how many of us can honestly say we don't sometimes neglect our four-legged companions? Who among us has not taken our beloved pet for granted as we rushed through our day?

We don’t mean to do it, but it happens. We barely make it through the front door after an exhausting day at work. We’re too tired to make a hearty, healthy meal for ourselves and our animal companion(s), so we slip a frozen dinner into the microwave and open a can of pet food—or maybe just a bag of dry food—and plop it into a bowl. Nobody gets a nutritious meal that night!

So what? So play out this scene too many times, and you and your companion will have matching troubles: no energy, dull-looking skin or fur, stiff and achy joints. Just like humans, animals “are what they eat." Commercial pet foods are just full of processed by-products, the animal version of human junk food—and we all know what eating a lot of junk food does to us: it compromises our immune systems and makes us prime candidates for cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, and a host of other chronic, disabling, or life-threatening illnesses. Is it a surprise that it does the same thing to our animal friends?

Treat Them Right, Feed them Right

Warm-blooded creatures—human and animal—need live foods for healthy survival. Unfortunately, humans are not as intuitive as animals. When a dog doesn't feel well, it will usually go outside in search of grass.

A dog will eat enough grass to help his body reject whatever is plaguing it with pain or discomfort. He doesn't know that the chlorophyll in grass is healing in many ways; he doesn't have any idea about its numerous and even life-saving benefits. He only instinctively knows that eating grass will make him feel better—and he doesn’t have to give away his chew toy to someone else to tell him so.

Just like us, dogs and cats need actual fruits, vegetables, proteins, and a minimal amount of non-rancid whole grains along with the right fats. No commercial pet food equals the nutritional value of live-food substances. Since most of us don't have the time to prepare healthful foods with just the right amounts of vitamins and minerals for our beloved animal companions, we have to make sure they get the right supplemental nutrients with each meal—just like us.

A dog’s body was designed to eat raw meats and vital organs, which is what he would eat if he was in the wild. This kind of mostly raw diet is known as BARF, or Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods –– or Bones And Raw Food.

Prepackaged BARF products make it easy to feed your animal quality, farm-raised, pesticide-free, chemical-free, hormone-free, antibiotic-free foods. BASTIS Foundation recommends the new BARF formulas from one of our favorite holistic veterinarians, “Pet Whisperer” Dr. Steve Blake. Frustrated with commercial pet foods, Dr. Blake created two new prepackaged BARF formulas: beef and chicken. And since he doesn’t believe in feeding an animal something until he has tested it out on himself, he ate his own formulas for three weeks before testing them on his animal patients. Result: his skin has never looked better!

Petco will be carrying Dr. Blake’s formulas under the Natural Balance label. The ingredients are impressive, starting with USDA raw beef (beef formula) and USDA Chicken (chicken formula), hearts and raw bones. After that, both formulas include spinach, broccoli, celery, sweet potatoes, whole ground flaxseed, barley and alfalfa sprouts, whole apples and oranges, whole eggs, carrots, cold-pressed salmon oil, cranberries, sun-dried kelp, spirulina, dead seabed trace minerals, grapefruit seed extract and fortified with minerals for stability.

Sounds good enough to eat yourself, doesn’t it?!

BASTIS Foundation also recommends Country Pet Foods from New Zealand. All their meats come from human-grade, grass-fed animals. For safety sake, they blanch the food at 106 degrees for 5 minutes, which might cause the foods to lose a few enzymes but keeps the food more stable and kills all bacteria. They also add raw eggs –– there is no salmonella in New Zealand –– as well as a complete lineup of natural vitamins and minerals. The foods come in frozen packs, ready to use upon thawing.

A Success Story

A BASTIS Foundation client’s dog had suffered for years from different food allergies and was on the verge of death. He could no longer eat the commercial dog food recommended by their vet, was constantly shaking, and had virtually no fur left on his body from his scratching and biting; he was just skin and bones.

We persuaded his "parents" to give him a thorough 90-day cleansing to ease out some of the steroids he'd been living on for years, which had basically shut down his liver function. We put him on all fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fresh meats, yogurt with live cultures and extra acidophilus, and fresh carrot juice with an extra helping of the immune-building ingredients in Vitality Greens from Organic By Nature. We added Multi-Vitamin Herbal Supplement and Essential Fatty Acid Supplement from Merritt Naturals to his food. Today, he is eating and growing tufts of fur all over his body again. He doesn't shake like he used to, and he has much more energy. Not bad for an older dog, huh? Imagine how rapidly a younger animal would be affected.

Good Animal News

BASTIS Foundation recommends you visit the Organic By Nature website to find out about their wonderful green supplements for animals. Call Scott Ertz at (800) 362-8482 or email him at info@pureplanet.com for more information as to the exact supplements he would suggest for your particular animal companion.

We also recommend three Merritt Naturals items from their Animal Essentials line: (1) Essential Fatty Acid Supplement; (2) Multi-Vitamin Herbal Supplement; and (3) Green Alternative, an antioxidant formula.

Where Can I Get More Information?

The BARF Diet by Dr. Ian Billinghurst

The Pet Whisperer by Dr. Stephen Blake

Organic By Nature: call Amy Sandoval at (800) 362-8482 or email info@pureplanet.com

Merritt Naturals (888) 463-7748
(Retailers contact Joan Holden, (888) 551-0416)

Country Pet Foods (800) 454-PETS (7387) – ask for Norris Brown

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BASTIS Foundation, a non-profit educational health foundation, has no affiliation with any particular medical, political, religious, or special-interest philosophy or organization. We rely on the generosity of the people we help.

Donations are gratefully accepted and tax deductible

The recommendations provided by this site are suggestions only, and not intended as replacement for medical care from a
licensed physician or healthcare provider. For additional complementary or alternative medicine (CAM) advice, please seek out a local naturopathic physician, Chinese medical doctor, or qualified herbalist.

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