Spreading The Word

The word had to be spread! And who better to spread it - I thought - than my fellow vets. I penned an article in a newsletter circulated by the Post-Graduate Foundation in Veterinary Science of the University of Sydney. I explained to my colleagues my experiences with this evolutionary - revolutionary - diet. I outlined its enormous and far reaching implications for our patients' health. This article reached every vet in Australia.

During the next year (1986/87), my thoughts were greeted with almost deafening silence. I received phone calls and letters from about ten vets - all of whom wholeheartedly agreed. However, it was obvious that I was not about to set the world on fire by talking to vets. Being a slow learner, I tried once more. The next attempt was a paper circulated at a Post-Graduate conference dealing with small animal and equine nutrition in 1988. This too passed without comment by the profession. I was totally ignored.

Was I ignored because my ideas would reduce patient numbers and therefore income? Not at all. I was ignored because my ideas did not fit into the current mode of thinking. The current dogma was - and still is - that small animal nutrition is something left to the experts employed by pet food companies. That the "so called" super premium products are the pinnacle of pet nutrition. And if the manufacturers of super premium pet foods and prescription diets don't know the answers, then it would be impossible for any one else to know. On that basis, my thoughts on the matter did not deserve a moment of their time.

However, from my point of view the message was too important to let die. Since the vets could not be convinced, let alone tell pet owners, I would have to educate the pet owners directly. This required a book. The aim of the book was simple. It was to free pet owners from the tyranny of only being able or allowed or trained to feed their pets commercial pet food. I wanted them to know that there was a healthy, simple, cheap and viable alternative. I was also aware that most books on nutrition are deadly boring, difficult to understand and highly impractical. I was determined that mine would be easy to understand, highly practical and hopefully entertaining.

There was so much to tell! And not one of the books I had read was saying what I was experiencing, particularly with regard to the importance of bones. I could not find one book which promoted the feeding of raw meaty bones. All the books on so-called natural feeding relied heavily on grains. Only the book by Levy mentioned bones and it specifically warned against feeding bones.