The Search for 'Optimal Holistic Nutrition'.....

In my search for optimal holistic nutrition for Walter, I was referred to a book by Dr. Pitcarin (DVM) called "The Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats" by another veterinary technician studying alternative medicine. She did warn me that it wasn't the most 'scientific text' that she had read for animal health professionals, but she had said that it was well priced and was full of great information.

Now, I don't want to make derogatory comments towards another animal health professional, but I skimmed the book last night and proceeded to return it to the bookstore today. I am truly interested in learning about complementary and alternative medicine, specifically how it can be used in part with western medicine, but after reading, for example, that animals shouldn't be fed commercial diets because of 'by-products' (did you know that lamb is considered a by-product, which is widely used in raw diets) and that when you change an animals diet to a 'natural' one (raw) you shouldn't gradually transition them to avoid potential GI upset, but rather fast them for 5-7 days (liquids only) so that you can build an appetite.

I have seen cats knocking on death's door who haven't eaten in 2 days, let alone 5-7. He did mention that conventional veterinarians would be opposed to this due to a cats sensitivity to getting hepatic lipidosis (fatty liver disease leading to liver damage), but he says that if your cat is young and healthy it shouldn't be a problem and it's only overweight cats or cats who have an underlying problem who would get this adverse effect. So my question is, how would the average owner know if their cat was even the slightest bit overweight, or if there is an underlying health problem (that hasn't been diagnosed) unless a complete and thorough exam was done prior to changing diets....or should you just take this guy's word and change their diet anyway?

Needless to say, even with a very open mind, this book stressed me out to the point of wanting to burn it.

On a positive note....I purchased a sample bag of Acana Grassland's dry cat food and some more cans of grain free cat food, which Walter decided he was finally going to eat today. The dry food he went after like nobodies business, and the canned (Before Grain Quail.....smells horrible by the way) was half eaten. There's a start anyways.
21111111 (written by Walter as he walked across the keyboard).

Well, nighttime feeding is coming around, and someone is sitting at my feet asking for more grain free cat food (right....)

Holistic food 1 Veterinary diets 3

"Who wants to try holistic medicine?!"

Being raised in North America, when we're sick we go to our doctor who gives us a prescription for this or that, possibly combined with some old home remedy (that usually doesn't work).

So, as a well educated Animal Health Technologist our medical education is taught almost completely from a westernized point of view. Antibiotics for infection, anti-depressants for behavioural issues, diuretics for congestive heart failure, narcotics for pain management and so on and so forth. What about a simpler approach? Vitamins, supplements, diet change, herbs, acupuncture and so on....does this really help?

Honestly, I have no clue. I have been raised by western medicine and I treat animals with western medicine. Sure, I have seen a Chiropractor a time or two, and yeah it helped. I've also taken some vitamins (multivits, glucosamine etc.) and yeah it made me a bit perkier and less painful. I have always thought that alot of the stuff that we, as humans, put in our bodies that we think will help us does, however, I think that if you really think that something will help you, it will...the mind and positive thinking works in a very mysterious way.

But what about this approach for our animals? They really can't tell us what's wrong with them, it takes a very thorough history, full physical exam and diagnostics (blood work, radiographs, CT scans etc.) for us in the veterinary profession to even try to come to a conclusion.

Walter suffers from food allergies, more specifically to chicken. His symptoms are mild compared to others. He gets red, inflamed skin above his eyes and on his ears and becomes very itchy, he also vomits readily after eating chicken. We have been taught that when an animal is allergic to food it is generally a protein source; chicken, beef, soy are the top three, basically because they have been used so much in the past and in so many common commercial foods that animals have become allergic to them.
In western medicine, his treatment is:

a) Change his food to either a hydrolyzed protein diet (means the protein source is broken down so small the body cannot detect it, therefore cannot recognize it) OR a novel protein diet. (meaning a 'rare' protein source) such as duck, turkey, rabbit, venison, kangaroo etc.

b) Give low dose oral anti-histamines/steroids (such as prednisone) to decrease the inflammation in the GI tract and skin (will eventually try to wean off, but not necessarily)

c) Keep them on this specific diet for a minimum of 3 months, then try adding in ONE protein source at a time to see what the animal reacts to, OR just keep them on the restricted diet.

This kind of makes the nutritional component to the animals life a bit dull. They can only have special hypo-allergenic treats, which most but not all, animals don't like. Sometimes, all of a sudden, they quit eating that food, and it's a bit of a pickle trying to find them an alternative food that's comparable.

Personally, if it was me....I would get bored of only having one kind of food pretty quickly. But, animals are different and many don't have a problem eating the same thing day in and day out for years on end.

Walter's treatment was very similar. We changed him to a hydrolyzed protein diet, but he would only eat the dry and not the canned (as there is only ONE canned food on the marked that is made this way) and started him on daily steroid therapy. We changed his diet to a novel protein source (venison) and he hated it, both dry and canned. NOW....he is back to a hydrolyzed protein dry food (different company) which he enjoys and a novel protein (lamb) canned food, which he isn't crazy about. But he still continues to vomit, on an every other day basis.

I have been educating myself on alternative treatment for allergy prone animals, with the help of my veterinarian. The holistic clinics that I have talked to suggested switching his food to a grain free diet (because in eastern medicine it is different grains that one is allergic to and not proteins), add omega 3's and 6's to the diet (as they have a natural anti-inflammatory effect), other skin support supplements and possibly even add in Chinese herbs and acupuncture treatment if diet alone doesn't help.

So, over the past couple of weeks, I have started to introduce omega oils and a dry skin support supplement into his diet. The omega oil he's ok with, the dry powder stuff....not too crazy but will eat it eventually if he gets hungry enough. So today, I went out to one of the local "health food" pet stores (ugh...) and bought him some yummy, grain free canned food (I thought I should start with canned and eventually change his dry later on...don't need too many changes).

I bought only 4 cans today:

Merricks New England Boil, Lobster Feast and Seafood Medley

California Naturals Deep Water Fish Formula

And I have 2 cans of Before Grain from my previous cat; 1 can of Tuna and 1 can of Salmon

I have used the Merricks canned food with my last cat to entice him to eat. It looks really yummy....has a very nice broth, the food itself is like slop (which I think a cat would like rather than the fluffy pate/mousse stuff) and has whole shrimp, and fish pieces in it.

When 6 pm rolled around (dinner time for Wally), I was all excited to serve my very deserving little boy a wonderful dinner of 'Seafood Medley'...mmmmm. I popped the can lid and he came running. I put about a quarter of the can in his dish and warmed it up (skipped the supplements for today)...mmmmmmmmmm, I thought. As I was bending down to put this dish on his placemat he did his usual "give it to me...NOW" dance. He smelled it for a second, took a teeny tiny little lick....and....

.....walked away....ugh...

Guess he didn't like seafood medley too much. I felt bad and gave him half a can of his old food.....and guess what.....he ate that.

Well, for today....

Holistic food 0 Veterinary diets 1

Stay tuned for what happens in the next round of....."Who wants to try holistic medicine?!"

The Case of the Missing Spectacles.....

Again this morning, I was abruptly woken up at 5:52, an exact TEN minutes prior to my alarm clocks specified set time of going off. Not happy. I could hear Walters little feet investigating something on my nightstand. I opened my eyes to see a burred image of a cat (I am almost legally blind without the use of modern day eye wear) and I immediately picked him up off the nightstand and placed him on the floor. I tried falling back asleep, but then my alarm clocked stepped up to the job it was originially programmed to do and woke me up, again. I stretched out my right arm to blindly fumble around for my glasses that I placed on the stand the night before, but there were no glasses to be felt. I rolled over and squinted my eyes so I could somewhat see the outlines of the other clutter that takes up my nightstand, but still couldn't manage to see the glasses. Where could they be?!? Could I have knocked them off the stand during somesort of seizure like activity the night before? Perhaps I fell asleep with them still on and they gracefully crept off my face and landed somewhere between the pillows or on the floor.

Thank goodness for contact lenses, after putting them in, I searched throughout the linens and pillows, under the bed, around the nightstand, in the nightstand, in Walters bed and kennel....nothing...NOTHING!

This isn't the first time he's done something like this, and I should have known it was coming as I have caught him red-handed chewing on my glasses before. Two weeks ago he stole my boyfriends wallet off the kitchen table. Both of us even came home early to take a look around the house for it incase we had to run to the registry office to get him a new drivers liscense, but thankfully we found it, burried amongst the shoes at the front door.

I guess I'm just going to have to hide my valuables from my "Clepto Cat" Walter.

Have you hugged a Walter today?

I was woke up at 5:52am this morning (an exact TEN minutes before my alarm was due to go off) by a wonderful feeling of what felt like warm, wet sandpaper scraping across my left cheek and 15 pounds of cat lying on my chest. Apparently my alarm clock has now become an obsolete piece of bedroom furniture due to my cat's own innate ability to predict my wake-up calls do to his hunger. No, it's not like he's starving, he just thinks he is.

Unfortunately, in the four months since I have adopted him, he has gained 3 pounds. Sure 3 pounds doesn't sound like alot to you and I, but 3 pounds to a cat who is supposed to be 11 pounds is close to a 30% increase in body weight. That is similar to a person who is supposed to be 130 pounds gaining 40 pounds in four months. So in reality, he must go on a diet. Technically he has been on a diet for 3 months, obviously it hasn't worked, but according to him, he is being held against his will and starved and has wasted away to nothing but a bag of bones.

Some days he will try the suffocation approach (laying on my chest ensuring that I must fight for air) and if that doesn't work, he will jump to the floor, or on my nightstand and will rummage through anything that is guaranteed to make a noise or just generally annoy me until I get out of bed.

Yes he has trained me, trained me very well I might add. It is very difficult not to give in most days since he is a perpetual talker. Some cats talk, but him...you can carry on an entire conversation. He has his "I want attention" sounds, his "I'm bored" sounds, his "Why did you bother me" sounds, his "get out of bed" sounds, his "hey, how's it going?" sounds and of course his 'IT TIME TO FEED ME" sounds.

Although he can be quite the annoying little (I guess little isn't the word for him) thing, I still love him. It's truly amazing at how fast you can fall in love with an animal, and how they quickly become your best friend. You must cherish your friendship and love that you have for them every day, because you never know when it will be the last.....and hopefully, Walter's day won't come for a very long time.

Have you hugged a Walter today?

A Bit About Me...

Well, I guess I should say a bit about myself....

My name is Vanessa, currently, I am a registered animal health technologist in Alberta, Canada. Animal health technologists (or Veterinary Technicians in the U.S.) are similar to human nurses, but with a much wide variety of tasks. Of course, alot of our daily duty is generalized nursing, however, we also do all the lab work, all of the radiology duties and other diagnostic procedures, surgical assisting, anesthesia, some reception, nutrition, behaviour, grief counselling etc. My work days are never the same, always different.

I always had a passion for animals. At the age of 10 I started to help out with my neighbours dog grooming salon, sweeping up hair and discharging clients. I remember that was the first time I ever saw someone express a dogs anal glands, I almost fainted, to say the least. I couldn't comprehend what this offensive goopy, smelly substance this was comming from a dogs back end, and why anyone would want to put their hands in a dogs bottom to do this......I have since realized the necessity of this act, and now it's unfortunatly part of my daily job..ugh...

My first 'real' job with animals came in high school. I signed up for a high school work experience program called the Dolphin Academic Research Team at a local aquarium. I went to the orientation with about 300 other students from the area. The next week I had the daunting task of being the first interviewed for the 6 prestigous placements. The following week, I recieved a phone call from the head dolphin trainer letting me know that I would be starting my work experience the following weekend.
Every weekend for the school year I thawed fish, measured buckets, cleaned buckets, thawed fish some more, and pressure cleaned filters from a 200,000 gallon dolphin habitat, I remember picking scales off various parts of my body for days after that. It truly was a great experience, I learned not only what it takes to be part of a team that cares for captive marine species, but also about the natural setting of these wonderful animals, and how important it is to both them and us as the human race to preserve it.

Soon after my work experience was comming to an end, they hired me on staff. This was my dream job coming true. I had the experience to work with not only dolphins, but penguins, reptiles, sharks, sea turtles, many tropical fish and flamingoes. While I was there, one of the dolphins gave birth infront of thousands of people. The birth of a marine mammal was something I always wanted to see, and I saw it, first hand, but I also saw the act of death right in front of my very eyes. The calf was born, mom pushed it up to the top for its first breath of air, it swam around for 3 minutes, and the hand of God came down and took that life away. To see an infants life be taken away, either human or animal, is soul crushing. The mother was depressed, didn't eat for days, wouldn't swim other than to take a breath of air....we tried...we tried, as part of her family, to console her, to interact with her, but it wasn't the same from there on. She passed away almost a year to the day. The remaining dolphin was sent to another facility in the U.S. to be with another pod of dolphins.

I focused the rest of my work on the other animals. We developed a husbandry training program for 3 green sea turtles and 3 common caimen (similar to aligators) to decrease stress during medical procedures. I loved training animals, not for show and entertainment, but to show trust, understanding and to decrease any stress that they may have in their environments, but my mind was always on the health of these animals. I realized that with any animal, whether in a zoo, aquarium, refuge or in a domestic home, animals need healthcare first and formost. They need to be healthy to be truly happy, and thus I embarked on my journey to be an animal health technologist.

Before graduating from my program, I had to complete a 6 week hands-on animal health practicum. I moved out to the west coast of canada, rented my first apartment and started my practicum at the aquarium. I assisted in daily rounds with the animal health team, ultrasounding dolphins, training voluntary blood draws from whales, fish anesthesia and sea lion radiology. I even had the chance to work with the local marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation program specializing in harbour seal pups. After my wonderful experiences on the west coast, and realizing that my potential salary at a local clinic could not sustain life in such an expensive city, I returned home to the praries, where life was reasonable and ordinary...or so I thought.

Since graduating in 2006, I have worked in a mixed-animal practice (meaning both large/farm animals and small companion animals) and a small-animal/exotic practice. My first job was at a mixed-animal practice about 30 minutes outside the city, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. We would do everything from spays/neuters to bovine semen testing (gross, I know). We also were the Veterinary Health Team for the local zoo, and this made my days even more different from the rest. It was a rotating door of cats, dogs, lizards, snakes, ruminants, horses, camilids, parrots, primates and marsupials.

Currently, I am employed at a local small animal/exotic (small mammals) clinic, in a very affulent area of the city. I never thought that I would truly enjoy working in a small animal clinic (always wanted to go back to a zoo or aquarium), but my mind has since been changed. I love it here, life is never dull. I love my boss (how many people can really say that), co-workers, clients and of couse their animals (well most of them...not too fond of the ones that have required me to get a tetanus shot, or 10 days of antibiotics). We see mostly cats and dogs, with the occasional rabbit, guinea pig or other small rodent (and yes I know that rabbits aren't rodents, they're lagomorphs). Our clients range from the city's top paid NHL hockey players to tv hosts, and the regular you and me, and yes, they are all equally important, it's just exciting when we get a celebrity in!

So this pretty much brings me up to now. I finally moved out of my parents domicile a few years ago and in with my signifigant other. We have a growing family of 2 fighting fish, blueman and redman; 3 guinea pigs (triplets born in our bedroom), max, cala and daisy; 2 mini-lop rabbits, loki and lucy; and our recently adopted cat, Walter or Wally for short, all of us living humbly together in 700 sq feet.

Welcome to the life of an animal health tech!

Never Thought I'd be Here....

I never thought in a million years that I would have a blog....if you asked me a year or so ago, I couldn't even tell you what a blog was. I know I'm only 24, but I'm really not one of those 'computer saavy' people...but here I am today.

My very first entry, how exciting. I really can't see that in the future, my life will become so exciting and full of adventure that I would really necessitate a blog, but I guess a woman could only hope.

I had the day off, I worked the saturday shift for one of my co-workers. I was looking forward to sleeping in, having the bed all to myself (well with my cat Walter) when the phone rang..work again, I let it go to the answering machine.

I took my mom to see Julie and Julia this afternoon, we had quite the laugh at all the old women taking one another out for an afternoon matinee. Besides my own mother, I'm sure I was the youngest one in the theatre by almost 50 years.

Well, today wasn't a very exciting day, so here's all the best for tomorrow.....