Nowhere in dog care is there more argument than if bones should be fed as part of a regular diet.

You’ll see a lot of advice that it’s dangerous. It certainly can be. However, if you follow our bone feeding advice, you will minimise the risk, but not eliminate it.

You’ll also see a lot of advice saying it has no benefit, or that certain manufactured products are better. This is a much more complicated issue and as you will see, not entirely true.

Why Is There So Little Proof?

Absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence.

In other words, there can be no proof of benefit without studies designed to look for it. The problems with bones is that they generally lack companies with the financial incentive to fund major studies.

Therefore, we know that toothbrushing, Dentastix, Greenies, dental foods and even mouthwashes can help, but we just don’t know enough about bones. It was this gap that we attempted to resolve in 2010.

The Walkerville Vet Bone Feeding Study

For 12 months, we surveyed dog owners at the time of vaccination, asking many questions about their diet. We also gave their mouth a dental score.

At the end of the study, we had 479 completed surveys. Then, owing to the fact that we’re always busy, we put them aside for a few years but never forgot them.

In 2017 I approached a statistician at the University of Adelaide about publishing the study. He was very helpful, and together we statistically analysed the data so that this was possible. Here’s what we found.

Bone Feeding Study Results

The graph gives a quick summary of the dog dental scores we collected. There was a dramatic difference in the rate of periodontal disease based on how often bones were fed. This difference was statistically significant at several points.

We also found that certain breed groups (Terriers, Gundogs, Working Dogs) were less likely to have dental problems when compared with Toy breeds.

According to these results, the feeding of bones to dogs is associated with better periodontal disease scores.

Although this suggests that the bones are keeping the teeth clean, we must be careful to not claim causation; we can’t prove that one causes the other. For example, owners who feed bones might generally be more conscious of dental care in other ways. Of course, we tried to ask about such things in the study, but only a long-term study would answer that question properly.

Regardless, the results are compelling and unique. It certainly suggests that dogs who are given dietary bone will benefit.

So Why Isn’t It Published?

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time any such study has been conducted anywhere in the world. But it still hasn’t made it into a scientific journal.

We have submitted the manuscript to several journals, and there are three main reasons why it remains unpublished.

1. We have not tried the low ranking journals. Any paper can be published if you’re not fussy about where.
2. Legitimate criticism has been made that we were too close to the data. Claire and me both knew the patients, and it’s conceivable that our dental scores were biased as a result. Of course we don’t think so!
3. The journal reviewers are leaders in the field of veterinary dentistry, which is generally antagonistic towards bone feeding. Just read this quote from one:

It has already been established that diets with coarser materials will help to decrease the incidence of plaque and calculus accumulation, however there are major concerns in regards to the other problems that raw diets and diets with bone can cause.  From an oral health stand point, the incidence in dental trauma  or fractured teeth and endodontic disease should also be compared.  Without this comparison it is irresponsible to recommend this type of diet.

It’s like saying we aren’t allowed to publish on the benefits of early reading in children if we don’t also look at associated eye diseases. The reviewer’s comments are, of course, not evidence-based as no one has looked at rates of problems with bones either.

I would love that study too, but no-one asked the dental chew manufacturers to prove their safety. Are we not allowed to show a benefit if it exists?

So we continue to try. In the meantime, here’s a link to the full scientific paper, including references to other bone studies over time. Enjoy, and feel free to ask lots of questions in the comments below!

Related: How To Feed Bones To Reduce Risk | Other Ways To Keep Dogs’ Teeth Clean

Have something to add? Comments (if open) will appear within 24 hours.
By Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud, a vet in Adelaide, Australia. Meet his team here.

So it was with great hope that here in Australia we awaited the arrival of Purina’s new food designed to reduce human allergies to cats and kittens. Imagine the possible benefits if it works:

• More people being able to enjoy the company of cats
• More cat rescue and less rehoming
• Better relationships for allergic partners of cat owners

But could it also be too good to be true? If it encourages people who can’t keep cats to get them, surely this will be a backwards step instead. I found my first Devon Rex in an animal shelter where she’d been dumped for just this reason.

I’m going to take you through the science behind Purina LiveClear® as impartially as I can. By the end, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect if you try it.

How Purina LiveClear Works

It starts with the major cat allergen of humans: Fel d 1. This complex protein is found in the saliva, sebaceous glands, skin and fur of cats. It’s very stable, and can easily become airborne, from where it causes all the usual signs of allergy in people: sneezing, runny eyes, asthma etc

Cats probably spread most of the Fel d 1 around by licking their coat. So the people at Purina thought: what if we developed a food that blocks the Fel d 1 from the saliva?

It’s actually very clever.

They expose chickens to cat allergens and collect their eggs. These then contain high levels of anti-Fel d 1 antibody. The egg proteins are sprayed onto cat biscuits so that cats end up having antibodies to their own allergen in their saliva. Theoretically then, when they groom themselves, the Fel d 1 is taken out and inactivated.

As an aside, it’s worth noting that in the trials the food was fed continuously, which makes sense when you see how it works. However, as any vet knows, it can be hard to do this without having a fat cat.

Does Purina LiveClear Reduce Allergens?

According to Purina’s own research, cats who eat LiveClear have a 47% reduction in allergen on their coat. And this is true, if a little oversimplified.

The reality is the graph here. It shows the same cats divided into four groups based on how much allergen they had in their coat. You can see that the top 25% have a lot more than the rest. You can also see that the actual levels vary for all of them week by week.

In fact, a look at the original paper shows that even these data points are averages of substantial individual variation.

Of course what matters most is how this translates to its effect on people. Is an average 47% reduction enough, and does the weekly variation make a difference?

Does LiveClear Reduce Human Allergy?

To give Purina some credit, they could have stopped here, but they went on do do human trials. They exposed people affected by cat allergy to blankets from cats fed either a control food or LiveClear. The study was double-blind, meaning that neither the researchers or test subjects knew which was which.

In other words, a high-quality piece of work. Sadly for Purina and cat allergy sufferers everywhere, the results were disappointing.

The following table shows the P-values for each symptom. Values less than 0.05 are generally regarded as significant. As you can see, there were no significant differences between reaction levels to blankets from treated or untreated cats.

Difference Between LiveClear & Control Food In Allergy Symptoms

Hang On- Purina Said It Worked!

Actually, there were differences found when the results were compared with earlier known exposure (i.e. no longer blinded). This should be yet another demonstration of the enduring power of the placebo effect. And yet that’s not what was said.

While I honestly think that LiveClear will help some people, using an unblinded allergen exposure as a comparison is not the way to find the proof.

Well, you might say, if the subjects felt better, does it matter whether it was a placebo effect or not?* That’s an ethical discussion for another day. What we really need is a good blinded study using cats in their own homes to get closest to the real world scenario.

So Is Purina LiveClear Worth It?

The evidence so far suggests that Purina LiveClear is an unreliable way to reduce cat allergy symptoms in the home. I certainly would not recommend that allergic people plan on having cats based on this intervention alone.

Despite this, I applaud the company for such an innovative approach, and I’m not writing the food off completely either. For just as some cats will produce unacceptably high Fel 1 d levels, others are likely to respond well, especially combined with other approaches. You won’t know unless you try.

If you already live with a cat, but are allergic, or have an allergic partner, then there’s not a whole lot to lose. LiveClear is clearly as safe as any other cat or kitten food. If it doesn’t help, all you’ve done is bought a more expensive version!

Related: The Shaky Evidence For Feliway In Cats | Other Ways To Reduce Household Feline Allergens

* Strictly speaking, this is a nocebo effect, where the known allergen exposure is likely to have increased the subjects’ perception of symptoms. Then compared to the lower tested levels later, a significant difference appears. Clear? No, I didn’t think so!

Sources

Bonnet, B., Messaoudi, K., Jacomet, F., Michaud, E., Fauquert, J. L., Caillaud, D., & Evrard, B. (2018). An update on molecular cat allergens: Fel d 1 and what else? Chapter 1: Fel d 1, the major cat allergen. Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology, 14(1), 1-9

Pezzali, J. G., Smith, S. C., & Aldrich, C. G. (2018). An overview of the effect of diet on the allergenicity of cats to susceptible humans. SOJ Vet Sci, 4, 1-9

Ramadour, M., Birnbaum, J., Magalon, C., Lanteaume, A., Charpin, D., & Vervloet, D. (1998). Cat sex differences in major allergen production (Fel d 1). Journal of allergy and clinical immunology, 101(2), 282-284

Satyaraj, E., Gardner, C., Filipi, I., Cramer, K., & Sherrill, S. (2019). Reduction of active Fel d1 from cats using an antiFel d1 egg IgY antibody. Immunity, inflammation and disease, 7(2), 68-73

Wedner, J. H., Mantia, T., Satyaraj, E., Gardner, C., Al-Hammadi, N., & Sherrill, S. (2021). Feeding cats egg product with polyclonal-anti-Fel d1 antibodies decreases environmental Fel d1 and allergic response: A proof of concept study. J Allergy Infect Dis, 2(1), 1-8

The food that nearly killed her is a leading brand of grain-free dog food you can buy at nearly any Australian supermarket. I wish I could tell you its name.

Here’s what happened.

Rowdie’s Collapse

That’s Rowdie in the picture. She’s a 12-year old Beagle who’s always been in good health, including at a checkup early this year.

On the 16th of May, she was having a bath when she suddenly collapsed, rolled on her side and remained stiff and unresponsive for 10 to 15 seconds. She was taken to an emergency vet and had blood taken. The cause was thought to be a seizure.

I saw Rowdie a few days later. The first thing I thought was that it probably wasn’t a seizure: these go on for at least 30 seconds and have lots of muscular activity. Her history contained a further clue: she’d recently developed a moist cough.

Heart Disease, Not Seizure

More clues came from her examination. Her heart rate and her breathing were faster than expected, and I could feel fluid in her abdomen. Most importantly, she had a grade 3 heart murmur that wasn’t there just four months earlier.

The final clue was the bath. Seizures happen at any time, even during sleep. Rowdie’s collapse on the other hand happened at a time of increased activity.

I strongly suspected a heart problem and so we took chest xrays straight away. These showed an enlarged heart with pulmonary oedema (fluid on the lungs). Heart disease was confirmed.

Why Rowdie Though?

You see, Rowdie’s problem wasn’t typical. She’s not of a breed prone to heart problems, and she’d been normal so recently. Most cases of heart failure don’t come on without warning because we’ve been listening to the murmur getting louder for months or years beforehand.

Here’s where Rowdie’s luck turned the first time. Here in Adelaide we’ve always had a shortage of vets skilled enough to offer cardiac ultrasound, called echocardiography. Well just the week earlier I’d received news that a board-certified ultrasonographer was setting up a freelance service.

We started Rowdie on heart medications and booked her in for the soonest available appointment.

Echocardiography Saves The Day

The ultrasound exam saved her life. That’s because the results showed she had a very unusual form of heart disease that I never would have predicted: dilated cardiomyopathy or DCM.

DCM is when the heart muscle gets thin and weak, and it normally has a very short survival time. However, not in Rowdie’s case. It was while I was talking over the results with her owner that she got her second lucky break.

I remembered those reports about grain free foods. And so I asked about Rowdie’s diet.

Grain Free Diets & Heart Disease

It turned out that earlier in the year, Rowdie’s owners had started buying a grain-free dog food. Like most people, they assumed that if it was being proudly marketed as grain free, it must be better.

Vets have known for some time that this is not true, but we can’t get the message out to dog owners. The reality is that grain free diets are being regularly linked to dogs like Rowdie.

You can read more here. We don’t know exactly why, but theories include B vitamin deficiency, inhibition of taurine or carnitine metabolism, or unidentified, potentially cardiotoxic compounds. 89% of DCM-associated diets reported to the FDA contained peas¹.

Treatment of Diet-Related DCM

I advised Rowdie’s owners to put her back onto a quality grain-based diet, and added a taurine supplement as a precaution. She also needed to stay on the heart medications. There was no way of knowing if my suspicions were correct except by trying.

Even when DCM is caused by the diet, not all affected dogs can recover. It depends how much damage is already done, and her case was severe.

I saw Rowdie two weeks later. She was doing very well, which was probably just the effect of the heart meds. A month later she was doing even better, which by now was not what we expected for regular cases of DCM.

By the way, the best way to tell is by measuring sleeping or resting respiratory rate.

A Stunning Response

On the 11th of August we repeated the echocardiogram. Here is a summary of what was found:

• The dilation of the left ventricle had vastly improved, but was not completely resolved
• The left atrial enlargement had completely resolved
• The measurements of heart contraction (fractional shortening and EPSS) were now normal
• The regurgitation jet at the mitral valves was no longer visible

And here are the numbers:

The improvement was so great that it was debatable whether Rowdie needed to stay on heart medications any more. We’ve got one more ultrasound exam planned and then we’ll probably stop them.

A Warning To Dog Owners

What is critical for you, the reader, to understand here is how rarely dogs receive a cardiac ultrasound. Heart disease is one of the most common problems of dogs, but we lack the skilled sonographers to do all but a tiny fraction. I only ordered this test because there was something not quite right about Rowdie.

As nearly every case of canine heart disease has just one cause, it’s reasonable for vets to make assumptions. Especially in a user-pays system where any further investigation will add costs and delays. However, for Rowdie this would have been deadly.

There is no doubt in my mind that most cases of DCM caused by grain free diets will go undiagnosed. This would have happened to Rowdie too if she was a more ‘typical’ breed or had a more typical history. Which matters because this specific form often responds well to treatment especially if recognised early.

Without a realisation that the diet was to blame, Rowdie would have died quickly. Like the more regular cases of DCM, she would have responded briefly to the medications, but then started declining again.

These days I ask a lot more about the diet every time I hear a heart murmur. And I hope that the lesson for you is to avoid these diets until we can report which ones are faulty, and either fix or remove them.

Related: Why I can’t warn you about bad dog foods (yet)

Have something to add? Comments (if open) will appear within 24 hours.
By Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud, a vet in Adelaide, Australia. Meet his team here.

Reference

1. Smith, C. E., Parnell, L. D., Lai, C. Q., Rush, J. E., & Freeman, L. M. (2021). Investigation of diets associated with dilated cardiomyopathy in dogs using foodomics analysis. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 1-12 Full text

In my vet practice we support raw feeding, but that doesn’t mean we don’t also have a watchful eye. I’ll cover the risks first. By knowing them and their solutions, you can do it more safely.

Afterwards, I’ll feature some of the first evidence to show a benefit for raw puppy foods.

Risk 1: Imbalance

Vets are a little obsessed with puppies getting a balanced diet, and if you know our history you’ll understand why. In the days before commercially balanced foods, many people got it horribly wrong. Prior to the parvo age, one of the leading causes of puppy death was an unbalanced diet.

We still see it from time to time (a milder case is featured here ). It happens when muscle and organ meats are fed out of proportion to a puppy’s calcium requirement. It’s sufficiently difficult to get right that you can’t just add back calcium powder either.

The solution can only be one of three things:

1. Using commercially balanced diets for at least 75% of the total energy requirement
2. Getting a veterinary nutritionist to formulate a diet for you (that’s an actual vet*)
3. Buying a commercially balanced raw food for puppies, if you can find it

Which brings us to risk #2.

Risk 2: Contamination

This is a sensitive topic right now but at least it’s obviously real. Pet meat is poorly regulated, and therefore you can expect all of these to be found in it at some stage:

• the wrong species (e.g. horse instead of cow)
• chemical residues illegal in human meats
• salmonella, campylobacter and other harmful bacteria

Salmonella in dog food isn’t just dangerous to puppies. It has also been shown to easily spread within in families and infect children¹.

I’m afraid that until the whole pet industry is better regulated, we need to be wary even of the pre-formulated, balanced raw meat diets here. If you do want to use one, personally I would choose the larger companies likely to have better quality control..

The solution has to be paying extra for meat processed entirely within the human supply chain. There will still be risks with any raw meat, but if you stick to beef or lamb, contamination rates are very low.

Risk 3: Fussiness

A fussy dog sounds like a joke. It’s no joke to anyone who has one.

My experience with fussy dogs is that they learn to be picky by being offered raw meats or home-cooked foods. Suddenly the biscuits don’t seem so good any more.

The solution is to set an absolute line in the sand by making clear boundaries that your dog can understand. ‘Only this much and no more’, or ‘only at this time’, etc. It’s just like getting kids to eat their meals. They can’t learn that hunger striking gets a tastier option or they’ll do it again and again.

Now to the benefits.

Is A Raw Diet Good For Puppies?

Done well, there are probably some positives to feeding puppies raw foods. These could include:

• better skin & coat health
• improved gut function
• improved appetite

I say probably because up to now the evidence has been lacking. However I want to point you to a recent paper from Finland about raw puppy diets and skin problems later in life. Its results are shown here, and I’ll do my best to explain them afterwards.

Note that this is about prevention; a raw diet is very unlikely to fix your dog’s skin problem.

Raw Puppy Diets & Atopy

The common skin allergy of dogs is called atopic dermatitis. You definitely know a dog with this, even possibly your own. They get ear infections, itchy bellies, or lick their feet constantly. Diet is certainly not the main cause, but it might play a small role.

This study (linked below²) looked at the percent of adult dogs with atopic dermatitis based on their diet when they were 2 to 6 months old. The numbers across the bottom are the amount of each diet being fed. When there’s a statistically significant difference between dogs with and without skin problems, the bar is marked with an asterisk*.

What you can see is that there are multiple points where the likelihood of skin allergy is associated with:

• a lower percentage raw diet, or
• a higher percentage dry food

Ingredients Linked With Better Skin

The study authors went further and asked about specific ingredients. They found these three were associated with less skin problems:

• Raw tripe
• Raw organ meats
• Human meal leftovers

Why might that be? The authors suggest the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ whereby an overly clean and sterile early environment might lead to an immune system more prone to allergy.

This makes sense when you look at the three ingredients:

• Raw tripe will have the animal’s gut flora still present in many cases
• Organ meats are also likely to carry bacterial contamination
• Human meals are incredibly diverse (usually in a negative way of course)

A Raw Diet Plan For A Puppy

So let’s put all this together into a reasonable plan for a puppy diet.

Firstly, note that the actual amount of improvement is small, so nobody should feel that they have to feed any raw food at all.

Secondly, note that you don’t need to feed 100% raw to see a benefit. The authors recommend a diet:

• at least 20% as raw food
• below 80% as dry food

And in fact that’s a good place to stop. I would not go below 75% balanced commercial food. This is both to keep the diet adequately balanced and to avoid stomach upsets. One thing premium food is very good at is keeping the gut happy.

Thirdly, which ingredients? Raw tripe sounds ideal if you can get it, remembering to buy as fit for human consumption. It’s probably quite cheap too.

Human leftovers might be OK, but please look at our page on dangerous foods for dogs first. If you feed leftovers you need to do it in a very structured way, such as at a certain time in their bowl to avoid setting up bad habits like begging.

As for offal, it’s harder to do safely. You could add some liver or kidney, but no more than weekly to keep vitamin A levels down. Thyroid glands in mixed offals can cause excessive thyroid hormone levels. What you end up using will depend a lot on what you can easily buy and trust.

I also add raw bones from 10 weeks of age. It’s a personal choice, which you can read about here.

So in summary I’m advocating a diet that still relies mostly on good quality balanced commercial dog foods, but tweaks them a little by adding a small amount of selected raw foods. This approach is a typical ‘vet’ compromise, and I am resigned to it pleasing exactly no-one. But it’s what the best evidence** tells us.

As the owner of an atopic dog, it’s what I’ll try with my next puppy. And if better evidence appears in the meantime, you can bet that it will be posted here.

Big disclaimer: whenever you choose to go away from a 100% balanced, cooked diet, I can no longer guarantee complete safety.

* A quick note about online nutritional advice. It’s not a level playing field because the law uses something called ‘the reasonable person test’. In other words, if you follow ‘Joe Blow’s You-Beaut Diet For Puppies’, and your puppy dies, you may not be able to sue him. That’s because the courts will probably say that a ‘reasonable person’ would not be expected to trust this diet. Of course, if Joe Blow is a vet, then a reasonable person would be expected to believe him, and you can sue him. This is why vets generally play diets with a very straight bat, and the outlandish ones are not published by vets.

** The study is not without its flaws. By asking owners to remember their puppy’s food some years back, it will introduce a measure of recall bias. In other words, owners of adult dogs with and without skin disease might not recall the puppy diet in exactly the same way. It also relied on an owner assessment as to whether skin disease existed or not. This would be a problem if people who choose raw diets judge skin disease even slightly differently to those that don’t. Lastly, bearing in mind that significance is defined as less likely to have occurred by chance than one in 20, by asking about 46 different food variables, it’s nearly inevitable that some will achieve significance even by chance alone. Definitely more work is needed here to drill down on these individual ingredients in an intervention study.

Have something to add? Comments (if open) will appear within 24 hours.
By Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud, a vet in Adelaide, Australia. Meet his team here.

1. Behravesh, C. B., Ferraro, A., Deasy, M., Dato, V., Moll, M., Sandt, C., … & Urdaneta, V. (2010). Human Salmonella infections linked to contaminated dry dog and cat food, 2006–2008. Pediatrics, 126(3), 477-483.
2. Hemida, M. B., Salin, S., Vuori, K. A., Moore, R., Anturaniemi, J., Rosendahl, S., … & Hemida, M. B., Salin, S., Vuori, K. A., Moore, R., Anturaniemi, J., Rosendahl, S., … & Hielm‐Björkman, A. (2021). Puppyhood diet as a factor in the development of owner‐reported allergy/atopy skin signs in adult dogs in Finland. Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine Full text.

The Maffra District Knackery has now admitted that they processed horses from the Northern Territory.

Now read on to see why it was always the most likely explanation…

An outbreak of liver failure in Victorian dogs has been linked to raw meat from a local supplier. At least 14 dogs died and a further 30 were hospitalised.

I’ve been following the story carefully. The more we know the stranger it gets.

Why The Dogs Died

We now know that the dogs died after being poisoned by indospicine, a toxic amino acid found in many plants of the Indigofera genus. The suspicion that it came from their food is strong enough to make the following statement: fresh or frozen raw pet meat sourced from Gippsland between 31 May and 3 July should not be fed to dogs.

This includes products sold across more than 30 stores described as beef and kangaroo pet meat.

Whether cooked or raw, meat containing indospicine is very toxic to dogs. Once you see where it comes from, you might share my concerns about all raw pet meat. You might also wonder if cats are at risk, given that they don’t get the same level of attention*.

Where Indospicine Comes From

There are six plants^† known to contain high levels of indospicine, but only one of significance to us: Indigofera linnaei or Birdsville Indigo. The map at the start shows it to be widely distributed across the northern half of Australia.

So how did it get into Victorian dogs?

The answer is that it accumulates in the meat of animals which graze on it. Birdsville Indigo is a tough drought-tolerant plant with a deep taproot, able to exploit seasonal rainfall before anything else does. As a result, it’s often the only decent food available for livestock.

Deaths in Australian dogs have been previously documented from the eating of camel meat¹ and horse meat². In both cases these animals were presumably grazing in the areas on the map. In fact, we’ve known since at least 1952 that the plant is the cause of Birdsville Horse Disease³.

Which I hope begs the obvious question: if we already knew about it, how did it happen?

The Raw Pet Meat Business

Meat is expensive, and only getting more so. Up against that is an increasing demand from dog owners for raw meat at affordable prices. The result is an unstable balancing act where the pressure is always on to find a workaround.

In this case, that workaround was probably meat brought in from the Northern Territory. Not that I’m not blaming the NT at all: they actually have some pretty tough regulations designed to prevent just this sort of thing.

Here are three examples from their laws:

• A person shall not sell pet meat unless it is dyed blue in the prescribed manner
• A person shall not slaughter a horse, donkey, mule or hinny for pet food if he or she knows, or has reason to suspect, it has been in an area in which Birdsville Horse Disease occurs
• A person shall not sell meat for human consumption, pet meat or bait meat with intent to deceive the buyer as to the true identity of the meat

So What Exactly Happened?

I think there is only one sensible answer: the meat came from horses transported from the NT into another state prior to slaughter. Here’s why:

1. Illegal slaughter is very unlikely in Australia anywhere
2. Camels could be slaughtered legally for pets in NT but the meat would be dyed blue
3. Cattle (beef) are improbable as they haven’t been associated with indospicine poisoning
4. Horses, donkeys etc would have come from areas in which Birdsville Horse Disease occurs and therefore be illegal to slaughter in the NT
5. Of the likely species, horses are the easiest to transport to another jurisdiction
6. Outside of the NT, meat sellers don’t always need to tell us what species the meat actually comes from

If I’m right, this is all legal, just very unethical.

Name That Species, Please

I’ve written about meat substitution before, and the only thing preventing me taking it further is the prohibitive cost of species-of-origin DNA testing. Even if the meat that killed these dogs was actually beef, it still must have come from areas where such meat should not be fed to dogs.

And in fact, as vets we should be looking harder at any cases of unexplained liver disease in dogs. We should be asking about access to pet meats in the same way we’re asking about grain-free diets in heart disease.

One thing for sure is that there’s still a lot more of this saga to come out. Whether that happens or not is another story.

In the meantime, I hope this makes us think twice about cheap ‘pet meat’. And if you ever see meat actually marked as horse or camel, you should only buy it if the seller can guarantee it’s not contaminated with indospicine. How they can, I’m not sure.

Related: Should I add meat to my dog’s kibble, anyway?

Have something to add? Comments (if open) will appear within 24 hours.
By Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud, a vet in Adelaide, Australia. Meet his team here.

* Try putting “canine” and “feline” into Google Scholar and look at the number of results. You’ll see a 3:1 bias in favour of dogs.

† Those 6 plants:

• Indigofera hendecaphylla
• Indigofera linnaei
• Indigofera lespedezioides
• Indigofera spicata
• Indigofera vicioides
• Indigofera volkensii

They are all low shrubs found in livestock grazing lands from Africa, through Asia and the Pacific Islands, to North, Central and South America. It makes you wonder if it’s also happening to less ‘affluent’ dogs elsewhere. Just look at how long it took us to notice a new exotic disease even in Australia when it was happening far away from the capital cities.

References

1. FitzGerald, L. M., Fletcher, M. T., Paul, A. E. H., Mansfield, C. S., & O’Hara, A. J. (2011). Hepatotoxicosis in dogs consuming a diet of camel meat contaminated with indospicine. Australian veterinary journal, 89(3), 95-100
2. Hegarty, M. P., Kelly, W. R., McEwan, D., William, O. J., & Cameron, R. (1988). Hepatotoxicity to dogs of horse meat contaminated with indospicine. Australian Veterinary Journal, 65(11), 337-340
3. Hegarty, M. P., & Pound, A. W. (1968). Indospicine, a new hepatotoxic amino-acid from Indigofera spicata. Nature, 217(5126), 354-355
4. Tan, E. T., Ng, J. C., Al Jassim, R., D’Arcy, B. R., Netzel, G., & Fletcher, M. T. (2020). Emerging food safety risk of hepatotoxic indospicine in feral Australian camel meat. Food Control, 113, 107205

This is absolute rubbish and internet myth-making at its worst. Why is everyone so afraid of almonds? Because they only read each others’ blogs instead of trusting evidence or experience.

It’s always safer to say ‘no’ than ‘yes’, isn’t it! Here I’ll go through each of those ‘seven ways’ and demonstrate their lack of accuracy.

And what do you know, they actually missed a real problem too.

Are Almonds Safe For Dogs?

Almonds consumed in small amounts appear as safe for dogs as humans.

There is no evidence that sweet almonds sold for human consumption are dangerous to dogs. There appear to be no published papers of danger to dogs, nor any anecdotal reports from vets despite extensive experience.

The (Supposed) Dangers Of Almonds

So, you are thinking, what are those 7 dangers? I’ll demolish each in turn then give you that eighth.

1. Choking hazard. There is no doubt that a human would be at higher risk than a dog. The horizontal position of a dog’s airway makes choking much less common, and besides, dog biscuits are often the same size. Just please don’t throw almonds for a dog to catch, just like you wouldn’t throw kibble.
2. Gastrointestinal upsets. This is as true for almonds as it is for eating anything out of the ordinary. There is nothing special about almonds over, say, a chicken breast. Small amounts should be OK for most dogs.
3. Fluid retention. Sure, if a dog eats a whole packet of salted almonds, you’d better call a vet, but just a few? No problem. There’s much more risk from salt in many other common foodstuffs.
4. Pancreatitis. There’s a kernel (hehehe) of truth here in that dogs prone to pancreatitis should not be fed oily or fatty foods. But this is a small percent of dogs, and you’ll run into much more danger from everyday dog treats you buy at the pet store. If your dog vomits or goes off their food frequently, get a checkup with your vet.
5. Bladder & kidney stones. Nuts are not especially risky, and you’d need to eat a lot even if it could happen (for which there’s no evidence of course). Dogs prone to bladder stones are fed special prescription diets as all regular foods increase the risk.
6. Allergies. This list of allergy foods is the best evidence we have, and almonds were not identified. All foods can potentally cause an allergy but unless we feed our dogs nothing we have to take a risk somewhere.
7. Aflatoxins. These are mould toxins, and if your dog is being poisoned, then so are you! Of course the risk is very low with correct storage.

A real danger occurs with bitter almonds. These are closely related to sweet almonds but contain significant amounts of cyanide. They are mostly only sold for special uses such as herbal remedies. I also suspect that some old almond trees are of the bitter variety but I understand they’re fairly unpleasant to taste.

How Many Almonds Can A Dog Eat?

I’m certainly not advocating that you start feeding almonds to your dog. However, if you are eating almonds and you drop a few, your dog can eat them as safely as many other foods. Just don’t make a habit of it. If they keep doing it they will get a sore tummy, and probably sooner than you.

Which Nuts Are Toxic To Dogs?

Of the commonly available nuts, only macadamias are known to be bad for dogs. They are associated with tremors or shaking, but rarely anything worse due to the amount required to be eaten.

I have never identified a case of macadamia poisoning and consider it one of the rarest poisonings of dogs.

Other nuts will have their own issues. Pistachios contain excess salt, many others are coated in toxic chocolate, and you can read about the safety of walnuts here.

So let’s all relax a bit. Heaven knows, there’s enough to worry about as it is.

Have something to add? Comments (if open) will appear within 24 hours.
By Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud, a vet in Adelaide, Australia. Meet his team here. The information provided here is not intended to be used as a substitute for going to the vet. If your pet is unwell, please seek veterinary attention.

This debate is but a taste of what appears online. But who is correct?

Like with all internet myths, there’s a grain of truth in there. Let’s find it!

Are Walnuts Safe For Dogs?

Walnuts are safe to feed to dogs, as long as you keep five things in mind:

1. Walnuts in shell can be dangerous especially for small dogs. In a dog’s rush to eat them, they may swallow the shell leading to intestinal obstructions.
2. Walnuts fallen from the tree are extremely dangerous due to a black mould that causes tremors and seizures. These are almost indistinguishable from snail bait poisoning.
3. Black Walnuts are toxic. This is a rare tree in Australia as the nuts are not edible for humans either.
4. Dogs prone to pancreatitis can get sick from any oily or fatty food, such as nuts. If your dog vomits frequently or goes off their food without good reason, see your vet for a blood test.
5. Too much of any unusual food can upset a dog’s gastrointestinal tract. This can lead to vomiting or diarrhoea, but should resolve within 24 hours.

These considerations should also apply to pecans.

Help! My Dog Ate A Walnut

So you drop a walnut kernel and your dog gets to it before you do. What do you do? Answer: not worry too much.

I still would not make a point of feeding walnuts for the reasons listed above. Giving walnut oil is definitely not advised in the same way as any fats or oils. But even if you do deliberately give the odd walnut, you’re unlikely to do harm.

Which Nuts Are Toxic To Dogs?

Of the commonly available nuts, only macadamias are known to be bad for dogs. They are associated with tremors or shaking, but rarely anything worse due to the amount required to be eaten. Therefore, macadamia poisoning is rarely seen by vets.

Other nuts will have their own issues. Pistachios contain excess salt, many others are coated in toxic chocolate, and you can read about the safety of almonds here.

The main threat is to those dogs that have a walnut tree in their yard. These trees are best either fenced or stripped before the nuts mature, just to be sure. If that’s out of the question, then at least keep the grass short underneath the tree and pick up fallen nuts every day.

Have something to add? Comments (if open) will appear within 24 hours.
By Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud, a vet in Adelaide, Australia. Meet his team here. The information provided here is not intended to be used as a substitute for going to the vet. If your pet is unwell, please seek veterinary attention.

When there’s a lack of hard evidence, we only have experience to go by. So I’ll use mine to help you answer the key questions put to me by cat owners.

What Is A Hairball?

A hairball, or more technically a trichobezoar, is a hard pellet of matted hair found in the gastrointestinal tract. They occur due to hair being swallowed during the normal grooming process, which then accumulates in the stomach.

Eventually the hairball gets to a size where it is vomited up. Such an example is pictured here, surrounded by food. A hairball is much more rarely passed in the faeces.

It’s difficult to know if hairballs are normal or abnormal. My view is that they are an inevitable consequence of grooming. Our task is to prevent them from causing problems.

Help! My Cat Just Vomited A Hairball!

If a cat vomits up hairballs frequently, you need to consider four possibilities:

1. That the hairball is a normal accumulation of hair vomited up at the right time
2. That the hairball is caused by health problems
3. That the hairball is causing health problems
4. That your cat is vomiting for another reason, and with it comes the resident hairball

In my experience, point 4 (the hairball as an innocent bystander) accounts for most of the cases I see. To help you recognise it, let’s go through the other three possibilities.

1. How Often Do Cats Throw Up Hairballs?

A cat passing hairballs normally will:

• Vomit no more than weekly
• Have a single rapid effortless vomit, and be immediately hungry afterwards
• Have no other health problems

2. When Hairballs Are Secondary To Illness

Underlying health problems that could lead to hairball problems are mainly of the skin or gastrointestinal tract.

Skin problems mostly relate to what we call overgrooming. Historically, this has been labelled a psychological problem, but the more we know the more we understand it’s usually a response to itchy skin. If your cat’s coat does not look healthy, click here for a deep dive into the causes of overgrooming in cats.

Gastrointestinal problems are a mixed bag, ranging from parasites to allergies to food responsive disease. Again, if your cat vomits more frequently, is underweight or has loose stools, click here for a discussion of the possible causes.

3. How To Know If A Cat Has A Hairball Stuck

A cat with a hairball large enough to cause problems will usually only have the following symptoms:

• Frequent unproductive vomiting
• Poor or no appetite

However, these signs are vague and caused much more often by other serious conditions.

Therefore, unless your vet can feel a lump in your cat’s belly, they need to consider all the causes of vomiting in cats, plus those of not eating. And given how often people confuse coughing and vomiting in cats, don’t rule this out either

A clue that looking for a hairball might be a good idea can come from the patient’s history. These cats are more likely to:

• have a history of hairball problems
• have a highly shedding coat like the one above
• have a long coat
• be an older cat

4. When Hairballs Aren’t The Cause

Vomiting is probably the number one sign of a sick cat, and has hundreds of possible causes. Many of these cats will have identical risk factors to those prone to hairballs, just to make it harder.

Most of the cats I see who are brought to me for a hairball problem actually have a vomiting problem. Probably top of the list is pancreatitis because it’s so hard to diagnose. It’s just that there’s often a hairball in their stomach when they vomit.

Therefore, there’s no good alternative to a thorough workup, usually via blood testing and ultrasound examination to begin. Only once we draw a blank might we be prepared to blame the hairball itself.

How to Help A Cat Pass A Hairball

If a cat’s problems are caused by a hairball, you can try to help it pass. Don’t do this unless you’re absolutely sure, as you will waste valuable time.

Please note that cats do not commonly pass hairballs in their litter tray. I am personally dubious that cat laxatives like the one pictured here actually do very much. However, if your cat is bright, happy and eating, there’s probably no harm in trying.

Just follow the instructions on the package. I am not aware of any other remedy that might work. However, these products are most useful for prevention anyway.

How To Prevent Hairballs In Cats

Unlike the unreliability of treating a hairball, there are effective ways to prevent them forming.

The first is to remove as much dead hair as possible before your cat does. This will require daily brushing with a slicker brush or similar. If you started while your cat was a kitten, they will usually enjoy it.

It’s messy. I had a cat like this once, and I kept an old theatre gown near my armchair to protect my clothes.

The second is diet. Royal Canin, Hills and no doubt others make effective hairball preventing diets. They work by removing the hair from the stomach before it balls up. Most use either cellulose fibre or psyllium.

The third, of course, are hairball treatment products like pictured above.

Can A Hairball Kill A Cat?

I have seen two cats who would have died without their hairballs being surgically removed. That’s not many over 27 years but it does happen.

For these cats, their owners agreed that the risk was too high to ever let it happen again. Therefore, we took the nuclear option: clipping.

Every six months for life, these cats were booked in for a full shave under sedation. It kept them free of problems, even if they did look a bit strange.

But the main way a hairball can cause death is through inaction. This study contains one cat who died through a delay in treatment and another who was euthanased due to a mistaken belief it was a tumour. And there are also those cats where a much more serious vomiting or coughing problem is written off as ‘hairballs’.

I hope all this helps, no matter whether you have a minor or major problem. But in closing I’ll repeat: hairballs are more often suspected than actual culprits. Keep an open mind!

Have something to add? Comments (if open) will appear within 24 hours.
By Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud, a vet in Adelaide, Australia. Meet his team here. The information provided here is not intended to be used as a substitute for going to the vet. If your pet is unwell, please seek veterinary attention.

Are you struggling under the weight of too many choices? Everyone telling you how you must use a certain food, or a special remedy? You’re in good company.

Linus Pauling was one of the greatest scientists of all time, but even that didn’t save him. Despite groundbreaking discoveries and a Nobel Prize, he is perhaps most famous for the wrong reason.

It’s mainly thanks to him that megadosage of Vitamin C is seen as a credible treatment for colds, cancer or whatever. His belief in its power means that we’re stuck with it now, even though it works no better than a placebo.

I’m not going to criticise individual movements; after all, even Vitamin C is great for guinea pigs! What I say here could be true for training methods, diets, natural remedies or even veterinary pharmaceuticals. Instead I want you to see them through the eyes of a vet who has seen a lot of things come and go.

For what makes me saddest are the dog or cat owners who have fallen under the spell of extremists. Except they don’t know it. To them, the bubble that Google and Instagram create makes it look like they’re doing the right and proper thing.

More than that, it makes what everyone else is doing look like ignorance, or even cruelty. Which is probably part of the strategy that keeps them from straying.

Sometimes the influencers are doing it for money, sometimes fame, and sometimes just because they have a fervent belief in what they do.

Just for example, I saw two cats recently whose pelvises both collapsed within a week of each other. The poor owner was devastated. She’d just been doing what she was told was right, just trying to do her best.

We didn’t get to her in time, but I wonder if we would have succeeded anyway without the proof. It’s not a fair fight.

You can spot the arguments easily. They are full of:

• black and white statements
• bold promises
• harsh criticism for methods that aren’t their own

Vets can’t fight back because the ‘truth’ isn’t that simple. To live in the real world means dealing with the messiness of biology where nothing is ever truly black and white and knowledge is gained through the slow spasmodic creep of scientific discovery.

These people use fear. It’s such a strong motivator that once owners have it, you can understand how hard it is to change. Especially because they get to pet owners first.

These people are also tapping into a deep-seated human need for absolute truths. Miracle cures and superfoods are the benign end of something that through history has often turned quite dark. But let’s not get political.

All I ask is this. If you are doing something that seems 100% right, but isn’t mainstream, be very careful. There’s harm in doing the wrong thing. There’s also often harm in not doing the better, other thing.

Personally, I plead for three things:

1. Moderation. If something is good, more of it is rarely better. Biology is all about having optimal concentrations in chemical reactions, not megadoses.
2. Compromise. “Compromise means no-one is happy” said a single man I knew in 1986. He’s still single. Keep an open mind and a foot in several camps if you can.
3. Collective wisdom. The human collective endeavour is what has brought us here, and we ignore it at our peril. A majority saying the same thing doesn’t mean conspiracy, it means consensus.

There is much to be said for safety in numbers and following the crowd. Yes, it’s boring, but it’s usually safe, and often only small tweaks are needed to make it perfect.

But most of all, ask a trusted professional about it. There isn’t much to lose. You’ll usually find that we’re quite happy for you to continue, just with a bit of non-judgemental no-high-horses advice.

After all, you asked!

Have something to add? Comments (if open) will appear within 24 hours.
By Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud, a vet in Adelaide, Australia. Meet his team here.

I support many owners who feed homemade and raw diets, and I try to practise evidence-based healthcare. Therefore, a statistic like this deserves a closer look.

Why Are Dog Cancer Diets So Common?

In the face of a cancer diagnosis, most dog owners very quickly come across strong dietary advice online. Many vets don’t offer any other suggestions so if there’s no harm, it seems logical to try.

Plus, there are sound theoretical reasons why dogs with cancer should be fed differently.

The two most common approaches are described below. Afterwards, I’ll add my views on supplements, and finally come up with a diet recommendation.

Low Carbohydrate Cancer Diets

It’s been known for 100 years that cancer cells preferentially convert glucose into lactic acid even when other fuels are available. This is called the Warburg Effect.

This forms the basis of the most common type of anti-cancer diet. Here, we attempt to starve cancer cells of their food source by depriving the body of carbohydrates.

While good in theory, the problem with these diets is gluconeogenesis. This is where the liver takes proteins and converts them back into glucose in order to maintain blood levels. After all, the brain’s only fuel source is glucose, and without it we go into a coma.

This unavoidable process appears to greatly reduce the efficacy of low carbohydrate diets. So while it’s possible that low carb diets may slow cancer, so far we cannot see any evidence via increased or prolonged survival rates.

Ketogenic Cancer Diets

The ketogenic diet is an ultra-low carbohydrate diet where the majority of the calories come from fats. Often this is by the addition of coconut oil. The aim here is to make cancer cells more vulnerable to other treatments.

There is some low grade evidence of efficacy in humans, but significant concerns exist for dogs. This is because dogs do not tolerate high fat diets well. Pancreatitis, whether obvious or not, is likely to be very common in dogs on ketogenic diets.

For this reason, they cannot be recommended.

Cancer Diet Supplements

There are two diet supplements with some degree of evidence.

The first is fish oil, and especially its omega fatty acids DHA and EPA. Generally speaking, muscle wastage in various diseases can be partly alleviated by the addition of EFAs. Therefore, doses of 40mg/kg EPA and 25mg/kg DHA are often recommended for dogs with cancer.

Once again, care must be taken not to induce pancreatitis.

The second supplement is a polysaccharide extract of Turkeytail mushrooms, also called Trametes versicolor or Coriolus versicolor. In a very small pilot study, the ‘I’m-Yunity’ product delayed the progression of haemangiosarcoma metastases and appeared to extend survival time.

Other supplement benefits are currently unknown. These include cucurmin or turmeric, CBD, yunnan baiyao, Vitamin D, glutamine, green tea, Astragalus, melatonin, and probiotics. S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) and silybin (milk thistle extract) are two liver support compounds that may be useful in alleviating some of the harmful effects of chemotherapy.

Negative Effects Of Cancer Diets

I also want you to consider ways that dog cancer diets can cause harm. Here are some examples:

1. They may change the taste of the food and therefore reduce food intake right when we need it. This is especially true for some supplements such as turmeric.
2. Many homemade diets and recipes promoted online are severely unbalanced. Now is not the time to be nutrient deprived. The graphic below shows an analysis we did of a widely advertised cancer diet for dogs.
3. Some supplements may actively counteract cancer treatments. A good theoretical example is antioxidants which may reduce oxidative injury to cancer cells in chemotherapy.
4. Major diet change in dogs is often associated with gastrointestinal upsets.

What Is The Best Cancer Diet?

In selecting foods for dogs with cancer, we should always follow the principle, “first, do no harm”.

I’m agnostic on clients who choose to use low carbohydrate diets as long as the dog tolerates them and the diet has been properly balanced. This is almost never true for diets available online, but can be done with the help of a veterinary nutritionist.

However, it will disappoint many people to hear that if I had a dog with cancer, I would not change the diet substantially. Food choice is unlikely to alter the course of the disease, but what will is poor nutrition or poor food intake.

I would add omega-3 at the doses mentioned earlier, and I would certainly investigate Turkeytail extract if the cancer I was fighting was prone to metastasis. This is something you could talk over with your vet but great care would be needed to find a reputable source.

How Do We Explain Miracle Cures?

Over my long career I have seen many dogs survive cancer in a way that seemed miraculous. But like everything in life, once you dig deeper, it’s not so simple.

The ‘miracle cures’ that I have seen were all the result of an initial misdiagnosis caused by the first vet not taking a biopsy. Hemangiosarcoma and osteosarcoma in particular are very hard to prove without sending samples away.

Additionally, as I mentioned under mast cell tumours, many cancers behave unpredictably. Some can appear to go into remission, even if untreated. Others don’t grow back even when they aren’t all removed.

A Realistic View?

I’m not going to criticise you for trying a new diet if your dog develops cancer. I just don’t want you to be disappointed. This comes by understanding that all we can hope to do is delay the inevitable.

What about food as a cause of cancer? Here we are on even shakier ground. The main reason that cancer is twice as common in dogs as humans appears to be genes, not diet.

Maintenance of muscle mass is vital in late stage cancer. This is probably the most important effect of the right diet together with moderate exercise. If you can achieve this without sacrificing nutrition or health, your dog’s remaining time should be as high in quality as you can make it.

Whatever diet you choose!

Have something to add? Comments (if open) will appear within 24 hours.
By Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud, a vet in Adelaide, Australia. Meet his team here.

References

Bianco, A. V., Abood, S., Mutsaers, A., Woods, J. P., Coe, J. B., & Verbrugghe, A. (2020). Unconventional diets and nutritional supplements are more common in dogs with cancer compared to healthy dogs: An online global survey of 345 dog owners. Veterinary and comparative oncology, 18(4), 706-717

Brown, D. C., & Reetz, J. (2012). Single agent polysaccharopeptide delays metastases and improves survival in naturally occurring hemangiosarcoma. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2012

Weber, D. D., Aminzadeh-Gohari, S., Tulipan, J., Catalano, L., Feichtinger, R. G., & Kofler, B. (2020). Ketogenic diet in the treatment of cancer–where do we stand?. Molecular metabolism, 33, 102-121