Ahh, chicken soup! Doesn’t it bring up the fondest memories of someone making you soup when you were ill?

Turns out soups are the best way to give the digestive system a break while the body is healing. They truly are “Food as Medicine.” Doctors of Chinese Medicine know this, and recommend soups and stews for deficient stomach and spleen chi. Ayurvedic doctors recommend kitcheree for babies, the elderly, and those detoxing.

Soup, for our animals, you ask? Don’t holistic vets always recommend raw food?

Well, read on…

Think of the stomach as a big cauldron, a living soup pot. Everything added to the cauldron must be warmed, then further broken down using stomach acids and enzymes.

Everything that enters the stomach must be heated to body temperature (98.6 for humans, 101.5 for dogs/cats) to start the “cooking” process of digestion. It takes a lot of energy to heat up the pot and break down the food.

As youngsters, we easily make hydrochloric acid and enzymes to accomplish this. As we age, the breaking-down process becomes more difficult. Cooking our food and/or adding digestive enzymes can go a long way to helping the process.

Fresh food for dogs and cats is great; but, sometimes our pets need a little help with an easy-to-digest diet.

Our mothers and grandmothers knew that a homemade soup with chicken, veggies, and a starch is easy to digest, providing readily available nutrients for a sick grandchild. It is no different for our sick animals.

Raw foods are perfect when you are robust, healthy, and good at methodically chewing your food.

Raw foods are great for most animals unless the animal:

• has digestive issues
• is a very chilly by nature or from illness
• living in very cold conditions
• has cancer or other serious chronic disease.

These animals can be helped to jump-start the digestive process by eating cooked foods while they are ill.

This DOES NOT mean “death by crockpot!!!” I’m being very emphatic here because cooking food lightly does not mean cooking food until all the nutrients are killed. That is no different than buying canned or dry food. This is about fresh, wholesome ingredients, cooked slowly and gently to release nutrients and start the break-down of proteins making digestion and absorption easier.

There is a very distinct difference here: Overcooking destroys. Slight, light cooking enhances.

Long-term cooking works best for breaking down hard materials like seeds, grains, and bones.

Consider bone broth soup recipes for your dog or cat.

Bone broth is an extended version of our chicken or beef soup. The primary difference is the amount of time required to break down cartilage and bone, thereby releasing minerals and collagen into the broth.

Bone broth is a great option for feeding your pets in order to support:

• digestion
• bone and joint health
• post surgery
• skin, hair and eye health
• adrenal fatigue
• ADR (ain’t doing right)
• immune issues
• liver detoxification – just to name a few.

Our dogs and cats love bone broth. Pets can benefit from a soup fast with bone broth once a week. You can also add it to moisten their regular food or offer this easy-to-digest pet diet daily to support overall health.

In the FOOD THERAPY  FOR DOGS AND CATS, PART 1 Mini Course will continue our series on FEEDING FRESH we’ll cover the healing foods for:

• Diarrhea and Constipation – two sides of the same coin.
• Kidney disease and the real skinny on protein requirements.
• Seasonal foods to support vitality
• Handouts: Nutrient Sources, Safe Handling Procedures, Bibliography for other Fresh Feeding support books, websites and more…

Whatever your biggest concerns – your obstacles, worries and fears about feeding fresh food – we’ll cover them during the webinar series.

Over the last three decades I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of animals on Fresh Food shine brightly, live longer, and truly enjoy their food. You’ll get a kick out of their joy! I want to share what I’ve learned with you because Feeding Fresh is really SO easy and the benefits are so worth the effort!

If you’d like to dig deep into the fun of FEEDING FRESH for your dogs and cats click on this link and see the 3-part series on FEEDING FRESH FOR DOGS AND CATS: IT’S SO EASY AND FOOD THERAPY PART 1 AND 2.

If your dog or cat could choose their own food what would they choose?

Well, everyone knows the answer to this question, right?

They would likely choose fresh meat.

Okay, maybe you have a finicky cat who only wants canned or dry food; but, after an adjustment, period my guess is your cat would want fresh food. Would you expect a teenager dieting on hamburgers and pizza to get excited about a bowl of brown rice and veggies? Not likely.

If the evolutionary, natural default setting for a healthy diet for dogs and cats is fresh food, why do we give them the opposite?

Fear, expense, time – all of the above?

If dogs are omnivorous (as I do believe they are) and cats are obligate carnivores (it’s clear that they are), why are most commercial diets packaged, toxic “cardboard” with some meat flavoring? Oy vey! Remind me to cover this in the next Mini Course.

The idea of feeding fresh food to our dogs and cats lost favor last century when the doggie biscuit industry produced early iterations of dry kibble. Cats were not fed dry biscuits as they were left to their own devices to kill varmints – until recently.

Historical use of bran and wheat biscuits for dogs trace back to the late 1500’s in Europe. The early forms of kibble food traveled across the Big Pond, from England to the US, morphing into the present-day Milk Bone treats. I’m not kidding! Always convenient, but, never a health food, both then and now. Nothing has changed for the poor dogs of long ago, and, more recently, for our cats.

Are the advertisements of whole food, grain-free, artisanal dog and cat foods true or hyperbole? These marketing themes claim the value of a complete, wholesome diet with human grade, real-food ingredients; but, the reality is that most of their ingredients are far from clean, nutritious, or “whole.”

The good news is you can jump over all of this nonsense and simultaneously improve the longevity, health and vitality of your animal!

Make your own homemade raw food recipes for you dog or cat and see the difference for yourself.

It’s so easy! Seriously! To make this recipe you’ll need a little education, a smidgen of courage, and the desire to build a foundation of health with homemade food for your dog or cat. Top it off with the love you have for your animals, and you’ll see the results quickly by the way your animals look, feel, smell, and act!

If you aren’t already feeding fresh food to your cat or dog, what’s stopping you? If you are, maybe you need some new ideas or a refresher course. In my mini course FEEDING FRESH: IT’S SO EASY! we’ll cover the following topics:

• Why and how our in-home carnivores were evolved to handle all sorts of foods, including fresh meat, bones, tripe, veggies, fruits, and more
  • Clear information about the special anatomy and physiology of your dog or cat
• Health benefits you should expect to see, feel, and sense in your animals
• Two simple recipes to get you started
• How to transition your pet to the best homemade raw food diet
• Carnivore, vegetarian, vegan – what’s right?!

If you’d like to learn more about feeding your dog or cat a fresh, homemade diet, check out my 3 part mini course series on FEEDING FRESH.

I’ve taught hundreds of folks how to Feed Fresh food, it’s really So Easy. Your animals will thank you for it!