What is the Holistic Approach?

Holistic pet care is rising in popularity as a total body wellness for your pets. For those of us not well versed in the holistic approach, what exactly is this?

In simple terms (since that's how I think) the holistic approach for your dog or cat is simply - considering the whole pet, how they would function in the wild, natural, chemical free, mimicking how they would find food and nutrients on their own.

What would your dog eat if they were not feed the food you give them every day? Now compare this to what they are getting? Is this healthy for them? What are their dietary requirements beyond the standard protein, vitamins, and nutrients?

Most animals' domesticated diets don't even come close to their wild counterparts. They may (or may not) be nutritionally sound, but some ingredients may go against thousands (or millions) of years of evolution, simply because there is no way a dog would eat corn meal in the real world in the wild.

The holistic approach attempts to take into consideration what the natural fit for your pet would be, and to as closely as possible mimic that "natural setting". Now, if you stop to think about what that means, this can be extremely hard to give them that type of diet while ensuring they maintain their nutritional balance. There are also varying degrees that people can take this concept. For instance, people started considering the "in the raw" diet for their pets after the Menu Foods scare. They would cook meat for their pets at home, portion it out, and refrigerate the unused portions.

The main problem with the "cook-it-yourself" method is that most people simply don't have the time to do this every week. There are a number of good dog food brands out there that try and fill this niche. Taste of the Wild, Solid Gold Holistique, Canidae - all have foods that better fills this role.

I think most people fall in the middle somewhere in that they understand the concept, but need products that help them get "as close as possible" without driving yourself psychotic over it. There is a short list of things you can avoid to maximize benefit and minimize your effort level.

Some things to avoid:

Soy, Corn Flour, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Artificial Colors and Flavors, Rendered Meat Products, Meat By-products, Meals (as in chicken or beef meal), chemicals you cannot pronounce.

This is a common sense list. I'm sure there are more things you could avoid. Personally, I think there can be subtle side effects to eating meats that require such harsh chemicals to counteract weeks of unrefrigerated biological contamination. Studies show that even though bacterialogicals might be dead, their "dead bodies" are not completely benign.

Ingredients that I look for are:

Good sources of protein (Beef, Fish, Bison, Lamb), all natural ingredients I can pronounce, real vegetables - not bright colored shapes to look like vegetables, things that would make sense to be in a dogs diet.

So few people even look at the ingredients of their dog's food. Maybe they are afraid or just don't want to know.