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If your dog is having skin problems, stop sticking to the same old food!

January 20, 2017 By Sunny Lim

One of the easiest way to improve your dog’s skin allergies.

You may already know that one of the best ways to get rid of your pet’s skin problems is through a diet change.

And I agree it’s easier said than done, even if your dog’s perfectly fine.

I still remember being in the pet shop for the first time, tasked to buy dried dog food for my Maltese, I was confronted with a dozen of different brands of kibbles (thankfully I was in a smaller pet shop).

Looking through all the brands, I spent nearly an hour in the shop, and it was exhausting trying to compare the minute differences.

In the end, I went for something that’s within my mid-range budget, with the longest ingredients list. I paid for the food and walked out of the store with a spring in my step, still feeling proud that I’ve unlocked the ‘Savvy Shopper’ achievement – getting the most stuff for the least price possible.

I’m sure you have had the same experience, and these days, it seems more challenging.

“If you can’t convince them, confuse them.”

Don’t you think that the adage is even more pronounced in recent times? I was shopping for bedsheets and every year they seem to be able to attach new terms to similar products – Pima, Sateen, Jacquard, Maillard (Just kidding, but who knows?).

It’s not just daily products. I’m even having problems keeping up with all the new pet products that are in the market and finding myself figuring out what’s good and what’s not.

Why do I bother? It’s because a right diet is the best way to help owner with their dog’s health issues – especially skin problems.

The good news is that no matter how fancy dog food gets, the fundamentals never change.

Back to the basics

I’ve helped many owners with their dog’s skin problems and here are three tips I always share that will make things easier and increase your odds of success.

Choose a good food
Fewer ingredients means lesser chance of allergies
Every dog is different. Try until you succeed

1. Choose A Good Food

No one can promise you a brand that will solve your dog’s skin problems. You can only increase the odds by selecting a good quality food.

But what does it mean by good quality?

Given the amount of competition going on, there’s a lot of confusion.

Here’s are some tips I would like to offer you:

To oversimplify things a little, identify the brands that are being sold in supermarkets and stay away.
There are some brands which prices are suspiciously low (costs as little as supermarket brands).
Check if ingredients are specific.
Corn should preferably be avoided.
Avoid products that uses BHT or BHA as preservatives.
Don’t get fooled by fancy ingredients.

Here’s the detailed explanation on why supermarket brands are inferior.

However, good quality food doesn’t need to cost you an arm, neither does it mean having a long list of fanciful ingredients. The items in the ingredients list are arranged in order of weight, so the first few ingredients, usually meat and carbohydrates, makes up the bulk of the kibble.

In some brands, ingredients are ambiguous. Beware if the manufacturer uses terms like ‘Meat meal’, ‘Animal fat’ or ‘Poultry fat’. Who knows what meat or animals they’ve used.

Secondly, although corn seems like something healthy, there’s a long controversy behind them. Not only because they are cheap, but it’s also mostly genetically modified. I can’t go into them right now, but manufacturers aren’t short of alternatives, neither will you find yourself short of choices.

As for BHT and BHA, they are preservatives that are linked to caused cancer. Common natural alternatives include Tocopherols (Vitamin E) or rosemary extract.

Don’t be fooled

Ingredients in the middle and end of the list make up only a tiny amount of the food. To know if the celery and spinach are merely dusting on a plate, identify where the animal fat is listed.

www.wag.com — Can you see where ‘Poultry Fat’ is highlighted? Ingredients listed after that may only be in tiny quantities.

The reason is that kibbles are usually sprayed with a layer of animals fats to increase its palatability and it’s listed in the first few ingredients. You surely don’t see kibbles dripping in fat, so the ingredients listed after that is like salt and pepper on your steak.

Action Steps:

Stay away from kibbles with the following ingredients:
- Unspecified sources of ingredients e.g. Meat/poultry meal
- Chemical preservatives (BHA / BHT)
- Corn
- Flavoring and coloring
If you see the brand at a supermarket, don’t buy it.
If it’s way cheaper than other brands, don’t buy it.

2. Fewer Ingredients Means Lesser Chance of Allergies

Harmless as some ingredients may seem, we have no idea what your pet is allergic to. Even though allergy test will give you a good idea of the kind of food to stay away from, the results can be inconclusive.

That’s the reason why if your dog is suffering from allergies, a fail-safe, though tedious way, is to put your dog on an exclusion diet, where the dog is fed with only a few variety of ingredients and slowly introducing other ingredients to observe the body’s response to them.

Not everything that’s good for us will benefit your pet.

We love to know that we’re feeding nutritious herbs, fruits and vegetables when choosing kibbles for our furry friends, but as mentioned earlier, they’re just not available in substantial quantities to provide any benefit.

Not only that, the additional ingredients may be the reason behind your pet’s allergies.

However, rarely do dogs have such severe allergies that they need to go through the hassles of an exclusion diet. Many dogs that I’ve worked with is able to see improvements after changing to kibbles with limited ingredients.

Dog food with limited ingredients usually comprises of a single meat protein, a few carbohydrate source and a few varieties of vegetables and will help reduce the odds of exposing your dogs to allergens (some brands have 10 – 20 different types of fruits and vegetables in their kibbles!).

If you see an improvement, then you may add in some healthy, low allergy risk foods if you wish, adding in one new ingredient every week. Yogurt, kefir, steamed or pureed leafy vegetables are great choices, but beware of human food that’s toxic to dogs.

Action Steps:

Put your pet on a limited ingredient diet first, which also means no treats :(
Add one new ingredient every week and observe if your dog’s skin acts up
If your dog seems to be allergic to a particular ingredient, remove it.

3. Every dog is different. Try until you succeed.

Although it’s common to see improvements on your first diet change, some dogs may require you to switch around a few brands.

Here are some more tips on how to do that:

Do your own evaluation. Don’t depend on hearsay.

Don’t have preconceived notion of certain ingredients if you haven’t done allergen tests. Doesn’t mean chicken is bad or your dog has to go grain-free. Who knows if your dog is allergic to potatoes instead? For example, my dog’s allergic to lamb and fish but not chicken. Besides, chicken formulas are still very popular with pet owners.

It doesn’t mean that what people say is bad, will be bad, including me.

Price is not an indication of quality.

An iPhone is more expensive than most smartphones, but it doesn’t mean that it’s the best. It depends on what the user needs and what they’re comfortable with.

It’s the same for dog food. Although prices can vary by quite a bit, brands that you can find in supermarket will be much cheaper. On the other end of the spectrum, commercial raw diets are usually the most expensive, because of the high meat content. Most premium kibble brands are priced in the middle.

At the end of the day, it still depends on what your dog’s requirements are. If it’s sensitive to a high protein/high meat content diet, feeding your dog expensive high protein diets is only going to make matters worse.

Be willing to try everything.

Try until you succeed. Let your creativity flow and trust yourself. After all, you’re spending most time with your dog and trust yourself to evaluate if whatever you’re doing is working or not. Here are some options you can try:

Canned food
Home cooked food
Commercial raw diets
Home prepared raw diets
Different protein, exotic protein if need be
Carbohydrates free (no sweet or starchy vegetables like potatoes, carrots, yam etc.)
Go vegetarian if necessary.

If you don’t try you’ll never know. Good luck!

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” – René Descartes

Summary

We are what we put into our mouth and the same applies to your dog. The body has an amazing ability to heal itself and our job is to give the body what it needs to heal. Good quality food nurtures the body, and will help to prevent illnesses by strengthening the immune system.

However, most of the time we don’t know what’s causing our dog’s allergies. So start with as little as possible and work up from there. The fruits and vegetables in dog food are usually in tiny quantities and may be the cause of your dog’s allergic reactions.

Finally, don’t give up just because changing one brand doesn’t help. I’ve helped so many owners with their dog’s skin problems and they’ve always been patient and strict with the program. Try until you see results.

Up Next

Now that you’ve learnt about how to utilize diet change to improve your dog’s skin problem, we’ll look at some of the jargons used by pet food. I’d also give my recommendations on what you should look out for in the diet to increase your odds of solving your dog’s skin problems.

P.S. If you find this article useful, remember to share!

Finally, there are too many dogs suffering from skin allergies and more dog owners need to know about more natural and lasting alternatives to solving skin problems. You can help! On behalf of all the dogs in the world, Thank you!

Are premium pet food worth their price?

June 22, 2015 By Sunny Lim

I believe if you have had a pet with skin problems, you would have experienced a time when you went to a vet or pet shop and they tried to push you expensive prescription diet or top of the line gourmet hand cooked free range lamb with sturgeon caviar promising to be the end all and cure all for your pet’s skin problems. Well, did it?

My guess would be most probably no. If it did however, you have no idea how lucky you are to find a particular brand of food that’s suitable for your pet’s condition (or why did it have to be the most expensive one?!). But I still know of many pet owners who chooses to stick to one particular brand even though they are not seeing significant results.

So then, is expensive food really better? The short answer is: Of course!

Reason? Is organic peanut butter better than Skippy’s? Of course! You’d get less pesticides and all of the chemicals that we don’t want, all for a few pennies more in exchange for good health, why not?

But is fancy organic peanut butter cultivated from virgin volcanic soil good for people with nut allergy?

How good a product is still has to depend whether it’s going to do any good for the body.

So how are we going to determine whether it’s going to provide the benefits? To answer this, we have to first ask what is primary result I want from the food? If you don’t you’re going to be persuaded into buying something you don’t need and most times, having more creates more problems. We’ll come to that later.

So what are some of the primary objectives you can have when choosing a food? Are you looking for any specific ingredients? Is it because your pets are fussy eaters? Skin issues? Underweight? Overweight? Kidney/Liver issues?

What’s your budget?

Just like buying a new phone, if we don’t know what’s the most important function to us, we’ll tend to go for the one that has everything and everything we don’t need (me included).

So once you have your primary objective identified, it’ll be so much easier for you and whoever is serving you.

And I always tell my customers that if they have been doing a lot of trial and error with different food, supplements and products, my good guess is that they already know what works and what doesn’t. Use your gut and trust yourself rather than what people tell you.

For me, even though something didn’t work out the first time, I’d still try two more times with different variations before I confirm its suitability.

But don’t go around changing your pet’s food every time it refuses to eat the same food. If you know they are fussy eaters, catering to their preferences may do them more disservice in the long run. Proper behavioral training is the solution to this issue.

How do manufacturers determine their price?

Luckily for pet food, where people buy it out of necessity than as a luxury, is has not reached a stage where manufacturers are charging crazy prices to position themselves as a premium brand. Of course there are brands that can give you more value in terms of the ingredients for the same price and you will learn how to choose one in this article.

But to simplify things, a $20 bag of food is not going to be of the same quality and as nutritious as a $60 bag of food even if they have the exact nutritional levels.

Why? First up, just take protein for example, I can take a whole bunch of hair, nails and skin of animals, grind them up and make them into kibbles and they will show a good level of protein, well, because they are protein.

Secondly, meat safe for human consumption will surely be more expensive than meat taken from ground up male chicks and rejects.

As for the fancy list of supplements, herbs and botanical? You probably can ask the manufacturers how many milligrams are added in a kilo. The amount is almost insignificant.

What should I look for?

If I have your attention up until now, you’d care enough to at least make sure that the food that goes into their mouth comes from the same carcass that goes into ours.

Fresh Ingredients: The definitions are confusing as there’s no regulation on the definition on the use of the word ‘Fresh’ and every brand seems to be using that now. But if the price is medium range and up, it usually is dependable.
Free range and antibiotics free: Although livestock are generally not slaughtered after their being administered with antibiotics, free range livestock especially from Australia and New Zealand have very low chances to be contaminated with antibiotics.
Suited for your pet’s activity level: If you aren’t working out, you don’t need protein shakes. If your pet is more laid back, giving him a high protein diet might do him more harm than good. Remember, less is more.

Secondly, ask around if you have friends whose pets are on raw diets.

Proponents of raw diets have been touting the benefits of feeding animals like cats and dogs on raw for a long time and it has only gained popularity over the last several years. From experience and research, putting pets on exclusively raw diets from young does produce sturdier bodies and less dental problems.

Let’s say you only have a small dog or cat under your care, commercial raw diets are generally affordable and I strongly suggest this option if you are able to allocate a monthly budget of around $70 – $100 for their food.

Watch out for these traps

Sometimes bigger companies have shareholder’s stomachs to fill: And as a result more money may go into the branding that into the quality of the food. Like buying Panadol versus any generic brand of paracetamol.
Long ingredients lists: Apart from being available in such small quantities that may not provide significant results, more ingredients means higher possibilities that something in the list is going to cause allergies.
Grain free: As long you’re buying kibbles, there’s still going to be carbohydrates in the form of potatoes, lentils, peas et cetera. It’s the only way to hold the kibbles together. Nothing wrong with grains or carbohydrates, just that increasingly, manufacturers are using the term grain free to charge a premium when the cost may potentially be the same.

Some brands have potatoes as their first ingredient, nothing wrong with that. Potatoes are 80% water and some well known brands are using dried potatoes so that they can appear lower down the ingredient’s list.

Take your money and get supplements instead

That’s right. Paired with the right food, supplements double up the benefits of proper nutrition and gives the body help it needs to heal and strengthen itself.

But nobody walks into GNC and grabs everything. For me, the gut is where I start because what isn’t absorbed is just expensive poop and piss. To enhance absorption I recommend digestive enzymes as well as probiotics – minimum. Not all our food is absorbed and diseases starts in the gut (and it starts in the mind for humans) and enzymes helps break down the food to increase the bio-availability of the nutrients and the probiotics protects the gut from harmful bacteria and yeast which if has the slightest chance, will cause your pets health to plunge into a vicious cycle.

Then if your budget allows, you could add in another one and rotate between supplements like krill oil, multi vitamins or spirulina to help reduce free radicals and boost the immune system.

As long as it works

At the end of the day, you’re a smart consumer. What really matters is that the food matches your primary objective. If you need a convenient food with the less hassle to provide them with the best benefits, then raw (and expensive) is the way to go. Contrary, finding a food that is agreeable to your pet immune system and taste buds relies on trial and error or with an exclusion diet plan.

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Do you have any tips or tricks for fussy eaters or have issues you’d like some advice on? Leave your comment below!

Are You The Overly Attached Owner?

January 24, 2015 By Sunny Lim

Does the thought of losing your pet cause your mood to go into a downward spiral and ruin an otherwise perfectly good day? Do you spend more time thinking and taking care of your pet than yourself?

Or is this you?

If you’ve answered ‘Yes’, good news is that you’re not Tin Man, but the not so good news is that you might be overly attached to your pet.

No, there’s nothing wrong with it. We all grieve when they’re gone, we all pamper them while they’re here. It’s natural. It’s what they do, and what they have that’s rare in humans that fills the emotional void and make us fall in love with them so deeply. Their unconditional love, no matter how little time we spend with them, how we look when we put on extra weight, their affection (except Mari-kun), their willingness to listen our complaints makes them the perfect companion.

Animals And Their Wizardry

However, it’s also their almost perfect character (‘almost’ because they have the innate ability to do the dumbest things) which led many into a trap.

Although a pet can bring about great therapeutic healing as seen in therapy dogs, we need to be honest with ourselves if we can deal with the fact that most animals will leave this place before we do. It can even be a dangerous event if someone is already suffering from mental illness. Even to most people, a pet is more than just a furry companion – they can even mean more than a significant other or family members.

Too Much Of A Good Thing Makes Me Sick, Especially If The Good Thing Is Chocolate

Most people I know take the loss of their pet in stride, especially pets who died of old age. But life, not only is it fragile, the outcomes of daily events – big and small, is beyond our control. How many times have you bought someone a gift but only to get an awkward smile when they opened it up?

It’s not about being indifferent, but knowing where to draw the line. Water and nutrients are essential for the growth of a plant, give it too much, it dies. Same goes for many things in life.

Pets are readily conditioned by positive things, they’ll soon know that all they need to do to get more treats and attention is to beg for it. Not only does it create obesity, anxiety and stress issues, having an unhealthy body and mind will manifest into in turn create more problems.

It’s A Matter Of Personal Reflection

It’s difficult finding the balance as most pet owners are either overly attached or nonchalant, both of which will create the same behavioral and health issues.

So in my opinion, only when we understand boundaries, of what’s expected of our pets (e.g. rules they need to abide), but also what’s expected of us – logically evaluating our pet’s best interests, will we be able to enjoy a healthy relationship.

How to choose the proper pet food

June 6, 2014 By Sunny Lim

So often I have customers coming in clueless about what brands of pet food to choose, often confused by the myriad of brands available and conflicting feedback from people.

Many may disagree with me but what matters most is that your pet has a healthy appetite and eats willingly anything they’re not allergic to, given at the right proportion. Animals who usually remains healthy and lives until a ripe old age seems to be fed on a good variety of food rather than a strict diet.

Although there are people who feed their dogs low to mid range kibbles all their lives and never suffered from anything serious, it’s akin to saying that there are many healthy old people who still smoke cigarettes at the age of 80 and therefore tobacco does you no harm.

Better diets will improve lives

Ask and look around and you’ll see that there are more animals developing physiological and psychological problems than before. This is because many pure bred pets we see today are badly bred from puppy mills – Animals with character flaws like aggression or genetic problems are allowed to breed indiscreetly. Also, to reduce operating costs, most are poorly nourished and as a result, pets you find in pet shops have not benefited from a healthy, wholesome head start which is so critical for their future development.

But even if they’re born with problems, a proper diet will help make up for the poor start and rebuild their immune system.

Superficial issues always surface because of internal imbalances. With a healthier diet, most obvious signs you would see if your pet is responding well to the diet is better skin, brighter eyes, cleaner ears and thicker hair. But how does one define what’s good and not? You’ve seen categories like Active, Fit, Senior, Breed Specific Diets, Limited Ingredients, Grain Free, Hypoallergenic Diets, BARF – why do they need these much differentiation and which one to choose?

To me, where and how they source their raw materials and what they put in it is more important than what they’re called and how much they cost.

My Criteria

It doesn’t mean that the longer the ingredients list the better the product is. Let me give you a simple example: Most supplements requires you to take one to two tablets in order to achieve the right dosage. So lets just say if we have a meal replacement product that has all the essential nutrients, multivitamins, a correct proportion of of vegetables and fruits, supplements to improve joint health, digestive health, an array of herbs to improve general well-being, you’ll be looking at a huge meal to consume everything at the right dosage. That said, it doesn’t mean that a product with a long ingredient list is bull, but rather, you shouldn’t discount a product just because it has limited ingredients.

Secondly, wondered why so many people realized that feeding their pets chicken would result in allergic reactions? Although there isn’t a definitive answer yet, but a chicken usually takes 4 months to mature naturally but only a month in modern farms. How it’s being altered to achieve that and I do not know, but the amount of antibiotics used on livestock is ridiculous.

All these alterations made to produce weakens the body and at the same time strengthens bacteria and viruses. And to put the body back in balance, choose meat produce that has been sourced from responsible farms. Everybody can add fancy stuff inside their diets and boast about optimal levels of protein etc, but if the quality of the product is questionable, you’re just be feeding your pets optimal levels of poison.

Other things to note

There has been arguments if a high protein diet could lead to or worsen kidney diseases and raise uric acid level as a result of protein metabolism. My simple suggestion is to stay on the safe side and choose a formula that has a protein level around 30-35%. Besides, more protein is not an indication that it’s a good product! Our fingernails, hair, skin are all protein, but it ain’t good sources isn’t it? The best way to prevent that and many other illnesses, is to make sure that your pet has enough water so that the body has enough fluids to flush kidney stone forming substances and other toxins out from the body.

Is is also imperative that your pet has enough exercise as it will help the body utilize the nutrients and functioning well especially with a high nutrient diet. Goodness unspent and not utilized will do more harm than good.

Any particular brands that I should choose?

I know you’re waiting for this and the short answer is: No. But I do offer some brands I personally think that are not bad and for different budgets.

If you’re here reading this, then you have a good idea that education is the key to take good care for our body and mind. Same goes for food that nourishes your pet. Rather than spending hours on Zalora choosing that perfect dress, take half an hour, just go through some of the websites of brands that has crossed your mind. Don’t bother reading about their manufacturing process and what they put inside because if we are talking about better brands, most of them doesn’t differ much from each other.

Rather, find out where they have sourced their food from. But in all honesty, food manufacturers, be it food for personal consumption or for pets, can say so much, yet mean so little. Like politicians, most of the time labels are just pure confusing.

Since most pet foods are from the United States, here are some of the commonly used food labeling and what they really mean.

Therefore, as mentioned in the beginning, it’s always a good idea to provide variety in one’s diet. Like how different vegetables provide different vitamins, different pet foods brands are formulated differently and provide different amounts of nutrients. Staying with one brand or formula may cause deficiency in the long run.

So change around every few months, how often really depends on the individual pet. For a fussy eater, rotating food when you have not managed its choosy behavior may make their habits worse.

My next article will be on raw diets if you have the time and want the best for your pets.

How buying a pet is funding barbaric acts

November 16, 2013 By Sunny Lim

China putting live animals in a bag for sale — Her smile makes me sick

You might have heard about irresponsible vendors in China putting live animals in air tight bags and selling them as trinkets. >If you haven’t, read about them here.<

The reason this barbaric act exists, together with illegal pet trade, poaching and irresponsible pet farming, all boils down to consumer demand.

The moment someone carries that cute little puppy home from behind the glass case of the pet shop, it’s encouraging breeders to churn out puppies, as many as they can, at the lowest cost they can manage. What if there are syndicates who are forcing women to give birth over and over just to sell their babies? Worse still, to maximize profits, the women are forced to live in inhumane conditions. Heinous? So what makes the pet industry different? Just because they are animals?

But that’s not all. Who could resist infant mammals? Even baby turtles are cute. Everyone wants to bring them home, giving rise to impulse buying. As a result, many pets are not well taken care of beyond their infant stage. Why? Because it suddenly occurred to the owners that taking care of a living thing is hard work. Because that puppy isn’t cute anymore. Because it has developed behavioral problems and has gotten out of hand. And the most frustrating reason of them all, “Because Fido is old and we don’t want to see him die.” Bollocks.

Every month, SCPA Singapore alone takes in 300 animals which are unwanted by their owners.

From this culture of irresponsible buying and breeding, created the need for another undesirable activity: Euthanasia.

Even with all the rescue efforts going on and kindhearted people doing what they can to give pets a second chance, there’s still more strays, abandoned animals and animals scheduled to be euthanized than what rescue groups can handle.

There are animals being put down everyday, healthy, unhealthy, their lives forcefully taken against their will. And I’d rather lose my job as a groomer because there isn’t enough furry dogs for me to groom, than to see breeders churn out puppies without a care in the world and irresponsible owners leaving their pets in a terrible state. The same pet who has given the perpetrators 100% of their love.

Seriously though, there’s so much advantages to adopting. First, it feels good giving animals a second chance to live. Secondly, because most of them have not experienced excessive pampering, they’re usually much calmer and well-behaved. And since most animals up for adoption is in their adulthood, what you see is what you get. Plus so much more!

If long-term commitment is not for you, why not try fostering? It’s the practice of temporarily taking care of the animals before they find a permanent home.

Of course, the government too need to understand and allow larger breed of dogs in HDB flats.

There is much work to be done so please help to share this around and encourage people to adopt. The animals need your help. Even if you can’t adopt, your help in disseminating this message may have already help an animal on death row.

Finally, let’s take one last moment to digest this picture from the video above. This puppy was being put down right after the photo shoot was done. Look them in the eye. Do they deserve this?

1. Choose A Good Food

2. Fewer Ingredients Means Lesser Chance of Allergies

3. Every dog is different. Try until you succeed.

Summary

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