by Dr Greg on August 31, 2009
Doctor and patient discuss the surgery.
This last Sunday–a hot summer day here in Gilroy, California–my nephew invited me to a BBQ at his home. I love enjoying a pool on these late August and September; it actually makes the heat okay. Just as I walked in the door, and before I could even grab a beer and go sit by the pool, Steve called me over to check out his 40-year-old parrot, Merlin.
Merlin’s rear toe was hanging by a thread of skin, but there was little to no bleeding. In fact, this was the joint he had [click to continue…]
by Dr Greg on August 29, 2009
Vaccines are an important part of good pet healthcare. My clients regularly ask me questions about vaccinating their dogs and puppies. And actually there are some common themes, so I thought I’d share my answers with my Dog Dish Diet readers.
What is a vaccine and how does it work? Vaccines are made of millions of “inactivated” or changed viruses that prepare the immune system for the “real thing” and chemicals (adjuvants) that further stimulate the immune system to react. The more the body reacts, the better the protection. However, in [click to continue…]
by Dr Greg on August 22, 2009
Wouldn’t it be great to have a sense of smell like dogs do? You could tell where family members have been, and who they have been with by the odors left on their clothes. In fact, if you were lost you might be able to “smell” your way home by the odors of plants, trees, or activities present in your neighborhood. Dogs rely on their sense of smell as much as their owners rely on vision for [click to continue…]
by Dr Greg on August 19, 2009
My name is Greg Martinez, DVM, and I am a recovering kibble-aholic. I assumed like so many of my colleagues that a dog’s health was assured if you fed a “complete 
and balanced” dog food. I thought that most kibbles were good as long as they contained the right percentages of recommended nutrients. I was proud, too, that I was able to recommend different kibble diets that were developed by a veterinarian (Mark Morris, PhD, DVM) in [click to continue…]
by Dr Greg on August 14, 2009
As Lonna and I wrap up a marvelous vacation in the Azores and enjoy the days
we’ve spent together with good friends, it’s time again to focus on the business of dogs and their diets.
Actually, the subject is never completely out of my mind. More than a week ago I went into a pet shop in Lisbon and saw that Royal Canin dry dog food was on display. One rabbit hunter here (that is the only thing to hunt) feeds his 13 dogs Purina dry dog food that he buys from the US military base here.
Here in Angra, a small town, on the island of Terceira there are French Briards, German Shepherds, Boxers and various crosses standing on every wall guarding their territory. They are the alarm [click to continue…]
by Dr Greg on August 12, 2009
Hmmmm. Should I indulge myself in that triple-layer chocolate decadence torte (it looks so good) or should I be good and have chicken-broccoli-shitake mushroom stirfry with a side of brown rice. Yeah, I know it’s a tough decision. But at least we have a choice.
Our pets, however, don’t have nearly the freedom. Oh they can sit by the dinner table and seemingly watch an imaginary tennis match as their eyes track back and forth between our mouth and our plate. They can sit and stare at the cabinet where we keep the treats. And occasionally they get away from us and go outside and eat something incredibly disgusting. Still their options are limited. And at mealtime, we dole out the food. In short, our dogs are what we MAKE them eat.
And that’s why I wrote Dr. Greg’s Dog Dish Diet: Sensible Nutrition for Your Dog’s Health. My goal is to arm YOU–every pet owner in America (the world?)–with the simple steps to selecting and serving your dog with the most nutritious food possible. There [click to continue…]
by Dr Greg on August 11, 2009
In his book,”In Defense of Food,” Michael Pullan suggests that the “western diet” (high carb, high saturated fat, low omega fat, low antioxidants) caused many native populations to get ill once they adopted that way of eating.
Fast food and packaged food in place of native diets led to health problems in native Aborigines, Hawaiians, and Japanese popuations that changed their tried-and-true eating habits passed down from generation to generation over thousands of years.
Isn’t that similiar to the high-carb, low-fat, commercial, dog food ingredients that we have forced on a native canine population that had been eating a certain diet for thousands upon thousands of years. Now it seems that our dogs are suffering from more obesity, arthritis, immune diseases, and cancer just like other native populations of humans that changed their diet.
The great thing is, every diet can be changed easily and economically using by reading the label for ingredients, and adding healthy human food and oils.In Dog Dog Dish Diet: Sensible Nutrition for Your Dog’s Health I try to reverse the affects of the commercial diets on some individuals that cannot tolerate them. Bone Appetit!
by Dr Greg on August 9, 2009
When I first came up with the idea for my book, I thought I’d call it Dog Dish Blues because that’s exactly what so many of my patients (and my own dogs) have had from eating the wrong food. Dog Dish Blues is the perfect name for this syndrome, if you will: dry, itchy skin; red, goopy ears; upset stomach; all manner of bowel disorders; and much, much more. Any one of these ailments is most definitely cause for the blues…both for dog and owner.
By my own count, at least six of the Veterinary Pet Insurance Top 10 ailments as listed have a nutritional common denominator and may be caused by diet. Furthermore, I can tell you that in our own practice at Gilroy Veterinary Hospital fully one third of visits involve a Top 10 condition that can become chronic (meaning that the same symptoms come back several times after treatment).
I didn’t end up calling the book Dog Dish Blues because I wanted to focus on the benefits of nutritional treatment instead. And so, the book I wrote is called Dr. Greg’s Dog Dish Diet: Sensible Nutrition for Your Dog’s Health. Our success treating 100s of dogs is most encouraging. Our countdown to publication continues. Bone Appetit.
by Dr Greg on August 8, 2009
Cousin Strider's gone to pot! Yeah, what do you suppose he's eating these days?
One of my great concerns is that the foods we are feeding our dogs today are so far removed from the diet of both wolves and the early ancestors of our dogs. It’s not just the fact that animals in the wild survive on a natural diet of game, berries and whatever they can forage, it’s the ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates that’s way off. In Dr. Greg’s Dog Dish Diet: Sensible Nutrition for Your Dog’s Health, I explain the difference between the typical commercial diet and the natural wolf diet…and what this should tell us about feeding our dogs. I use what I know as a vet (30 years in practice), a lifelong dog owner and as a student of wolves’ natural diet to suggest simple but important changes you can make in your own dog’s diet. I feel certain that NOT feeding our dogs’ inner wolf is the source of a lot of problems, ranging from dry, itchy skin and red, gooey ears to upset stomach and bowel disorders…and much more that I go into in the Dog Dish Diet. (By the way, these illustrations are by Caleb Laughlin and appear in the book.) Bone Appetit!
by Dr Greg on August 7, 2009
I worked on my manuscript for Dr. Greg’s Dog Dish Diet: Sensible Nutrition for Your Dog’s Health for more than a year. After the first edit, I did some rewriting. Then, for
Tucker leaning in for a kiss.
good measure, I put the manuscript through a second round of editing.
This is the phase that I call the slogging-through time. It’s the heavy lifting, and you feel as though you are so far from the finish line that you’ll just never see your book published. And believe me, once you finish writing even the first draft of your book, all you can really think about is the finish line and holding that hot-off-the-press first copy in your hand…My Book.
Make up! Quiet on the set!
I think the first time I thought I’d actually see the finish line and have a printed copy in my hands was when we shot the cover art. It had been a warm week here in Gilroy, California. We were all worried that a long shoot would be hard on the models.
The models, now that’s another [click to continue…]
