What a happy and inspiring experience to be invited to talk to vet students (all organised by them)…and how they gave me just SO much hope for our future! They had listened to a talk the previous evening by Hills who had brought some cake to tempt the students into listening about the only nutrition advice they get at vet school – from these big corporate pet food companies using their massive marketing budgets to bully their way into the minds of our future!
How fortunate I felt to be invited to give these bright young people some hope with everything that I had to say.
I had rushed to our local Tesco before the talk, and stocked up on Oreos, Biscoff biscuits, Rowntree fruit pastilles and jelly tots – yes all vegan and all delicious!
As these sweet snacks were being passed around and there was a general buzz in the lecture hall as they opened their laptops and began browsing their phones, I started the talk by saying to them –
“My name is Dr Arielle and I am a vet and an empath, and like most of you in the room, I have perfectionist tendencies and I am a complete introvert. I have been a GP vet for 30 years this year, and my safe space is in a consulting room with 4 walls and one owner and an animal between us and that is where I feel most comfortable.
To be standing in front of a large lecture hall of people and talking to you, has taken me so far out of my comfort zone, but what I have to say is just so important that I hope I can relay my message to you in the only way I know how – by telling you how I got to be here.”
I had expected them to still be behind their laptops and chatting, but you couldn’t hear a pin drop and every one of the students in that large lecture hall gave me their undivided attention…and it carried on that way for the next 40 minutes!
I returned home to this email in my inbox which made the long journey there all worth it –
“Hi Arielle
Thank you so much for coming this evening, it was a fantastic talk! We’d love to have you back to do another talk!
Many thanks
VetSoc Surrey”
This is what they learnt (some of the images shown below that were shared with them, and a very brief summary).
After a particularly gruelling day as a vet where I had 4 animals to put to sleep for obesity related reasons, I chose to start Pet Slimming Classes! I joined our local Slimming World and threw myself into pet nutrition to learn as much as I could. The Pet Slimming Classes were a complete failure as no one wants to be told that their pet is fat….but I had learnt just so much from this process of wanting to make this difference to our pet’s health through nutrition.
Inspired by my son who was vegan since being a teenager (and I always admired him for that as I never felt that I could give up yoghurt and chicken and cheese), I went vegan, and turned our family dog who had only ever known meat-based food vegan too from one day to the next. The transformation in both our lives has been quite profound and how I wish I had done it years earlier…but now all I want to do is share everything that I know as my journey has been fascinating.
But aren’t dogs carnivores?! is what you will always get asked. yes, they belong to the order Carnivora but they are omnivores as they have lived with man for 20-40000 years. The grey wolf is a carnivore and belongs to the Order Carnivora and so too does the herbivorous Panda Bear. I always feel that any animal that can look that beautiful and only eat bamboo shoots and leaves, is a sign of the power in plant proteins.
This jawbone is from a dog that was found buried with 2 people so they would have fed and looked after it as it was shown to have survived some illnesses and injuries. It is 10000 years old! Further studies found the bones of dogs buried over 3000 years ago in a pit outside Barcelona, showed that the dogs living at this time were primarily fed a plant-based diet!
Studies from the University of Uppsala in Sweden have shown how our domestic dogs have changes in their genomes right down to the genetic level compared to the grey carnivorous wolf and almost a third of those genes have changed the digestion of our dogs. They can digest starches and need almost 50% of their diet to be carbohydrate where a grey wolf needs 1.5% of its diet to be carbohydrate!
Prof Andrew Knight has devoted his time in academia to produce papers showing that dogs on a nutritionally sound plant-based diet can be healthier and live up to 18 months longer than those fed a meat-based diet. His papers have been echoed by Dr Sarah Dodd in Canada and both their studies have been peer reviewed for accuracy. No other pet food has received so much attention with published paper after published paper showing its superiority for the health of our pets.
We share almost the same gut microbiome as our dogs. 70% of our dog’s immunity is governed by the gut microbiome. If we support our dog’s good gut bacteria by feeding them the healthy fibres they need, they in turn will look after the health of our dogs in every capacity. The good gut bacteria allow for the absorption of the right nutrients to enhance health, while stopping the absorption of the free radicals and viruses through the gut wall. They also produce most of the serotonin in our dog’s body which is why they can profoundly affect the behaviour of our dogs as shown in the next slide.
Drake the 60kg rescue Great Dane suffered from such severe allergic skin conditions and from such anxiety. He had moved from home to home as this anxiety resulted in him being fearful of everything. His wonderful new owner transitioned him to a wholefood plant-based diet and within 4 weeks he had softer skin, his ear infections went, he wasn’t licking between his paws, he didn’t need his anal glands squeezed at the vet every 2 weeks and most remarkably is how much his behaviour changed – he became calmer and wagged his tail when visitors came whereas before he would hide behind the sofa!
Cymru the Corgi suffered from such severe inflammatory bowels and digestive issues that were from an intolerance to meat-protein and they resolved on a plant-based diet of Green Crunch and were quite life-changing for both him and his Mum.
Buddy the Bulldog’s story was tragic in that his Mum had spent thousands of pounds at the vet and he had tried everything – all forms of medication such as Apoquel, antibiotics, skin wash, raw food diets, hydrolysed diets, kangaroo etc and was going to be put to sleep at the age of 2!! until he transitioned to Solo Vegetal and it has also been life-changing for him and his devoted Mum.
Dr Sue Paterson first imported Solo Vegetal in 2018 as she saw the benefit of a truly novel plant-based diet above hydrolysed meat-based diets that dogs could only be put onto for a few weeks as they are so unpalatable and low in protein. Plant-based diets are truly novel proteins that all our dogs can benefit from for life.
Solo Vegetal has been one of the most successful plant-based diets now found in veterinary practices to really transform the health of all dogs regardless of whether they suffer from digestive or skin intolerances or not. It is highly palatable and balanced and Bruno in the photo is an 11 year old Bernese Mountain Dog who has outlived all his littermates on his plant-based diet that he loves!
Lily’s Kitchen is the first large ‘pet food corporate’ as they are owned by Nestle Purina; to produce their own range of vegan tinned food, which is so encouraging as this food is found in local supermarkets around the country.
There has been a surge in new independent companies formulating balanced and nutritionally complete plant-based diets in the last 2 years with new products becoming available almost every month!
All I can say is that the enormously worrying dangers of feeding our dogs and cats a raw fod diet have not gone away, and the marketing power of these companies has grown dramatically in the last 2 years! We see more and more cases of pancreatitis, cancer, kidney disease, obesity, digestive infections, urinary tract infections in humans, hyperthyroidism in dogs from being fed the necks of birds, autoimmune joint diseases in dogs……I could go on and on, but each of these conditions is caused by raw feeding of our dogs!! The biggest worry of all is that in 2020 when the whole world had shut down due to Covid, one paper had to be published in Paris by the scientific world health community as it showed the link between the raw feeding of our dogs and the increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria. That is our next pandemic right there as we are faced with a pet or us as humans falling gravely ill and having nothing available to effectively treat it as we have allowed the production of ‘superbugs’ through the marketing tactics of big companies pushing raw food diets!!
Some of the notes from a very informative and balanced webinar on raw feeding by Prof Rob Foale – a small animal medicine specialist
Some of the notes from a very informative and balanced webinar on raw feeding by Prof Rob Foale – a small animal medicine specialist
These are the statistics and the horrors of what we have done to our biodiversity and nature that keep me up worrying at 4am in the morning!
Here I reminded these lovely vet students that they were the future and they were the ones who were bright and very resourceful and gave us all hope with their decisions they would make as practising vets.
The research and interest in plant-based feeding of our dogs is developing at such a rapid rate that I started Plant Powered Paws Podcast to be able to have a platform to share what other people are saying
What a privilege to answer so many very valid questions at the end and as they were all leaving, I had yet more come down to ask further questions. There was one lovely young student who stood patiently waiting with her yoga mat tucked under her arm before her next evening ‘activity’ as I answered each question in turn, and when I got to her to answer hers, she replied –
“I don’t have any questions, I just wanted to hear more”
She is the one who gives me the most hope of all for our future:)
“As a vet, I believe in a kinder, healthier way to feed our pets that does no damage to our environment, harms no animals and uses fresh, healthy plant-based ingredients for a balanced and delicious diet”
Arielle Vegan Vet
“If nobody changes then nothing changes but if somebody changes then everything changes!”
Arielle Vegan Vet
April just loves Give A Dog A Bean!
I have never seen such a manic reaction from two lazy dogs, they scoffed Give A Dog A Bean as if this was the first meal they’ve had in a long time
Beautiful Loki the Vizsla loves Give A Dog A Bean
He’s on Solo Vegetal, as I’ve always been a dry food feeder for convenience, but he goes absolutely nuts for your Give A Dog A Bean!
Arthur the Diabetic Labrador thrives on his plant-based diet
Just as in humans, the best diet when suffering from diabetes, is a balanced fibre rich, plant-based diet
