London Vet Show Highs and Lows

Just be Kind Dog Food and Dr Arielle attend the London Vet Show!

It was really exciting and a big step up from last year to have so many vets attend our stand and be convinced by all the published evidence that we have of how healthy a plant-based diet is for our dogs and would be for their patients.

Once they knew that it was nutritionally sound with all the right level of nutrients and even better, with a much healthier ingredient list of pure plant-based proteins and natural wholesome ingredients that enhanced the gut flora, the question they all had was ‘But what about palatability – will dogs like this as much as the foods they are usually fed?’

They had to see just how palatable the food really was by trying it on their own dogs. Every vet we spoke to was sent home with a tin of Give A Dog A Bean for their own dogs to try, and we just knew that they would love it and these vets would become our most valued ambassadors of plant-based nutrition!

The only dog at the show was a well-behaved black Labrador following alongside a lady in a wheelchair. We gave her a tin of Give A Dog A Bean to try her black Labrador on when she returned home, and her happy dog went mad sniffing the tin and wagging her tail, and the tin hadn’t even been opened!

What Did Vets Learn From Dr Arielle?

As vets, we have such a responsibility to safeguard all animals and plant-based dog nutrition ticks the boxes for every one of those concerns. I named and shamed the big pet food corporates in my talk this year at the London Vet Show, even though these large companies were present at the show.

I felt enormously grateful to have had a stage to speak to highlight these concerns as I do confess to breaking down at one point (not during my talk luckily), but as I got lost in the maze of corporate excess and exploitation of our farmed animals at the show trying to find a friend! Raw feeding companies and the fresh food meat-based pet food companies had grown in such numbers and size since last year with enormous stands and presence. They are all driven by corporate greed and the devastation on our planet as well as the negative health implications in our pets is such a huge concern, and escalated by them and nobody there seemed to care.

When the smell of cooking bacon permeated from a restaurant nextdoor to the hall, I wanted to just run away and escape from it all. After crying uncontrollably in the sanctuary of my small stand with the kind company of Taz (Georgie the German Shepherd’s Mum) there to support me, I felt a renewed and even desperate sense of pushing forward and making as many contacts at the vet show as I could to highlight the benefits of plant-based dog nutrition.

Somehow highlighting all the positives was the easiest thing in the world, as there are only positives with plant-based dog nutrition! I was able to speak to some key figures, and I am really pleased that I had chosen to book my stall stand just 3 weeks ago, as I returned home emotionally drained, but also feeling so much more positive about the future of plant-based dog nutrition with the exciting contacts that were made in the veterinary world – just SO promising for the future health of our pets and our planet!

The main thing that vets wanted, was proof of studies and through the talk that I gave, I was able to inform them that not only were there 10 published studies to date showing the health benefits to dogs of being on a nutritionally sound plant-based diet….but I could go even further to show that there had been NO published studies showing that raw feeding of dog was healthy, in fact the complete opposite – only studies showing how dangerous it was for our dogs, the owners and our planet.

Even the very large companies producing meat-based tinned and dry dog food was putting the health of our dogs at risk by exposing them to bioaccumulated toxins that are found in meat-based pet foods as shown in this article here. This risk is greatly reduced in our pets on a nutritionally sound plant-based diet.