Critter Junction . Loving The Animals

Be A Best Friend to Your Best Friend!

Natural Choices for Your Beloved Animal Companions

It's been a long day, but you're almost home, where you'll be greeted by a bundle of unconditional love wrapped in fur with a wagging tail and a wet tongue filled with tons of licks designed to tell you you're the greatest thing that ever came into this precious being's life.

How blessed we are to be able to share our lives with animal companions that live just to love and protect us. These animals really are man's best friend—and they deserve man to be their best friend too!

Every time someone says, "It's just a dog..." or, "It's only an animal..." the world gets a little colder. Our domestic companions rely on us completely for their every need. They give us every ounce of love they can possibly produce. And, like us, they need warmth, companionship, water, food, exercise, comfort, and especially love. Yet, in our busy lives, how many of us can honestly say we don't sometimes neglect our four-legged companions? Who among us has not taken our beloved pet for granted as we rushed through our day?

We don’t mean to do it, but it happens. We barely make it through the front door after an exhausting day at work. We’re too tired to make a hearty, healthy meal for ourselves and our animal companion(s), so we slip a frozen dinner into the microwave and open a can of pet food—or maybe just a bag of dry food—and  plop it into a bowl. Nobody gets a nutritious meal that night!

So what?

So play out this scene too many times, and you and your companion will have matching troubles: no energy, dull-looking skin or fur, stiff and achy joints. Just like humans, animals “are what they eat." Commercial pet foods are just full of processed by-products, the animal version of human junk food—and we all know what eating a lot of junk food does to us: it compromises our immune systems and makes us prime candidates for cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, and a host of other chronic, disabling, or life-threatening illnesses. Is it a surprise that it does the same thing to our animal friends?

Treat Them Right, Feed them Right

Warm-blooded creatures—human and animal—need live foods for healthy survival. Unfortunately, humans are not as intuitive as animals. When a dog doesn't feel well, it will usually go outside in search of grass.

A dog will eat enough grass to help his body reject whatever is plaguing it with pain or discomfort. He doesn't know that the chlorophyll in grass is healing in many ways; he doesn't have any idea about its numerous and even life-saving benefits. He only instinctively knows that eating grass will make him feel better—and he doesn’t have to give away his chew toy to someone else to tell him so.

Just like us, dogs and cats need actual fruits, vegetables, proteins, and a minimal amount of non-rancid whole grains along with the right fats. No commercial pet food equals the nutritional value of live-food substances. Since most of us don't have the time to prepare healthful foods with just the right amounts of vitamins and minerals for our beloved animal companions, we have to make sure they get the right supplemental nutrients with each meal—just like us.

A dog’s body was designed to eat raw meats and vital organs, which is what he would eat if he was in the wild.  This kind of mostly raw diet is known as BARF, or Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods –– or Bones And Raw Food.

Prepackaged BARF products make it easy to feed your animal quality, farm-raised, pesticide-free, chemical-free, hormone-free, antibiotic-free foods. BASTIS Foundation recommends the new BARF formulas from one of our favorite holistic veterinarians, “Pet Whisperer” Dr. Steve Blake. Frustrated with commercial pet foods, Dr. Blake created two new prepackaged BARF formulas: beef and chicken. And since he doesn’t believe in feeding an animal something until he has tested it out on himself, he ate his own formulas for three weeks before testing them on his animal patients. Result: his skin has never looked better!