The issue of raw-meat feedings to pets in a contentious one among holistic veterinarians. It's true that raw meats do accord with pets' natural diets and supply, among other nutrients, the amino acid taurine, found only in flesh-based protein. My hesitation is that I don't trust the meat . The E. coli outbreak that led to a huge federal recall of frozen hamburger patties in 1997, the widespread incidences before that of salmonella in chicken--these were, I feel, only the latest indications that our meat is unsafe. So I cook my pets' meat as a rule. Then, to compensate for what has been destroyed by cooking, I add specific supplements and enzymes. If you have a source you trust, though, you might give organic raw meat a try--as I did, sort of by accident.

I kept my own pets away from raw chicken when I first began cooking for them, even though I used only free-range chicken. Then one evening I had to rush out on an emergency call and left a nearly defrosted raw chicken on the kitchen counter. I came back to find parts of a picked-clean carcass on the floor, with five very self-satisfied dogs and cats munching on chicken bones in the living room. I was sure that if the meat didn't poison them, they'd choke on the bones. Guess what? They were fine.

For a while I continued to play it safe, cooking the chicken and putting the carcasses in garbage bins with locking lids. When my crew figured out how to unlock the bins and had several more bone fests without incident, I began to relax. And the day my golden retriever Daniel dragged a dead wild boar out of the Westchester woods (I swear it was a boar; it was big, black and white, and hairy) and polished it off, bones and all, without getting sick, I officially changed my position.

Though not, I have to say, without regrets. The fact is that I'm a vegetarian myself, and have been for more than twenty years, for all the obvious reasons. I hate the inhumane ways animals are raised for slaughter. I'm sickened that they're slaughtered at all when we have so much other food to eat. It depresses me to think of how much river water is diverted, at great expense, to irrigate grazing lands for cattle and cows )not to mention the very real environmental hazard of methane gas being emitted as a waste product from millions of cows). And as a doctor, I understand the ways in which red meat especially can constrict human blood vessels with fat and cholesterol, in bodies likely never intended to consume meat at all.

That's the vegetarian view. As a veterinarian, however, I know that both dogs and cats were meant to eat meat in the wild, and that as modified as their systems are by the modern world, they do still need meat, raw or cooked. They aren't merely drawn to it by their biological instincts as a fun food choice. Specifically, they need more protein and calcium than a vegetarian diet can provide--which is also to say more protein and calcium than humans need. Because dogs and cats are carnivores.

If I'd had any doubts that pets should eat meat, they were dispelled some time ago by a visit from several vegans. Vegetarians in the extreme, vegans will not touch any products connected in any way with living creatures. So no dairy products for them, not even yogurt; no soups or sauces made with chicken or beef bouillon; and no fish (or caviar!). The vegans arrived at my clinic one day with their eight-and-a-half-year-old shepherd mix, named --guess what?--Vegan. And course Vegan had been raised on strict vegan diet. Unfortunately, she was dying of mammary cancer. I asked the vegans exactly what they were feeding Vegan, and to me it sounded great. But in addition to her cancer, Vegan the dog was acting so aggressively--lunging at me with intent to kill, or at least bit--that the diet appeared to have damaged her emotional state as well as her physical being. "Your diet sounds great," I said, "but something's wrong here, because if it was properly balanced for Vegan, I don't think she'd be dying or trying to kill me."

I tested Vegan's blood for its immune protein content, and was shocked by how high it was. You might think, when a disease like cancer takes hold, that protein levels in the blood would drop, but that's not the case. The protein level goes up because the body's immune system, working improperly, doesn't efficiently use these immune proteins. Since the body isn't using protein as it should, the immune system begins to drain protein from the muscles instead. Diseases like cancer and AIDS are typically "wasting diseases" because as the body saps the muscles of protein, the muscles waste away. It helps, at least, to give a wasting-disease patient red meat, because it contains protein that the body can recognize and use, thus allaying the wasting process. "If this dog doesn't get some meat as soon as possible, " I told the vegans, "she will die."

But the vegans wouldn't permit that. Their only concession was to allow injections of specifically isolated, naturally occurring immunological protein from healthy donor dogs. Vegan wouldn't actually be eating the protein, they rationalized, and another animal was not being killed to produce them. They left as a group by car for Florida, and called me a day or two later from Virginia: Vegan had gotten really weak. "Come on, guys," I pleaded with them. "Give this dog some protein." At last, they bought her a can of red-meat dog food--and Vegan roused herself to attack it. Still, the protein came too late. Within another day, Vegan was dead.

On the issue of raw food for pets, I've recently gone from wary endorsement to real enthusiasm. I've been inspired by its benefits as shown in the work of animal health advocate (and former Miss Rheingold!) Celeste Yarnall (author of Natural Cat Care and Natural Dog Care). And seeing the effects that an increase in raw food has on animals has led me to increase the amount of it for my pets as well as in my own diet. One day, I fully expect all the members of my household to be living exclusively on raw foods.

My cats will go for raw food as much as the dogs do, by the way--and even organic red meat (though they still prefer cooked food). I also let them have the bones, which they adore. I know this violates a cardinal rule of conventional pet care, and I realized that some pets have gotten bones stuck in their throats or stomachs, so I won't promise you that bones are safe for your pet. The fact is, though that over many years, neither my dogs nor my cats have ever had a problem with poultry bones, raw or cooked. (Many veterinarians caution that cooked bones are more dangerous than raw ones because the heating process has made them more likely to splinter; it hasn't' happened at my house but to be safe, I advise owners to stick to raw bones.) I do see animals who have gastroenteritis as a result of bone eating--intestinal inflammations that brought on vomiting and diarrhea. But in my house, my small dogs get bones, mostly cooked, from organic chicken, lamb chops, and even huge turkeys, at least twice weekly, and I can't recall a single bone-swallowing incident. And think about it: Have animals in the wild, including poultry predators like wolves and wold dogs, ever seemed troubled by bones? Nature just wouldn't be designed that way. To be sure, wild dogs and stronger jaws than domesticated dogs do, and more muscular stomachs, and more powerful hydrochloric acid to help in the digestion of troublesome bones. But especially as pets become healthier on good diets, they seem to grow more capable of handling bones, too.

Raw fish poses another dilemma that gets judged either way. Many holistic veterinarians now recommend raw fish as well as meat, both to provide nutrition and to serve as a measure of prevention against degenerative diseases like cancer. I don't believe that a raw-food diet is nearly as effective against cancer as certain colleagues of mine do, though I occasionally recommend it in addition to other measures when a sick animal might benefit from the quick jolt its protein can provide. With my own pets, I steer clear of raw fish out of fear that it may contain toxins. But I do serve cooked fish on occasion, and as it happens, my dogs like it as much as my cats do. I'm actually more surprised that cats like fish than that dogs do, given how much they fear being immersed in water. Did cats in Egypt hang out by the shores of the Nile, waiting for fishermen to go through their nets? Or did their fish craving come later, when they hung out as alleycats by nineteenth-century fish markets? Or do they just embody Oriental souls who as human beings liked sushi? Whatever the reason, they adore any fish I give them.

I feed my pets a wide variety of raw vegetables, which contain important enzymes lost during the cooking process. These range from alfalfa sprouts to zucchini, and include asparagus, carrots, and even lettuce (though tomatoes aren't usually a hit). I feed them fruits, too, including grapes, peaches, plums, and bananas. I once had a cat named Sparsely Populated who loved cantaloupe and had an absolutely uncanny affinity for it. I have a house with a long front lawn, and Sparsely would be in the woods at the end of it. I'd take a cantaloupe out of the refrigerator and start slicing it--with the windows closed. As I looked out the window, Sparsely's head would instantly go up. He couldn't smell it, he couldn't see it, but still he'd zoom home to get some! This cat would kill for cantaloupe; cooked winter squash, too.

In fact, both my dogs and cats happily dine on a far wider range of real food than I ever imagined when I threw out the Gaines Burgers those many years ago. yesterday, I took two organic potatoes, diced them up, and simmered them in a skillet with some olive oil and water. Then I put in a lamb burger and some broccoli, and just before they were done, I added a few pieces of organic cheese. Admittedly, that took twenty minutes. But it was a one-pan dish that required no more than a bit of slicing and stirring, and both my dogs and my cats loved it. Other nights I'll cook some yellow squash and mushrooms, or scrambled eggs with leftover chicken and rice. Or pasta! Pasta in a pesto sauce with broccoli rabe is their new fixation. Tonight, as I was working on this chapter, I gave my dog Clayton my leftover sautéed garlic veggies over chopped lettuce salad and watched him lick the bowl clean. Is that sort of cooking such a sacrifice, really, for the joy and good health it brings?

Dairy products I serve somewhat sparingly to my pets because they're mucus-forming (as they are in people), but my pets love them, so I include them in moderation. Almost any hard or semisoft cheese will be happily received; just stay with the blander choices (no Stilton, even for English breeds!? And avoid soft cheese like Brie, which have too much cream in them. For that matter, stay away from cream or half-and-half altogether. But you might try a little cottage cheese, an easily digestible source of good nutrition, and also yogurt. The fruit-laced yogurts usually find takers, but if not, you can almost always get a dog or cat to eat plain yogurt. Just as it helps us by providing friendly bacteria for our digestive tracts, so it helps pets, especially those with gas or diarrhea, and should definitely be given in conjunction with--and especially after giving--antibiotics for digestive support. (Acidophilus, available in pill, powder, and liquid form at your local health food store, also helps digestive problems; administer just one pill or its equivalent each week.)

Eggs, by the way, are fine, too, once or twice a week. (I'd strongly suggest you only use organic eggs.) Some health food advocates suggest pet be fed raw yolks. (The white must be cooked, as it contains a substance called avidin, which destroys the B vitamin biotin.) But I prefer to give my own animals cooked eggs. They all love omelettes. Sunday morning, I'll sauté some vegetables and tuck them in, along with a helping of the brown-rice-and-chicken combo, add a couple of pieces of organic cheese, and voila. With pets, as with people, just avoid having eggs on too regular a basis.

Some of these foods, admittedly, are less than ideally healthy, and purists may grumble. But they're also the foods my pets happen to like! And to me, one of the fundamentals of life is to enjoy what one eats. For that matter, my old dog Danny was just wild about pizza. Once in a while--not often enough to bring on the food police, I promise!--I would stop off as we were driving to get a couple of slices, one for me, one for Danny. Pizza certainly seemed to have no ill effects on him: he lived nineteen years, a remarkable life span for a golden retriever.

To almost any sautéed dish, garlic is a healthy and tasty addition. Plus, it makes the kitchen smell great! I try to add some, minced, to any cooked meal I make for my crew, figuring roughly a half clove for each ten pounds of pet. Most dogs and cats like garlic as much as people do, so it's hardly a tough sell. But garlic is also useful, along with yogurt containing lactobacillus acidophilus, in addressing digestive tract problems. And it's a very effective natural antidote to fleas. Just as we exude garlic through our skin the morning after a garlicky meal, so do pets. Fleas, fortunately, appear to hate the smell and taste of garlic, and tend to stay away from a pet who's been eating garlic on a daily basis as simmer unfolds. And, of course, a garlic-rich pet is great for repelling vampires.

The real-food choices for your pet are nearly as wide-ranging as they are for you, assuming you're the sort of person who makes a habit of eating healthy foods. Indeed, they may seem too wide-ranging. So here's a simple equation to help in the menu writing. Generally (which is to say, don't feel you have to abide by this every day), I recommend that a dog's meals be approximately one-quarter meat, two-quarters grain, and one-quarter vegetables, while a cat's meals be roughly one-third to one-half meat, with grains and vegetables constituting the rest. (For either dogs or cats, a little dairy goes a long way.) Individual animals will have different likes and dislikes, as we do, but basically you can feed your dog and cat the same meal in those different ratios. Don't worry too much about each meal's menu. Lamb or turkey, rice or pasta--any good food will be good for your pet as long as it's of satisfactory quality.

Easy as it is to give your pet real food, it may be harder to make him eat it. Both dogs and cats can become so accustomed to prepackaged food--in part because of artificial flavorings that cause their tongues to tingle, whetting their appetites; in part just out of habit--that a bowl of fresh food can be thoroughly off-putting. Or if they do eat it, real food may provoke some initial sickness, as their bodies react to the change by expelling toxins as healing occurs. In either case, a few commonsense recommendations can ease the transition.

One approach is to mix in a bit of the new with the old. I've known pets who could never quite bring themselves to abandon their commercial-brand fare altogether, and insisted, as the ratios of new and old were gradually changed to favor the new, on having just a dollop of the old spooned in for old times' sake. That's fine. Other pets, cats especially, make the switch but still need to hear the sound of a can opener opening a can of their old food, and perhaps to have its aroma in the air. That's fine, too. Even if you open and discard a small can of Friskies every day while your cat eats healthier food, what are you losing? Fifty cents a day? And you're certainly not throwing out food that would help the world's hungry people. With my own cats, I find that just turning on the electric can opener for a few seconds does the trick.

Another approach, cold as it my sound, is to let a pet who's refusing real food go without--for two or three days, maybe longer. Fasting is another controversial food issue with pets (and you thought feeding your pet was dull). My own strong belief is that unless a pet is quite old or suffering from a degenerative disease like cancer, fasting is a natural way for him to clean out his system, regain his health, and marshal new energy--along with an appetite. For Arnold Ehret, my nineteenth-century hero, only fasting made possible the thorough expulsion of toxins and the restoration of radiant health. So it does for animals, and indeed the fasting process for them is more natural than most of us realize. When an animal in the wild gets sick, what does he do? He goes into isolation--to fast, until he regains his health by repelling his toxins. The time he goes without food doesn't do him harm. Quite the opposite. As with a human being during a fast, the animal draws sustenance from bodily fats in which many cellular toxins are stored, and by using those cells and flushing out the toxins, he reaches a higher state of health than he had before he got sick. Cats, even more than dogs, have extraordinary powers of self-sustenance without food. Locked inadvertently in closets for weeks, they've been known to jump out with no less energy--indeed, with far more--than when they were locked in. Yet in our society, when a pet refuses to eat for a day or two, we rush him to the clinic, where he's promptly force-fed. In doing so, we ignore his own instincts, and potentially worsen his condition.

A caveat on fasting for animals, however. Animals in the wold can fast as long as they need to; their immune systems are strong and can withstand it. Domesticated pets may survive an inadvertent fast of days or longer. But because their immune systems are likely debilitated, they also may not. So fasting as a means to induce a pet to change its diet or improve its health should be monitored, and not allowed to go one for more than a week. During the first day or two, you can serve him a reduced amount of his old food but be sure he drinks liquids: steam-distilled water, or a chicken or beef broth (if from a good source), and also fresh-squeezed vegetable juices (carrot is the most popular) or even fruit juices. Then, to break the fast, ease him onto modest amounts of fresh foods for a couple of days before moving him to full portions. But not even all holistic veterinarians agree on this regimen; some insist that a pet should fast for no more than twenty-four hours. Again, common sense applies. See how your pet does in twenty-four hours. If he's lethargic or seems to be in pain, abandon the fast; if he doesn't eat, bring him into a clinic.

I don't do that much fasting in my practice, only because so many of the pets I see are too weak and debilitated to withstand it, and because I've had such success with my program of supplements and homeopathic and herbal remedies.* But occasionally it seems the right choice, not so much for dietary reasons as to help the body regain health. I fasted a five-week-old kitten once that had chronic diarrhea. Another veterinarian had put it on Kaopectate with a bland diet, antibiotics, and then Lomotil, an almost narcotic suppressor intended to stop the intestines' reflex action. And that didn't work either. When I told the owner to put his cat on a fast even after homeopathics failed, he balked: the cat was so young and thin already. What he didn't understand was that the food going in was sustaining the diarrhea. It's called the gastrocolic reflex: the stomach fills, the colon empties. After a three-and-a-half day fast, the cat was able to hold down bland food; the fast had stopped his intestinal reflex and broken the cycle.

At home, I fast my own pets one or two days a month, not to adjust them to a healthy diet, which they already eat and love, but just to clear out their systems a bit. I'll give them dinner Sunday night, then nothing except water until Tuesday morning. By Monday night, they're zipping around like loose electrons. By Tuesday, they're thrilled to eat, but the energy they've gained strays with them for weeks. Fasting for pets is a personal decision, but you should certainly consider trying a one-or two-day fast every few weeks and see how your pet responds.

I'd love to think that my argument is so persuasive that every last person reading this will stop buying prepackaged pet food today and start cooking for his pets. I'm good, but I'm not that good. Some owners do lead lives so busy or stressful that they cannot coordinate a real-food diet for their pets. And some owners, as much as they love their pets, simply aren't going to be bothered. Fortunately for them (and their pets), a number of excellent prepackaged pet foods have come on the market in recent years.

The new prepackaged foods are mostly produced by small companies. (One can only assume that the large pet food companies have chose not to produce healthy products because good food costs more.) They're hard to find at supermarkets, though some of the sleeker new markets carry them. And if you live in or near even a small American city, you may be within driving distance of one of the natural pet food stores that have sprung up in the last few years, or the good pet foods and related pet health-care products now available at most health food stores--cheering signs that the lousy major-brand fare may not dominate the market forever.

Excerpted from The Nature of Animal Healing by Martin Goldstein Copyright© 2000 by Martin Goldstein. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Dr. Martin Goldstein earned his B.S. and D.V.M. from Cornell University. He has written numerous articles about holistic veterinary medicine and alternative therapies for many magazines, journals and related publications. He has many happy and healthy dogs and cats, all of which are living proof of the philosophy contained in his book, The Nature of Animal Healing.

The information provided here is for educational and entertainment purposes only, and should not be relied on as medical advise for your pet, or in lieu of consultation with your own veterinarian. We urge you to always consult your veterinarian for specific advice and diagnoses concerning your pet.