The quotations below come from The Complete Herbal Handbook For The Dog And Cat by Juliette de Bairacli Levy. She is considered to be the Mother of Raw Feeding, and her book, all 345 pages, an education in natural rearing. Please click the link following these quotes and add this book to your library.

*The dog is of the Carnivora order and he was a flesh-eating beast in his wild state. Well-preserved skeletons of wild or semi-wild dogs show that they were superbly healthy.

*Therefore, first and foremost, the dog is a meat eater, it's entire anatomy being adapted for a meat diet, from the teeth fashioned for tearing and crushing, the powerful jawbones and muscles, the small, very muscular stomach, the short intestines (to avoid putrefaction of flesh foods) and, above all, the very powerful digestive juices peculiar to the carnivorous animals - the digestive juices, that can dissolve even lumps of bone. In health, the dog's juices, both of mouth and stomach, are strongly antiseptic, and this 'high' meat and even flesh from diseased animals - food which would kill a human being in a day - can be eaten without harmful effects. But meat of an unnatural (very inflamed) colour should be avoided. It generally denotes previous high fever of the animal; dogs usually reject it.

*The digestive capacity of the dog is very small when compared, for instance, with that of a goat - an animal of a size similar to some of the big-breed adults. The herbivorous animals - horses, cattle, etc. have enormous capacity for food and can consume many pounds of grain and herbage in a short space of time; whereas the dog, with its small stomach, has room for only very limited quantities of food. Consequently the general feeding rule for dogs is small amounts of highly concentrated foods, of which raw meat is one of the foremost. Raw meat, fed in lumps, exercises to full capacity both the muscular stomach and the intestines, also the digestive juices, and, of course, utilizes the special teeth and jaw formation. If other food is substituted there is deterioration of the carnivorous organs of digestion. In view of all this, it is understandable that raw meat should form 75 per cent of the diet of every carnivorous animal.

*Finally, how meat should be fed; the foremost law has just been given: always raw. Many veterinary surgeons - dominated by Pasteur's unnatural and faulty germ theory of disease - advise the sterilizing, by cooking, of all meat fed to the dog. This was also the official ruling at the British Government dog training centres (for war dogs), where the consequent health record of many dogs was unsatisfactory (much loss of young stock from disease, especially distemper, in spite of the distemper vaccination having been rigidly enforced). The main reason why dog owners cook meat is the sheer superstition that such food is made more safe. The theory is as outworn as that of Lister, who poured his ill famed carbolic-acid disinfectants on to raw wounds in order to kill the "disease" germs, and who, thereby killed off all the beneficial bacteria which are responsible for tissue healing, and who consequently retarded (sometimes totally so) the healing of most wounds upon which his unnatural treatment was practised.

*The cooking of meat is more mischievous in its results than the mere killing of the life forces which are present in all organic substances. Cooking semi-digests - artificially - the substance so treated; and in this unnatural breaking down of the meat tissues, the rightful work of the stomach, intestines, and digestive juices having already been undertaken before the food is fed to the dog, these organs are left improperly exercised; and when this procedure is repeated day after day, it is understandable - it is indeed a law of Nature - they will soften and atrophy, so that in time they will be unable to cope with their natural work.

*Now, thousands of dogs - in fact, when pets are taken into the counting, the majority of dogs - are fed habitually on a cooked-foods diet; many are deprived altogether of meat foods, and dogs so fed survive. It is true they are hosts for a multitude of worms, they have unpleasant body smells, have bad breath, and age rapidly; 70 per cent of them have disordered kidneys by their seventh year, also failing eyesight and hearing; their teeth are so filthy with a brown "fur" deposit that they have to be scraped regularly by a veterinary surgeon. But they survive. How very different is the effect of such diet upon an animal whose ancestors have been reared on a strict raw-foods diet for many generations, and who has been weaned and reared through half its puppyhood period on the self same diet, when it is suddenly placed on foods which are entirely foreign to its system - filthy foods. The harmful effect upon the body, including the nervous system, can well be imagined and understood. Therefore, when you strictly Nature Rear any stock, take precautions that those who acquire your animals will continue with the same health diet. I personally, as well as many other breeders, can promptly tell from examination of the teeth, limbs, and eyes whether or not an animal is being Naturally Reared, and we are seldom mistaken. As many breeders have told me: "Nature Reared stock look so different! They are so vitally alive!" When one meets them in the show ring, the naturally reared stock make the other stock look stiff and aged; it is no wonder that at the present time so many of the c.c. winners at dog shows are NR stock.

*I often feel when thinking back on my canine work, that if I am able to instill two reforms into the canine world: the fasting of all dogs in sickness, and the strict feeding of only raw flesh - never cooked meat in any form - then my years of canine work will not have been wasted.