Raw Food Diet, Day 52- Holiday Meat Feasting

Although I'm a good Polish Catholic boy, I have to admit that I've already feasted on some delicious raw meat today (turkey necks, to be exact). The Bible does tell us we shouldn't eat meat on Good Friday, but it says nothing specifically about raw meat. Raw meat is an entirely different animal. Trust me, if baby Jesus ever feasted on some raw cow stomach like I have, He never would have banned it, not even for a few days a year! Hey, all dogs go to heaven anyway.

Stanislaw

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more raw diet effects on brother:
Something new and strange has been happening to me since I've been on this diet. My tear stains are gone! I have snowy white fur around one eye and all along my lips on both sides. That fur had always been stained with a deep red/brown color. My humans don't believe in using bleaches or any harsh cleaners on me, and since I'm not a fancy show dog (I prefer to be a stinky and dirty lake-swimming boy), they didn't bother much with removing my stains.

Every single morning before we are allowed to eat our breakfast, my brother and I must sit nicely and patiently while our mom wipes our morning "boogies" from our eyes. If she sees any more "boogies" during the day she'll wipe those away as well. It's not so much that she wants to prevent stains but because she doesn't want our eyes all blocked up and for those boogies to wind up on her clothes and furniture. Yuck! Well, all of a sudden mom realized, that despite the presence of morning boogies just the same, that my stains were gone! (Stanley had stains too, I'm sure, but because he's black you can't see them.)

You can even see how my eye has changed if you look at the photos from the start of this blog until now. Some good before pictures can be seen in these posts: 1 and 2.

And now for the after picture!
I have that one freckle that can pose as a little tear stain, but it's just another one of my cute spots. Isn't that amazing? It was 3-weeks since by last bath that this picture was taken, and my face wasn't cleaned and I haven't been groomed since then. So mysterious! My mom wanted to find out why this might happen, and while she couldn't point to one particular cause, she found many potential reasons.

1. Water: Iron and other minerals in the water we drink are excreted by the body in the fluids (tears and saliva), and once they reach the air they are oxidized and turn a red/brown color. Our humans keep a water filter on their tap for their own drinking water, and they fill our bowl up with this as well. But they've always done this, so my mom has ruled this one out for me.

2. Yeast: The constant wetness under the eye area from tearing is a perfect moist, warm breeding ground for Ptyrosporin, or "Red Yeast." This can be coupled with a very low-grade bacteria infection which exacerbates tearing, and the yeast makes the red/brown color. Yeast usually has a smell.

3. Allergies/Infection: There can be direct medical conditions that cause our eyes to water, including allergies or bacterial infection of the tear ducts or ears. On their own, these reasons explain excessive tearing, but not staining .

4. Proteins: Proteins in the saliva and tears, when exposed to oxygen, dry to a brown color. I doubt the basic chemical make-up of my saliva has changed, so I'm not so sure about this one.

5. Food: Of course processed foods (especially those with food coloring) can cause bad staining around the mouth. Some believe that food allergies can change the pH of the body, which leads us to our next reason...

6. Body chemistry: The acidity of our body can vary greatly, and it may be related to the foods we consume. Some believe that a alkaline body can cause stains, and that apple cider vinegar can reduce this acidity and normalize our pH. When added to water, it can neutralize pH in the water we drink. A change in pH can make our bodies poor breeding grounds for yeast and bacteria. However, as mentioned in a previous post, apple cider vinegar has many tales of its many uses, but very few of them (if any) have been proven absolutely true through medical testing.

That said, the addition of apple cider vinegar has been one of the few changes (aside for the obvious - no more kibble) that my mom can think of. We were on raw for a while before the addition of unpasturized, organic ACV (the kind with bits floating in it), and there was no change. Then, after a few weeks with the ACV/honey mix added to our veggies my face was clean. Perhaps it took that long for the raw diet to do its thing, and it's a coincidence. We get so little ACV in our veggie mix it's hard to believe that it would do the trick...

It's an eye stain mystery. But all I care about is that I'm one good-looking boy. Whether I'm all stinky from a lake swim or fresh from a bath, all you'll find are freckles on this pretty face.