During the pandemic we were one of those families that decided to get a dog since we were now home nearly 100% of the time. We bought a red merle Australian Shepherd and were able to dodge the 7-week vaccines and de-worming by telling the breeder we’d vaccinate later.
We love this dog to the moon, and my daughter begged us to let her have puppies. We didn’t want to breed her with another Aussie because, let’s be honest, these are the most neurotic dogs on the planet. But we do love her.
So we let a little Golden Retriever come over and 60 days later we had a batch of fresh-baked puppies. Boy oh boy are they cute.
The puppies are going home with their new families starting next week. One family is from the movement, and I have a hunch a second family is too, so they’ll be keeping the dogs naturally reared. Everyone else has been very open-minded about how we raise their mother and have asked for more information on feeding and vaccines.
You know me. I wrote a 12 page PDF.
For many of us, we learned all about kids, kid food, kid illness, but we don’t know about dogs and cats. A long time ago, I even let the vet vaccinate a rescue dog we got a year after we stopped vaccinating our own child because I wasn’t prepared with the information to even have a conversation about it.
I’m sharing this document with you, and hope you share it with the people in your life who would benefit from it.
LQ
Care and Feeding of your Aussie-Retriever
We are so happy you are adding one of our very-much-loved puppies to your family. Finding loving homes for each of our little ones was our utmost top priority. While the decisions you make after you take your puppy home are entirely up to you, I’ve created this document to help guide your decisions on food, medicine, sunshine, sleep, and crating.
FOOD:
What you decide to feed your puppy is one of the most important, if not the most important, decision you’ll make about their health.
Your puppy eats a very large breakfast at 7:30AM, a medium lunch at 1:30PM, and a smaller dinner at 7:30PM. As your puppy ages, you’ll move to two meals; most likely a larger breakfast and smaller dinner. We let the puppies decide on their own how much they’d like to eat at each meal.
Your puppy has been eating Nature’s Logic Canine Beef soaked in beef broth or chicken broth, and topped with raw pastured eggs and their shells, organic whole cream and/or coconut milk, raw beef livers and hearts, and ground bone.
Traditional kibble, like Purina, is most likely baked at 500 degrees, sometimes multiple times. It’s usually made of low-quality nutrition ingredients such as animal byproducts, GMO corn gluten meal, barley, rice, oatmeal, pea fiber, GMO soybean oil, sunflower oil, and GMO canola. Your puppy has never been given these foods.
I’ve spoken with Nature’s Logic’s marketing manager and she said their kibble is cooked for less than a minute under 250 degrees. Nature’s Logic kibble can be ordered from Chewy’s or bought in-person at our local feed store. It’s $86 for 25 lbs.
https://natureslogic.com/product/canine-dry-kibble-beef/
The ingredients of Nature’s Logic Beef kibble are: Beef Meal, Millet, Chicken Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Pumpkin Seed, Yeast Culture, Spray Dried Pork Liver, Alfalfa Nutrient Concentrate, Montmorillonite Clay, Dried Kelp, Spray Dried Porcine Plasma, Dried Tomato, Almonds, Dried Chicory Root, Dried Carrot, Dried Apple, Menhaden Fish Meal, Dried Pumpkin, Dried Apricot, Dried Blueberry, Dried Spinach, Dried Broccoli, Dried Cranberry, Parsley, Dried Artichoke, Rosemary, Dried Mushroom, Dried Lactobacillus acidophilus Fermentation Product, Dried Lactobacillus casei Fermentation Product, Dried Bifidobacterium bifidum Fermentation Product, Dried Enterococcus faecium Fermentation Product, Dried Bacillus coagulans Fermentation Product, Dried Pineapple Extract, Dried Aspergillus niger Fermentation Extract, Dried Aspergillus oryzae Fermentation Extract, Dried Trichoderma longibrachiatum Fermentation Extract.
Nature’s Logic is free of grains, legumes and potato, which are unfit for dogs. The second ingredient in Nature’s Logic, millet, is a gluten-free ancient seed.
The thawed/frozen raw beef your puppy has been eating is made by Primal Pet Foods and is called Primal Pronto.
https://primalpetfoods.com/products/canine-raw-frozen-pronto-beef
Primal Pronto Beef ingredients are: Beef Hearts, Beef Livers, Ground Beef Bones, Organic Carrots, Organic Squash, Organic Kale, Organic Apples, Organic Broccoli, Organic Pumpkin Seeds, Organic Sunflower Seeds, Organic Blueberries, Organic Cranberries, Organic Parsley, Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, Montmorillonite Clay, Fish Oil, Organic Quinoa, Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Ground Alfalfa, Vitamin E Supplement, Zinc Sulfate, Dried Organic Kelp.
Your puppy also loves strawberries, peaches, coconut wraps, and roasted seaweed sushi paper called nori.
While we have not been feeding your puppy table scraps, we do feed their mother table scraps all the time. She loves bacon, pork chops, ribeye steak, taco meat, and chicken. I would never tell someone not to feed their dog “people food.” I believe you should only be feeding your dog people food—but we do not feed their mother wheat, corn, or soy.
Feeding your puppy on a raw diet is the optimum way to feed them, but it can be cost prohibitive, which is why we use raw as toppers. A raw diet is going to guarantee the best possible microbiome and immune system function for your puppy. If you’d like to learn more about feeding your puppy on a raw diet, please go to
https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/
and search their blogs for “raw diet.”
You can feed your puppy raw without purchasing anything commercially made that we use; simply chop up raw steak or any cut of beef and feed it to them with some raw pastured eggs (these chickens get to eat insects and earthworms) and the crushed-up shells. Beef bones should always be given raw; they will splinter if cooked. It’s best not to feed ground beef raw because it’s been dragged through the slaughterhouse before grinding, so the outside gets mixed in, and there is a higher chance of E.coli contamination.
The most nutritious raw meat, whether raw or cooked, will always come from ruminant animals that eat grass, like cows, deer, antelope, sheep and goats. A raw diet based on chicken is not recommend due to the amount of soy and corn chickens consume. This results in an inflammatory diet too high in omega 6.
CHEWS:
Our mama dog cares nothing for something vet-recommended like a Greenie. She prefers bully sticks (bull penis) and antlers. The antlers may be too hard on her teeth, so we always buy the ones that have been sliced open. The feed store has a huge selection of chews.
PUPPY SCHEDULE:
Currently your puppy is outside in the half shade/half sun backyard from 7AM to 8PM and crated from 8PM to 7AM.
While your puppy may complain for a few minutes about being crated at 8PM, they will go to sleep quickly and should not complain further throughout the night, after a short adjustment period (about 2 nights) from being separated from their litter.
PUPPY CRATING:
Currently your puppy is crated with a “puppy litter box.” This is the top or bottom of a large, shallow cardboard box, like one a flat-screen TV comes in. It is filled with woodchip pellets found at most any feed store. It is only this large because it’s been serving 7 puppies at once; yours can be smaller if you’d like to use one.
Assuming you’d like to break your puppy of the need for a litterbox in their crate, the solution is to adjust the size of your puppy’s crate down so that there is only room to stand up and comfortably turn around. This set-up would not have a litterbox in it and would force the puppy to not pee or poop, lest they risk defecating in their sleeping area. If you choose to do this, you’ll need to take wake your puppy and go out for a late night walk before you go to bed so that they aren’t forced to hold their pee for 10-12 hours. Be prepared to be woken up at 5AM to take them out first thing in the morning for a few weeks.
Make sure to adjust the size of the puppy’s crate out as they grow.
You will also want to shift their dinner to 5PM so they won’t have the need to poop late at night after you go to sleep.
PUPPY SUPPLEMENTS AND MEDICINES:
If, after moving your puppy’s dinner to 5PM, your puppy is having soft poop in the middle of the night, give them ¼ teaspoon Colon Rescue mixed into their food. This is made by Animal Essentials.
https://www.chewy.com/animal-essentials-colon-rescue-powder/dp/123260
Colon Rescue is made from Marshmallow Root, Licorice Root, Slippery Elm Inner Bark, and Plantain Leaf.
Your puppy has been given a probiotic made by Rx Vitamins for Pets, called Rx Biotic.
https://www.rxvitamins.com/rxvitaminsforpet/product-category/gastrointestinal-health-products/
Your puppy has also had a sea kelp supplement made by Animal Essentials. Dogs love seaweed, kelp, and nori and the minerals are essential to their good health. But don’t let your dog eat raw seaweed on the beach, as it’s been dehydrated by the sun and will expand in their stomach with potentially deadly consequences.
https://animalessentials.com/organic-ocean-kelp-8-oz/
FLEAS, TICKS, AND WORMS:
Your puppy has not been dewormed, nor given any flea control or heartworm medications.
I have never seen a single flea or tick on our mama dog, so I do not treat for them. However, if I were to, I would use Cedarcide:
https://cedarcide.com/
Conventional commercial de-wormers provided by a veterinarian, like Sentinel, made by Merck, can seriously injure your puppy’s gut biome and cause vomiting, diarrhea, and convulsions, so think twice about using them unless absolutely necessary.
Common worms affecting dogs are the roundworm, tapeworm, whipworm, hookworm, heartworm, and lungworm. We did not deworm mama dog because she did not have worms, and her mother had been dewormed many times, so it was not necessary.
Signs of an intestinal worm infection include passing worms in the feces, worm segments around the anus that look like grains of rice, diarrhea, bloody stool, mucus covered stool, abdominal pain, and vomiting.
We have not seen these signs in any puppy.
Natural, safe, gentle treatments for intestinal worms include pumpkin seeds, black cumin seed, fennel, pomegranate, garlic, apple cider vinegar, diatomaceous earth, olive leaf, and Oregon grape.
Your puppy has been eating pumpkin seed every day since 4-weeks-old as the #3 main ingredient of their kibble, and has been consuming garlic every day in chicken and beef broth.
There are also commercial all-natural de-wormers that contain black walnut and wormwood, which can be very strong, so be careful about dosage, and only use if necessary.
One is called NaturPet D
https://www.chewy.com/naturpet-d-wormer-homeopathic/dp/218105
And another is called Earth Animal No More Worms
https://www.chewy.com/earth-animal-no-more-worms-liquid/dp/382486
There was a time last year when our mama dog had diarrhea, which I assumed came from drinking standing water from snow melt that collected in our yard. I suspected she had a protozoa/giardia infection, and I treated her for 5 days with the following recipe of tinctures I picked up from the natural food store, mixed into tuna I knew she wanted to eat:
· 2 parts Oregon grape
· 2 parts licorice
· 2 parts cleavers
· 1 part garlic
Give ½ tsp per 20 lbs of body weight.
While it’s commonly believed that garlic is toxic to dogs, it may in fact not be true. Apparently, this belief is based on a study of only 4 dogs and I am not sure what quantity of garlic was given to these dogs. Our mama dog was fine taking a moderate amount of garlic (about a teaspoon) for 5 days.
Heartworm disease is only spread through mosquito bites. Signs of heartworm infection include a mild persistent cough, fatigue, loss of appetite, and weight loss. The top 5 US states in heartworm incidence are Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee.
We have not seen signs of heartworm in any puppy.
Lungworm is spread by eating slugs or snails or eating frogs that have eaten slugs or snails. Signs of lungworm infection include moderate to severe dry coughing and respiratory distress.
We have not seen signs of lungworm in any puppy.
TELEHEALTH VET:
Our mama dog’s telehealth veterinarian is Dr. Priscilla Dressen of North Star Holistic Animal Care. I cannot overstress my recommendation that you schedule a one-hour phone call with her for $95 and have every one of your questions answered by a knowledgeable professional who truly cares about pet health. Her phone number is 970-482-4665 and she said she’d love to connect with each one of you. While she does not have a clinic, if you’d like a recommendation for a local in-person clinic who will see an unvaccinated or partially vaccinated dog, ask her for that.
VACCINES:
Your puppy has not been vaccinated.
A primary reason for our decision not to vaccinate is that aluminum has no known use to mammals and is only present in our bodies due to contamination from aluminum water bottles, soda cans, skillets, food manufacturing processes (like baby formula), and vaccine adjuvants. Bodies are all different; some bodies excrete aluminum efficiently, and some don’t excrete it at all. The risks of injecting aluminum cannot be compared to ingesting it, as injection bypasses all built-in gastrointestinal mechanisms the body has for protecting itself. Stored aluminum also passes through the placenta from mother to fetus as well as mother to baby in breastfeeding.
Aluminum is known to cause and/or is highly correlated with damage to intestinal cell junctures leading to highly permeable gut syndrome, food allergies, allergy to any bystander proteins in the blood at the time of vaccination, asthma, mitochondrial dysfunction, as well as nervous system disorders, anxiety disorders, and seizures due to nerve demyelination.
If aluminum adjuvant is required in a vaccine for the vaccine to create antibodies to the pathogen it contains, it is impossible that the aluminum does not also create antibodies to other cells, tissues, and molecules it encounters, leading to serious food allergies and what we call “autoimmune disease” where the body has made antibodies to itself. There is no way aluminum can select for certain preferred antigens over any other proteins it encounters.
There are three main categories of vaccines for dogs:
1) Live-attenuated/modified live viral vaccines
2) non-live/inactivated/killed viral
3) bacterial vaccines
“Live-attenuated” viral vaccines (also called modified live vaccines) contain a virus that has been disabled with the intention that they cause a small infection rather than a full-blown one, although in immunocompromised people and animals, the live-attenuated vaccines can cause full-blown infections.
“Inactivated” viral vaccines, also called “killed” or “non-live” vaccines, are vaccines with a virus that have been killed and should not cause an infection.
There are also vaccines for bacteria. In general, vaccines for bacteria are not as effective as viral vaccines, and killed vaccines are not as effective as live vaccines.
Live attenuated vaccines are also preferable over non-live vaccines because non-live vaccines always require powerful adjuvants, like aluminum or squalene, in order to work in a body, and the adjuvants are not tested, studied, or approved by themselves.
However, live vaccines are excreted in feces, so vaccinating your dog with a live vaccine like parvo or distemper will result in infectious feces for a period of days or weeks, and likewise, having your puppy around feces from dogs recently vaccinated with live vaccines will be an infectious situation for your puppy.
If you decide to vaccinate your dog, you do not want to follow non-live aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines with a live vaccine in a short time period, nor do you want to combine the two. This is because the aluminum from the inactivated vaccines may be causing mitochondrial dysfunction that isn’t apparent to you until your dog is given a powerful live vaccine for which their little bodies must mount a massive immune response, and it’s only then that it becomes obvious their body does not have the energy to do it and they suffer a major event. If you vaccinate your puppy, it’s best to space adjuvanted and live vaccines apart by a year, to give your dog the best chance of excreting the adjuvant and recovering from its damage.
The core dog vaccines cover 6 viral pathogens: distemper, parvovirus, a combo shot called DHPP (which includes distemper, adenovirus, hepatitis, parainfluenza, and parvovirus—note this is a live and non-live combo), and rabies.
The distemper vaccine is live, or rather, modified live. The parvovirus vaccine can be given in a modified live or killed form, but I think the killed form has been removed from the market for poor efficacy.
If you decide to vaccinate your puppy, you may consider waiting until 12-weeks-old so that your puppy can make a robust immune response without maternal antibody interference from breastmilk. You might skip the 5-in-1 combo shot completely and focus on parvovirus and distemper, one at a time, and spaced out with four months between.
Choose the modified live version of the parvo vaccine if you have a choice.
Then, after one dose of each, rather than going in for boosters, have your veterinarian draw titers. If the titers are high enough, you do not need boosters.
Each time your vet asks to give your dog shots for parvo, distemper, or the 5-in-1 DHPP, ask for titers to gauge the need.
The symptoms of parvo and distemper infections include lethargy, fever, vomiting, diarrhea (sometimes bloody), and refusal to eat.
If your dog exhibits these symptoms, you must get veterinarian care immediately. It is not recommended to treat a severely sick dog at home.
Dogs do not usually survive parvovirus or distemper without IV treatment.
Once a dog is beyond the age of 6 months, the chances of them dying from parvo or distemper drop significantly, so take care to keep your puppy out of dog parks and kennels, away from vaccinated dog feces, and away from your shoes.
In addition to the 6 core vaccines, there are 5 more optional vaccines: Bordetella/kennel cough (a bacterium), influenza (viral), leptospirosis (bacterium), Lyme (bacterium), and coronavirus (viral).
Vets will attempt to vaccinate your dog for all 11 pathogens every year, or every two years, for their entire lives, with no end point. Please do not do this to your dog. At this point in your reading you might have a better idea of why so many dogs have seizure disorders, anxiety disorders, food allergies, eczema, and cancer.
If you choose to register your dog with the city/county, they will require that the dog receive a rabies vaccine by age 4 months, followed by a booster one year later, followed by more boosters every three years.
Rabies is a serious pathogen and is almost always a fatal infection. Bats and skunks are the main carriers of rabies. While the states in central US have the highest rabies prevalence, from Texas to North Dakota, their numbers are still very low. Historical data shows between 9-111 domestic pets test positive for rabies each year across our entire state—a state that likely has 3 million pet dogs. Those odds of your pet contracting rabies are about 1 in 27,000.
All rabies vaccines in the US are non-live/inactivated. They all contain aluminum or other adjuvant in order to work, and they all contain mercury (in the form of thimerosal or merthiolate) as a preservative to prevent fungal growth. Mercury is the #3 most toxic substance on earth, and the studies attempting to prove that the thimerosal version of mercury (ethylmercury) is harmless and immediately excreted are highly compromised. Our CDC has known for decades that injected vaccine mercury preservative is highly correlated with the development of tic disorder.
Remember, the rabies vaccine is non-live and adjuvanted, so don’t follow a rabies dose with a live parvo or distemper dose in quick succession. If at all possible, wait one year after the last non-live dose to give a live dose.
DAYCARES AND HIKES:
There is a trade-off in living this way. We choose not to take your puppy’s mother to dog parks, kennels, doggy day cares, and vet offices due to fecal-borne pathogens present at those places. Rather than use a daycare, we hire a house-sitter when we travel or pay a friend a $30 a day to stay in our home. Some non-vax families are of the mindset to go ahead and expose the dog to dog park pathogens, but that is not the route we’ve chosen with their mother. Intentionally exposing your dog to disease may cause the need for immediate veterinarian care and expensive treatment bills. That said, they would then be immune for life.
You are encouraged to take your puppy on hikes and anywhere in nature. Let them chew on grass, let them have a bite of deer poop to seed their microbiome.
PUPPY DAYLIGHT:
The backyard your puppy has been in since 4-weeks-old has a large shady tree and a deck built over cool concrete that all the puppies love to go under. Please do not leave your puppy in a hot backyard (80+ degrees in the sun, which will be about 5 degrees warmer than the shade reading reported on weather apps) with no shade or shelter for more than five minutes. Also check for any escape routes under the fence, like bunny holes.
Being exposed to raw, direct, morning, midday, and evening light is crucial to your puppy’s health. Aim to give them at least 30 minutes of each type of light. Sunlight hitting the back of the eye and skin in the morning regulates their circadian rhythm. Disruption of the circadian rhythm over time can lead to many chronic diseases.
Early morning light has no UV light – it has blue, green and red light. This pattern of light kick-starts your dog’s metabolism, wakes everything up and gets it moving for the day. The higher levels of blue light act to reduce melatonin levels.
In the middle of the day, as the sun shines through less of the atmosphere, we are exposed to the full spectrum. From IR right through to UV, with the highest levels of UVB.
In the evening the spectrum of light from the sun shifts to red and IR, without any blue light present at all. Red light increases melatonin and gets them sleepy for bed by signaling the end of the day.
Just make sure not to blast your puppy with household lights after the they’re in the sunset. Keep the kennel area of your home darker, no LED, fluorescent, or incandescent lights—they destroy the sleep-inducing melatonin your dog just created in the red light of the sunset. You can buy red light bulbs for sleep to keep in the puppy’s kennel area if you need light. You can also cover the kennel with a large blanket to keep light out.
WATER:
Always have one or two big bowls of fresh filtered/reverse osmosis or spring water inside and outside in the shade. We provide cleaner water to the puppies because tap water contains bacterial and viral pathogens as well as residue from painkillers, antibiotics, hormonal birth control, and antidepressants.
FIXING YOUR DOG:
It’s understandable that you may want to fix your puppy right away to avoid any undesirable behavior, but dogs must be allowed to grow to their full size, and become fully sexually mature, before being spayed or neutered. Early sterilization can cause abnormal bone growth, hip dysplasia, ligament injuries, urinary incontinence, and even cancer. It’s also thought that dogs sterilized too young have trouble moderating their food intake on their own. Dogs need to experience their hormones as nature intended to live their healthiest lives. In general, this means waiting until the age of 2 years before spaying or neutering.
We were concerned about having our dog go through heat because of bleeding, but it never amounted to more than a few drops that a pet enzyme cleaner couldn’t take right out.
TRAINING:
Your puppy is not yet house trained because they do not live in the house. Crate training at night without a litterbox, and keeping your puppy in a box right next to you during the day with bathroom breaks at 30 minute intervals, is the fastest way to potty train.
We’ve been saying, “Are you hungry?” to call the puppies out from under the deck each time we feed them, so that is a phrase they should know by now.
The most important command you can teach your puppy is recall, come, or to heel. This is the command that will save their life in the event of being hit by a car or getting into a confrontation with another dog if they are off-leash. Please look up videos on YouTube for teaching your dog recall. You’ll begin by teaching them inside where it’s safe, then move to a fenced yard, then move to a public space.
For my own dogs, I used a pinch collar for two weeks when they are between the ages of 6 and 7 months. I teach them to walk on my left side without crossing, I teach them to “leave it” when coming across interesting things on the ground, and most importantly, I teach them not to pull. Nobody enjoys walking a dog that pulls them around.
Pinch collars are not spiked collars; they have flat prongs. The collar must be a snug fit so remove excess prongs that make it too roomy.
The sequence for training on a pinch is this:
1. Dog engages in unwanted behavior, like pulling.
2. You say the dog’s name to get their attention.
3. You say, “No pulling!”
4. You snap the pinch.
Do not ever snap a pinch without warning the dog by name and giving the command first with a chance for them to choose to stop the bad behavior before receiving the correction.
After the two weeks of training, I switched their mother to a leash with a built-in Martingale collar and it works perfectly for us. If she forgets and pulls, crosses in front of me, or stops to sniff something, I continue the sequence of saying her name and give the warning, and she corrects herself immediately.
Thank you for reading this document. You can always call or text me with any questions you have about your new puppy. We wish you a lifetime of happiness with your new little one, and we will miss them dearly. Send all the pictures you want.
Great read! Just got a kitten and decided against vaccinations and declined further vaccines for my dogs. Thankfully I found a vet that doesn’t pressure us.
Timely advice! I can’t thank you enough. We have 5 golden doodle pups and their incredible mama. We will NOT vax and plan to follow your feeding advice, though a few people are already giving me flak for it. Far better for me to endure flak than for our doggos to endure cancer.
May I pls copy to send home with new owners?