A Great Vet: An interview with the macrobiotic veterinarian, Dr. Norman Ralston, D.V.M.
Enthusiastically Presented to you in an Online Format by Bruce Paine
This interview was published in the December 1979 issue of the East-West Journal magazine. Dr. Ralston passed away at age 79 in Balch Springs Texas in January 29, 1999. " Norman Ralston is a doctor of veterinary medicine and director of the Grove Animal Clinic in Dallas. Texas. He has practiced macrobiotics for several years and this summer lectured in Boston at the East West Foundations annual Conference on Cancer and Other Degenerative Diseases. Ann Fawcett has two cats which are thriving on natural foods."
EWJ: I've heard you have had some remarkable success in improving the health of animals at your clinic through proper diet. Can you give some details on that?
NR: I've been able to alter the disposition of certain individual animals by applying the principles of yin and yang to their diet.
EWJ: Could you briefly explain these two terms, yin and yang, as you use them?
NR: Very briefly, yin means expanding and yang means contracting. So a very obese or fat animal we consider yin. A slender aggressive animal we consider yang. By altering the diet we have been able to change some animals behavior to their opposite. An overweight, expanded, inactive yin animal we have been able to transform into a more contracted, yang aggressive animal through diet. Conversely, we have been able to change a more aggressive animal to a more docile and peaceable one by making the diet more yin. For example, I have a Doberman Pincer, a female dog which belongs to my secretary at the clinic. This animal came in as a very meek animal, reserved, and almost apologized for existing. She was on a diet of dry dog food with an occasional can of canned food. So, I decided to make this very yin animal very yang. Now, we started this dog on a very yang diet of about 50 percent grain and 25 percent vegetables. Basically, Im still giving her a little prepared dog food because we havent graduated to the point where we can disassociate ourselves completely from the prepared dog food. But our goal iseventually to be free of it, because theyre putting so many preservatives into the dog food. One of the ways I yangize food is to parch the grain. I burn it a little bit on the bottom. The grains we have used in this dogs diet have been brown rice, oats, corn, buckwheat, rye, and a small amount of millet. We have developed the dog into a very yang individual with a personality like a storm trooper. She can eat you up.
EWJ: Just by modifying diet?
NR: Yes, I did the same thing with a poodle, only in reverse. This dog belonged to a family that owned a meat market, and they fed her an overly yang diet of 70-80 percent raw meat. These trimmings consisted mostly of raw beef, some raw pork, and occasionally raw chicken. I remembered my grandmother used to tell me, If you want to make a dog mean tie it up and feed it raw meat. Most of these things Im checking out, I find that my grandmother taught me as a child but I had forgotten. Anyway, you restrict a dog, feed him a very yang diet, and, boy, he's ready to get you, since he has no way to discharge his aggressiveness in physical activity. This poodle was so mean I just hated to see him brought in, because he would only try to bite. He was preoccupied with biting people; even if members of the family sat downon the couch, he'd growl and snap at them, just a mean guy. I heard Michio Kushi lecture on macrobiotics at Amherst and say that food precedes thought. Well, it made me angry, I didnt like the idea, and I didnt like what he said. I asked myself what is this man trying to pull on people? So, I said I'll go home and I'll experiment. I kept thinking about it and thought this dog would be ideal to try it on. So I called the lady in and talked to her and asked her if she would consider putting this animal on a different diet. She went along with the idea. So, we tried it.
EWJ: What kind of diet did you use?
NR: Well, we gave him a lot of boiled brown rice, and we cooked it a long time--made it very yin. All of his meat had to be cooked as well. Then in about six weeks; she called me and said, You wont believe this dog. She brought him in and I could walk up to him and put my hands on him. I was simply astounded. I couldnt believe this was the dog I had known for several years and always dreaded to see come in the door. All of a sudden he's changed.
EWJ: What else did you prescribe this dog besides brown rice?
NR: Cooked meat was about 25 percent of his diet. For six days he didn't eat a bit. He was waiting for that raw meat and he could smell it, he wasn't going to eat. She called me and asked what she should do. I said, Just hang in there, there's two of you and one of you is going to win. If he wins, then we've lost. He won't starve to death. Just like you and me, if there's a rat around hell eat. So she kept putting the foodout and it was 25 percent cooked meat, well done. And occasionally cooked beans were mixed with the meat. In other words, they used a lot of leftovers. I had her taking vegetable scraps, steaming them, and putting them in the diet. She began to cook parts of onions, carrots, and things like that. So we gave him 25 percent vegetables. We also gave him 1/8 teaspoon sea meal. The sea meal consists of four types of seaweed ground into a powder. The animal refused the food at first. After three days we compromised and added a small amount of raw meat and the animal ate heartily. The raw meat was gradually withdrawn over a period of five or six days, and the animal continued to eat the diet very well.
EWJ: For healthy animals, what kind of a daily diet do you recommend?
NR: I do not give a blanket recommendation. A general guide with some of the following important factors should be considered in terms of yin and yang:
- 1) In what temperature zone does the animal reside (hot-yinnizing or cold-yangizing)?
- 2) What temperature zone was the origin of the breed?
- 3) What was the original purpose of the breed?
- 4) What is the purpose of the breed now?
- 5) What are the animals daily activities like?
- 6) Is the animal at present, more yin or more yang?
- 7) What are the desires of the owner?
These factors may seem complicated but are actually quite simple. Most of the factors we already know, and with a few simple questions put to the owner we can determine the rest. There is only one factor that seems determined by trial and error. That factor is biological individuality. We see this manifest even in puppies of the same litter. What is good for one is not always good for another. Generally, however, for a 20-pound dog of mixed breed origin residing in our North American temperate zone we would recommend the following diet: 50 to 60 percent whole grain, 25 percent meat beef or horse), and 25 percent slightly cooked steamed fresh vegetables. To this mixture we would add 1/8 teaspoon of sea meal one teaspoon of raw parsley freshly chopped, and one clove of garlic: We like parsley to be finely chopped and added raw or nearly so. We like to add the garlic near the cooking time of the vegetables just enough to make them edible and to destroy any parasite eggs that might be on them.
EWJ: What do you think of canned or dry pet foods?
NR: Most of our commercial dog foods are too yin, and were seeing the results. Really, not taking the quality of food into consideration is creating chaos in our pets. In the parks in Boston, there is a dog stool every three steps. Many of these stools are almost in the condition they were before they entered the dogs body. I didnt see a healthy dog in Boston, not one. Theyre all sick, I was so discouraged because I looked at these stools, and this is one thing Ive done over the years. Every dog that comes across my table I run a stool smear on. This doesn't mean a fecal examination, but I take a thermometer and just smear it on a slide and look at it. Well, its like I told a young veterinarian once in a meeting. He asked me if I was looking for parasites. I said look at 45,000 of them and then come back. It tells you something. Before long you become aware that the toxins are just building up in this animals body. I used to be very uptight about the blood count. Now, I can tell the quality of the blood by just looking at it. I can tell whats happening to an animals body without the sophisticated medical tests.
EWJ: Theres a booklet out by a homeopathic vet in California who talks about certain kinds of diet causing problems in animals urinary tracts. He mentioned cooked foods in particular.
NR: I think I've read this. He was talking about stones, right?
EWJ: Yes, especially male cats.
NR: I understand what he's saying, yes, he referring to the formation of bladder stones. But I feel we are on safer ground by using the unifying principle of yin and yang. As you know we can change the quality of food by the use of heat in cooking. It would be possible to change a food thats more yang to more yin and back to more yang just by the use of cooking methods. The body would react differently to the food with each change. We've had some success in this area. I have a formula which goes like this solidified mucus equals stones-whether its plaque on the teeth, cataracts in the eye, gallstones in the gall bladder, kidney stones in the kidney, or bladder stones in the bladder. Anything that causes mucus in an animals body is capable of causing stones because mucus eventually solidifies and becomes a stone. Recently, I had a cat that was in convulsions. I could get the cat out of convulsions simply by pressing on the maxillary sinus. It was like flipping a light switch. I could throw it into convulsions and take it out of convulsions, throw it into convulsions, take it out of convulsions, back and forth. So I recognized this as being in the sinuses. I took this animal and kept it under sedation and put a pack on its head to pull the mucus out. He recovered. In another case, a lady brought in a little animal. Due to my study of Oriental physiognomy [see EWJ Nov. 1978 and Oriental Diagnosis by Michio Kushi--ed], Ive been able to look at people and judge the condition of their pets. I have some three or four hundred slides that Ive made of animals and their owners together. Look at these slides and you can begin to see the correlation. If I definitely see something in the human thats a kidney problem then I know to look for this same problem in the animal.
EWJ: Even though they dont eat the same diet?
NR: They feed similarly. There is a correlation there. You just have to look at enough slides. Then you begin to see the correlation. Back to the mucous story and its correlation to animal fat, as in chicken, for example. I knew this lady and dog very well. She called me and said, "Dr. Ralston, my dog is starting to have convulsions. Theyre getting closer and closer together." I said, "They are? Let me ask you a few questions. Would you say that the first convulsion she had was right after Thanksgiving?" She said," Yes, thats right." I said," Would you say the second one she had was right after Christmas Day?" She said, "Thats right." And, I said, "Now would you say that the third one she had was right after New Years?" She said, "Yes. thats right. How did you know?" I said, "Why in the hell don't you stop feeding her chicken?" She said, "How did you know?" I said, "This chicken is causing mucus in this animals body. Shes so yin, she can't stand it (I had her on a very strict diet)." I said, "You put her back an her diet and don't deviate from that diet, and then we won't have any problems." In another case a lady came in with a little dog and I looked in the dogs eye and could see this mucus. I looked at this animal and it was having problems standing up, it staggered. I said, "This dog has been eating a lot of chicken?" She said, "Every day." It turns out she worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken. She brought home chicken scraps for this dog every day. Its all the dog had to eat. I said, "This is your problem right here." Then, I went to the trouble of showing her how to pull this mucus out by applying a taro potato plaster to the dogs head, and we got this dog straightened out, got her walking better. We just used grated taro. We used it right across her brow, and we just taped it in place. We kept working with this until we got the animal walking really well. So, I made her promise to come back. About five or six weeks later, I finally got her on the phone--the dog wasnt any better, in fact, she was worse. I said, "What are you feeding her?" She said, "Chicken." I said, "All right, bring her in and I'll treat her." I treated her for free and pulled her out of this and got her back to walking straight Again. One of the things that Ive learned to accept is the fact that people, because of their diet, dont change the animals diet. So thats what we've got to expect.
EWJ: Is it hard now for people to find whole grains for their pets?
NR: My dream is to one day have an animal food store that I can refer people to, so they can build their pets own diets at home. In fact, Im starting classes where I teach people how to do these things. We're going, to have people who are really interested and who are committed. Some people are not interested. If theyre not interested, then there's nothing you can do. One lady brought me an animal which was really obese. I said, "This animal needs to lose a little weight." The lady said, "It didn't eat anything." I said, "It eats something from somewhere." She said, "No, she doesnt eat a thing." I said, "Let me ask you a question. If I put this animal on a very good diet to reduce its obesity and make him more healthy, make him straighten out, will you cooperate with me?" She said, "No, that dogs a biscuit ox, he likes his biscuits and gravy every morning! He's going to get them too." There wasn't anything you could do for that person. There wasnt any way you could reach her. You just have to accept that. Most tumors, I feel, are caused by an accumulation of animal fat. The body cant take care of it so it begins to put it somewhere, or it tries to wall it off. I have long since given up the idea of biopsies. From my experience they just stimulate the body, and the body is immediately called to heal something. That's the bodys response. I feel that this triggers something--the healing mechanism recognizes animal fat or cholesterol Its called on to heal this area and as a result of that, the healing process calls on the body to ward off anything that's foreign to it. Even before I discovered macrobiotics, I had given up biopsies. On the tumors, weve been able to pull them lose from the body. I had one about the size of a large grapefruit on the side of this animal the lady was very diligent. I taught her how to treat the dog and she did it at home. After that I was really sure in my own mind that this was just a big ball under the skin. I made an incision and just flicked the thing out. Well, the diet I put the animal on changed her from one that was I don't care, Laying around on the couch, to one that was very active. Now, when the doorbell rang, she jumped off the couch and ran for the door and barked. And, she began to play with her toys again. After the surgery we continued the taro plasters to give the body information that this is the way things should go. And so working with this it healed beautifully. The animal taught herself (now I have to take the owners word for this) tricks like barking for food, fetching, and rolling over. Even this lady's children commented on how the dog was acting like she was a puppy. She got her toys out and played with them. She was really a joy. She came in about six months later for a check-up. She still had not gained her weight back. She still looked very good and was alert, but I noticed plaque beginning to develop on the teeth. I assumed that this was from her prior bad eating habits, I had no idea that the owner had taken the animal off her diet. I went back into my office and looked at the wall for about ten minutes and asked myself what I was doing. This was concrete evidence that you can help an animal through diet. And you know why this woman didnt see this? Because of her own bad eating habits. So, I went back and very carefully explained everything again. Hopefully, shell begin to see the light. She's agreed that she will keep the animal on a better diet.
EWJ: Has inflation changed peoples ways of feeding their pets?
NR: If its a big dog, people are going to be faced with the problem of economics. After all, they have to stay within their pocketbooks. Its a blessing that they can fix these grain diets, use the vegetables, and substitute some beans because meat prices have gone beyond what anyone can afford. Most of the time for dogs, I use meat just as flavoring, although the dog can exist very well on a completely grain and vegetable diet. It doesnt have to eat meat. Of course you have to remember that grain like rice for example, high in protein. You can produce a very healthy animal this way. Their coats become shiny and they look good. They're alive and they're alert.
EWJ: What areas you investigating now?
NR: Many, many symptoms that I see are deficiencies, Ive begun to recognize as prenatal: deficiencies. This is the project we are working on now. We have this dog at the clinic, shes pregnant and weve already raised one group of puppies from her that are superintelligent. We're beginning to give her millet in her diet because shes pregnant. We're giving her corn, cornmeal, barley, and some wheat also. Then, when these puppies are born we expect them to be just as intelligent. The last litter was. The woman who worked for me gave me the pick of the litter for helping her with it. We trained this young animal very easily. You could tell him something twice and hed just do it. I didnt want to keep him, because I wanted to bring on another one, I wanted to see if I could do this again. I got another dog behind that one. Im not proving this to anybody but myself, because really I want to see what I can do with it. For example, it's like the Bible says, "A man's sins are visited unto him to the seventh generation." You see, if some deficiency is in the mother, she can't give what she hasnt got to the young in her womb. I might say to you, Give me a million dollars. You say, "Well thats a lot, I dont have a million. You can't give me something you havent got." In my own case, for example, I can trace vitamin E deficiencies in my own body which caused the shortening of certain muscles. I can trace this back four generations in my family, using photographs and facial diagnosis. So, if I see this in animals, then I can correct it through diet and keep correcting it, and farther down the line, I'll have it whipped.
EWJ: You mean in successive generations?
NR: Right. To me, hip displacement in dogs is nothing more than a vitamin E deficiency. Vitamin E is very essential in the metabolism of muscles.
EWJ: Giving that dog vitamin E now, would it help him?
NR: No; hes pretty well passed that stage of development in the womb. You can give vitamin E until you go crazy, and you can't correct something that's already there. For example, Im constitutionally short. There's not any use in me saying hocus-pocus I'm going to be six feet tall. But, within my constitutional parameter there are lots of changes that I can make.
EWJ: So, you could modify their diet in some way that would at least lessen the pain for them?
NR: Yes, and what Ive done with acupuncture is to relieve the pain. Weve corrected it as best we can. We have a dog that we have X-rays on that we've followed. This is a young dog that came in with hip displacement. He was to be put to death, the dog couldnt even get up. Well, we took that animal and gave him some acupuncture treatment. The lady signed a release and gave us permission to keep the animal and to do anything we wanted to do. So the first thing I did was to give him acupuncture treatment. He got up and stated walking but wasnt very good. Then we followed this animal for about two years with X-rays and watched his hips develop. And I corrected his diet: This is what got me started working more with the diet and giving him a lot of grains. The diet really helped. Again, the grains made him very yang. We sold him as a watch dpg. In fact, to get the dog home, we had to tranquilize him and let the owner haul him home asleep.
EWJ: Do you recommend soybean products along with whole grains in a pets diet?
NR: Yes, soybeans are fine. The only problem you have with soybeans is if you get much more than 14 or 15 percent of soaked soybeans in your dog food then you have bleeding of the bile. This is something that you have to be careful of.
EWJ: In what form would you use soybeans?
NR: Now, if I had my druthers, I would simply use it in the form of tofu, perhaps flavored with meat broth.
EWJ: What are other alternatives to soy products
NR: As I mentioned, we also seaweed. This helps tremendously. And also were using some brewers yeast. It seems like this just enhances the effects of the seaweed--makes them like it. In a cat we would use fish instead of meat, You can tell whats happening to your cat by looking at his teeth. If plaque is building up on the teeth, it means that you are feeding something that is causing mucus. Going back to my experiences on the farm where I grew up, I remember the old ritual of my grandmother having me go to the bar to get the old ratter (a cat) for a black woman who was ill. My grandmother held the cat over the colored womans hara (center of gravity and vital energy, located in the lower abdomen--ed), held her hands on it, and she got well. I couldnt believe this, it was so remarkable. I told about this experience in veterinary school, and I got laughed out of the class. I use to think that every thing Grandma did was all right. I thought all I had to do was get into veterinary school and that I knew everything. Then they laughed at me. It took me fifty years to appreciate her again.
EWJ: Your grandmother held the cat over this woman to heal her?
NR: What happened was this lady was very sick. I dont know what was wrong with her. I was a little boy and my grandmother sat her in Grandpas rocker. Grandpa had been dead about twenty years, but his rocker was always a place of honor in the living room. And for you to get to sit in it was always something. She didnt allow just anybody to sit in it. Grandma put this woman in Grandpas rocker and put a comforter around her. A comforter is different from a quilt, in that its made of wool as well as cotton. Now I don't know what was the matter with the lady. She might have had the flu. Its hazy in my memory, but I remember she was very, very sick. Grandma sent me to the barn. I was always supposed to get what Grandma told me to get. She told me, You go get that old ratter down at the barn. I went down to the barn and got this old cat. He was a very healthy cat, I remember that. She had the woman hold him and stroke him, held him right over the hara area, that is, in her lap next to the abdomen. Grandma told her to just hold him there and hold her hands on him. Now, I'm beginning to see the benefit of that, because she needed some heat in that area. A cats temperature is normally higher than a humans. Also, the cat was very healthy, so he had a nice vibration with all things electrical. If you rub your hand or a comb down the side of a cat it will spark in the dark and make the electrical charge increase. So Grandma had this woman put her fingers and her hands on his back And, of course, he was emanating this electrical current and it was going through her body. It was making contact right at the hara center. This helped the woman tremendously. At first I didn't know what it was that made her well. Grandma had this comforter around her. This kept the heat in. Apparently, she was getting too cold and she needed more ki [vital energy--ed] flow. Grandma knew what to do, thats the main thing.
EWJ: And the woman recovered?
NR: Yes, definitely!
EWJ: Tell me what this old cat ate?
NR: He ate whatever he could find at the farm. The usual things; we had a lot of grain, we had alot of corn, so the rat, ate the grain and the cat ate the rat, or he didnt get anything to eat. Very seldom did we feed those cats. They just had to work for themselves.
EWJ: What would you recommend for cats today that dont have that option?
NR: Cats seem to appreciate rice. A lot of people say cats wont eat rice, but if they wont then the cats are very individualistic. If you put some fish in with the rice, theyll eat it and like it. Weve had a problem finding a source of inexpensive fish; its very difficult. We dont use more than about 25 percent, just to get the flavor in there. We have some cats that are eating peas, beans and squash, even cabbage, but we blend this in with the food. We have a family where one cat loves cabbage while the other cat will not touch it. This we have to under stand, the other one is just not going to eat it.
EWJ: What grains do you use?
NR: Brown rice of course. For other possibilities, how about corn and cornbread and how about oatmeal? You can mix oatmeal several different ways. You can mix it in with the corn meal. You can make a corn bread that has part oats in it. You can use  bulghur wheat. These are all things that can be added. The vegetables I am using are ones that are available in season, and grown locally, Most of the time it could be scraps; its amazing what, people throw away. Many people are not aware of the nutritional value of what theyre throwing away.
EWJ: What about a complete vegetarian diet for cats and dogs, especially cats, is that possible?
NR: I think so. I've almost outlined such a diet. You watch the animal reactions and its body. We begin to train the animals taste buds when theyre young.
EWJ: If a cat is in an apartment, would raw meat be out of the question?
NR: Well, in the first place where are you going to get it? In the second place, if he's kept in that very confined area he doesnt need that kind of a diet. That diet is too restrictive.
EWJ: But I mean raw meat in addition to the grains and vegetables youre talking about.
NR: But what will happen, if youre not careful, is that the animal will train himself to eat meat. Its like a child, feed him only candy, and he won't eat anything but candy.
EWJ: Do veterinarians today pay attention to nutrition?
NR: No, unfortunately. I feel this is lack of training. I know of only one or two veterinary schools that have a department of nutrition I feel that what is needed is a restudy of primitive humanity their animals, and their diets.
EWJ: Does this lack of emphasis an nutrition cause veterinarians to fail to think of food in relationship to disease?
NR: Unfortunately this seems to be true. Emphasis needs to be placed on the prevention of disease instead of treatment Deficiencies are being transmitted from generation to generation in the name of genetics, which very well may not be true. The real point may be what the mother eats while shes pregnant. Also no one seems to be questioning preservatives being added to animal foods.
EWJ: Do you find that you are lonesome for colleagues?
NR: Yes, its a very lonely situation. However, the fulfilling satisfaction of seeing animals get well defies description. For example, last week a little scottie came in. The lady who brought him in said, Do you remember this dog? said, Well no, quite frankly I don't. Then I began to remember this dog had come in practically nude of hair. Look what a beautiful coat he's got now, look how tall he's gotten. This is in about six months.
EWJ: You changed his diet?
NR: Yes, we can change the quality of an animals blood in exactly ten days, not nine, not eleven. Weve had this happen over and over. We've used diet even in treating heart worms. When we stick with this and when we bring seaweed into the diet we've found that this affects treatment time tremendously I had one animal that I just checked last week for what we call plus on heart worms. On the eleventh day we checked him negative. This doesnt mean that all of those worms are out of his heart. What it means is that we have changed the environment of that animals blood to where the worms are saying, "We dont like it in here anymore."
EWJ: Juliet de Bairacli Levy in her books (Complete Herbal Book for the Dog and Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable) talks about dogs being scavengers by nature and eating carrion. Are you familiar with her work?
NR: Yes, I am. Im finishing one of her books right now.
EWJ: What do you think about her recommendations for care of dogs, cats, and other domestic animals?
NR: I agree with her on many important points with some major exceptions. In her chapter on diets she recommends whole grains, saying for it is on cereals that carnivorous life relies for most of all essential minerals as well as the majority of vitamins including the vital fertility vitamin E, present in the germ of cereals, especially in wheat and maize. In the same sentence in the same paragraph she says that the feeding of grain is less important than feeding meat. On this I feel she has her values reversed. In the same chapter when she is referring to the, feeding of milk she says to the older puppy and adult dog, milk is not a natural food, and when taken in excess, it will form mucous deposits which are frequently the root cause of many of the common ailments, especially worm infection With the first part of this statement I am in total agreement and with the last part I am in total disagreement. Another point I feel it is important to make is that she makes no distinction between cow's milk and goat's milk. There is a vast difference. Goat's milk is known as the universal milk and can be fed to most species of orphaned young with some degree of safety. Cow's milk on the other hand contains some indigestible elements such as casein, which are very hard on the young of other species except of course the calf.
EWJ: Today, we seem to have lost track of how people traditionally fed domestic animals, as well as the original hunting and survival relationships between dogs and human beings. When you go into the grocery store and look at the pet food section and see all the canned foods, it becomes all the more apparent how removed we are from our original associations with food, where it comes from, and how we depend on it.
NR: Well, Ill say it like this but nobody can make a cat food thats as good as you can make in your own kitchen. I dont care how successful or how big a concern it is, concern it is, they just cant do it.
EWJ: Thanks for talking with us.
From the back cover of Raising Healthy Pets: Insights of a Holistic Veterinarian by Norman Ralston, D.V.M. with Gale Jack : ' "In Raising Healthy Pets, Norman Ralston, D.V.M. presents everything you need to know to bring up a healthy dog or cat. The noted Texas veterinarian discovered natural health after healing himself of a serious tumor on a macrobiotic diet. Using some of the same methods in his Dallas clinic, he has enhanced the lives of thousands of animals over the years and has become a pioneer in the natural care and treatment of pets. Raising Healthy Pets begins with Dr. Ralstons own story, of growing up on a Texas farm during the Depression and learning the secrets of folk medicine and the human-animal bond from his grandmother.
Dr. Ralston goes on to present a nutritional comparison between commercial and natural pet foods and shows you how to determine what your pet requires. He also offers sound advice on prenatal care and birthing, kitten and puppy care, grooming, bathing, immunizations, and neutering and spaying.
Raising Healthy Pets: Insights of a Holistic Veterinarian" by Norman Ralston, D.V.M. with Gale Jack {1996, One Peace World Press} 112 pages] ISBN 1-882984-22-6
Availble at select bookstores, natural foods/co-ops/pet stores, your local public library, and online at: George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation - Book Sales: and at: The Macrobiotic Path: Catalog:
You can also visit the Macrobiotic Path where Alex and Gale Jack "offer a variety of articles, books, and services, including macrobiotic counseling, view of life guidance sessions, and informal MacroChat conversations in person, on the telephone, or via fax or email." They might even know a thing or two about how to take better care of your pet, naturally.
Alex & Gale Jack
Thank you, very much. Bruce Paine
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