In each of my specialist areas, I shall suggest some books as introductions to the subject. Also, please find here a few general books that I feel give a good background to the principles of holistic medicine. If you would like further references, please contact me.

Please note – if you are in any doubt as to the health of your animal, consult your local vet for a diagnosis and to discuss treatment options. Promptly.

Please find information on research and books for homeopathy, acupuncture, nutrition and herbal medicine below:

Research into veterinary nutrition is, like human medicine, pretty sketchy. There’s not really any money in it. I’m going to give you some really eye opening human research and let you join the dots...

• First offering is from Ted Talks – an incredible U.S. site offering 3-20 minute talks on design, education and technology (hence TED).
  I’ve filleted out all the nutrition related talks here.

Actually, I could stop there, but this is such an exciting area of study, here are some more offerings:

• barfaustralia.com


• claremiddle.com


• kymythy.com


• rawfed.com


• rawmeatybones.com

• burnspet.co.uk


• Pfma.org.uk


• Fediaf.org

Interestingly – when I did a Pubmed search (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez) on Nutrition in dogs, of the 93 reviews, nine were associated with Waltham, the pet food manufacturer. Seven were from the research facilities of Hill’s Pet Nutrition. That’s 16 reviews in the 93, 17% were directly associated with a pet food manufacturer. It’s impossible to tell how many of the other 77 were indirectly funded/associated with these vested-interest industries.

Another interesting thing – when searching the net for information to suggest why humans should eat the same, processed, preserved and ‘scientifically balanced’ kibble, I could find none. Strange that there should be such a profusion of people bending over backwards to say how right it is that dogs and cats should eat this material. Oh – and look – these people happen to have vested interests in processed foods.

It’s interesting that in the UK, the pet food manufacturers sponsor an awful lot of activity at the vet colleges (I’m not having a go at Hill’s here. I’m sure all the companies are gagging to be up there with their sponsorship. They just happen to be the big in the UK right now and have sponsorship I happen to know about). For example:

• Hill’s Pet Mobility Centre at Liverpool vet school.


• Hill’s sponsor a vet and a nurse within Bristol vet school.


• Waltham sponsor a postgraduate at Bristol.


• Hill’s sponsored a 2009 study into suicide in vets at Oxford University.


• Hill’s sponsor at least one senior lecturer at Glasgow.


• Hill’s have just made generous donations to the new Small Animal Surgical Suite at Cambridge vet school.