By Kavita Chhibber
In January 2019, I was in India and our 15-year-old German Shepherd Ramses, suddenly had an acute bout with diarrhea that lasted for 3 weeks. My husband Ajit had his hands full. A big dog with diarrhea is a tough thing. Ramses had also started having constipation, which most elderly dogs are prone to because they start drinking less water.
Then I stumbled upon a book written in 1999, by Dr. Marty Goldstein. It was the only book he wrote until his second one recently.
Dr. Goldstein became famous after he saved Oprah Winfrey’s very ill dog. He is a big proponent for an integrated approach to animal wellness.
Dr. Goldstein wrote in his book “The Nature of Animal Healing” that diarrhea is not an ailment but a symptom that indicates an interruption in the large intestine’s regular work. The intestines realize that something toxic is passing through them. To alleviate this, they subsequently try to get rid of the toxins as fast as possible while the waste is still liquid or soft. Briefly stated: toxicity is what causes diarrhea. Inferior quality dog food is the culprit most of the time, but there are other possibilities (for instance, bacteria or parasites absorbed by licking a source can be a cause, along with other potential issues.) In dogs with cancer, diarrhea may indicate a healing crisis.
Medicines address and suppress the symptoms but do not eradicate the root cause.
While Dr. Goldstein describes how different underlying issues causing diarrhea may need specific treatments, he recommended an old food recipe which turned out to be miraculous – not just for our dog, but many others I recommended it for. I am sharing the recipe here.
I can tell you that once we started Ramses on this recipe, his diarrhea stopped within a couple of hours. Once we made it the base of his food, he never had diarrhea, hemorrhoids, or any other stomach issues until the day he died. When his stomach stabilized, we continued with the recipe as a soup base and added all the raw foods, he was used to eating as a supplement. I added carrots and ginger as well as turmeric and fresh chopped cilantro in it as well. These are prebiotics and have many anti-inflammatory properties. Cilantro is a great liver cleanser for humans and dogs can eat a lot of what we eat (although not always!)
I have not tried this recipe on cats, but I am sure it will help them as well.
It is called the potato diet.
It is fifty percent white potato, fifty percent sweet potato, a slice of turnip, a slice of leek, all boiled and then mixed with boiled chicken or lamb.
I usually put one sweet potato, one white potato, half a turnip, and discontinued the leek after some time. At times I have cooked the soup to last me two days and have just doubled the quantity.
I used to just throw everything in a pressure cooker, including the chicken or whatever meat I wanted to add.
Dr. Goldstein added some homeopathic remedies. We did not.
Today we have adopted two young rescues, who arrived at our home on 5th December 2021 and have been on all kinds of different dog foods, which were not the greatest quality foods. As we are transitioning them to a raw food diet, the same soup is the base to keep their stomachs healthy. We are using Dr Marty’s dehydrated raw dog food and treats, temporarily but they are expensive and may not be affordable for people with large or multiple dogs. So just make this your base and add your dog food to it.
In the end a raw food diet is the best and cheaper overall, if you know how to manage that. I will discuss it in another post. But this recipe has worked for all the people I recommended it to. Buy the book. Its just 10 dollars with priceless information. And worth every cent.