From a 1979 interview:

 
     Norman Ralston (NR) 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 (EWJ) 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, I'm 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 is eventually
to be free of it, because they're 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 down on 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 didn't 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 food out 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: There's 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 that's 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. that's 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 dog's 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 I've learned to
accept is the fact that people, because of their diet, don't 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, I'm
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 body's 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, she's 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 don't 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 I've done with acupuncture is to relieve the pain. We've
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 don't 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. We've 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 understand, 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
they're 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 you're
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 she's 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, I'll say it like this but nobody can make a cat food that's as
good as you can make in your own kitchen. I don't care how successful or
how big a concern it is, concern it is, they just can't do it.

 
EWJ: Thanks for talking with us.

(The above interview was published in the December 1979 issue of the East West Journal.)

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 [Norman Ralston,
D.V.M. with Gale Jack {1996, One Peace World Press} 112 pages]
ISBN 1-882984-22-6 is available for $12.95 (or less) per copy from:

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