Dogs and cats are carnivores by nature. Beware of high fiber/carbs in their diets; it will mess up their digestive tracts. Vegetables should be cooked before giving to dogs. Cats should not be feed vegetables what so ever. Just because and animal will eat/crave it doesnÂt mean it is good for themÂlook at some human food we love but shouldnÂt eat! Dogs love/crave chocolate but would you give it to them? Commercial foods list the fiber content as less than 1.0 to 1.5%--it should be 0.25 to 0.5% at most. Many of these feeds main ingredient is corn or such--these are highly processed to lower the fiber content--NOT especially good for any cat/dog to eat. Never have observed a cat/dog in a wheat field grazing, or picking corn or soybeans let a lone screening/winnowing flax seed. Just common sense! We feed natural raw meat/bone finely ground from chicken, rabbits, turkey adding eggs before serving. Vitamin supplements especially designed for cats and another for dogs for their needs are different are given daily. The reason your dogs/cats get fat is the carbohydrates are way too high in the commercial feeds. Cats catch small rodents for natural food--dogs are slightly omnivorous and will eat nuts, berries to some degree. Carrots are high in fiber/carbs--should be used cooked as an occasional treat. Due to the fact their bodies do not store protein as fat-only carobs/fats can be stored as fat in any living mammal. Giving your dog/cats a more natural diet will maintain their weight and health giving them a longer life. As suggested above consult a vet that is a nutritional Biochemist (my field-nutritional Biochemist, PhD.) for the real info on animal nutrition. Most vets are like most human doctors only learn what the feed/medicine manufactures tell them--it is not necessarily the truth--especially when money is involved!

Yesterday was bad but today, well, let's just say I had to take drugs. Yesterday Katrina had to start getting her legs wrapped again. Not since the UNA boots have we had to deal with this. I was up early because sis was having a procedure, bladder sling at the surgery center. Sassi had to be taken to the groomer and then Katrina had to go to the wound clinic. I had someone coming to cut the back out of a new cabinet I bought for a big TV a friend had given Neil. I went to the surgery center to see sis before surgery. I had had a bad feeling about this and had urged sis not to do it. Never had this feeling before. I dropped Sassi off with the groomer and then hurried home to fix breakfast for Neil and Katrina. I then get a call saying that the doctor had perforated the bladder and sis was being taken across to the hospital because there might emergency surgery to repair bladder. Neil and I went to check on sis. Those of you that have been here so long know a lot of Katrina's health history and it isn't easy nor is any of it good. We went through the wound care, leg wrapping thing for the better part of a year so this isn't our first Rodeo if you know what I mean. We tried to explain some of the things that didn't work before and it didn't fly with them. We got this " we've been doing this for years and we know what we're doing." Well, Katrina has had health problems since she was born so she knows her body better than anyone with the exception of myself. The doctor asked what surgeries she had had and when she started telling him, she lost him after the first 5. We then had to explain each one and go into depth why the surgery was done. Lord luv a duck, I was exhausted when it was over and was very glad Neil wasn't there. The appointment took 3 hours and by the time I got home and got supper taken care of, picking up Sassi, I just wanted to go to bed but still had to beat the closing time at Kmart to buy those long bath runners so I could make a path from Katrina's bedroom to her bathroom so she could navigate without falling. Her legs are weeping fluids and it runs off by the buckets onto the floors, which are hardwood. Since she has to walk with crutches she slips on wet floors. Sis, spent hours waiting to be taken down for tests to find out if she had to have surgery and ended up having to wait til today because the doctor had left the hospital for the day. This morning I got up early for the utility company to relocate my computer connection. Sis was taken down to have tests, the gutter people came and repaired the gutter. Katrina couldn't wear any of her shoes, I made a hasty trip to shoe stores and brought home a few possibilities for her. While I was out I got a frantic call from my other sis and she said our sis was taken straight from the tests to the operating room. The surgery would be 3 hours. I'm afraid at that point I lost it. By the time I got home, I was in tears, had called my grandson to come to stay with Neil. I took Katrina back to the wound clinic to get her legs wrapped again, and this time the nurse actually listened and tried a new way to wrap. I had taken a calming medication by then and had stopped crying. When I got home, I had found out that sis had made it through the surgery. The sling had to be removed, the bladder and tubes repaired and the surgeon is keeping her til next tuesday and will be sending her home with a cath. My grandson had put the big TV in the new cabinet in the living room and had connected my computer back up. (Every cloud has a silver lining) Katrina treated us to supper and in a few minutes, I'll go to the hospital and check on sis. I'm just plain worn out!

Doctors are just as capable of believing and promoting pseudo-scientific hogwash as those who are not doctors. Should someone who is 100 lbs overweight avoid red meat? yes. But it is because they are 100 lbs overweight, not because they are any particular blood type. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that high levels of "bad" cholesterol are detrimental to heart health, and some people have "genetic factors" that make them more prone to "bad" cholesterol based on dietary-cholesterol intake, but as far as I am aware no study has indicted blood type as a statistically significant indicator of these "genetic factors". And given how many studies have been run and how much money has been spent I'm confident that if there were any statistically significant correlation between blood type and a genetic pre-disposition for "bad" cholesterol it would have been detected. The surface of all cells have antigens, a sort of signature for determining friend or foe. When the body detects foreign antigens it it reacts with an immune response, which, in part, includes developing antibodies to help detect and react more quickly and more forcefully when these foreign antigens are encountered again. Human blood has three critically important antigens: "A", "B", and "D" (as well as a few dozen less important antigens). "Blood type" as expressed by the common parlance of "A+" "A-" B+" "B-" "AB+" "AB-" "O+" "O-" simply indicates the presence or absence of the three critical antigens on the blood cells of the person in question. They are a useful shorthand for determining whether a transfusion from one person to another would be life-threatening or would be likely to not be life-threatening. If you receive blood in a transfusion that has antigens that your blood doesn't have, your body can react with an immune response that can make you sicker rather than helping you. In the case of the A B and D antigens it will make you sicker and maybe kill you. That's it. That's what "blood type" means. Those who attempt to ascribe anything more to it such as red meat is bad for people with type A blood, or type O should avoid tomatoes or whatever are guilty of the same sort of specious (and sometimes dangerous) reasoning that says blond people are unintelligent, or those with darker skin are somehow less that human, or that eating ground up tiger penises will make you virile. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm attacking you. I'm not. I'm upset at the unwarranted certitude of the supposed doctors (who may in fact just be calling themselves doctors) who seem to believe that just because they went to school for a number of years, and they passed a test and they haven't yet killed enough people to have been stripped of their medical license that therefore any idea that they "really, really, really believe to be true" is scientifically valid. Lastly there is absolutely no relationship between the type-A personality type, and the blood type A except for the fact that they both chose letters from the same end of the alphabet.

About grinding einkorn in a Vitamix.... Yes, IF you have the DRY BLADE CONTAINER, which is used for hard, dry materials, such as grain, and for kneading dough. The container the Vitamix comes with is the WET BLADE CONTAINER. I have a "bevy" of mills, but I teach classes on the subject and have purchased them over the span of many years. I can mill any type of grain/seed/bean from tiny teff and amaranth to dent corn and garbanzo beans. Personally, I wouldn't use a Vitamix (with the dry blade container) because it heats the flour too much, but if you already have the dry blade container, chill your grain in the freezer and only grind it in small amounts with the least amount of time for processing possible to keep it from getting too hot. The heat destroys nutrients. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ COOKIE8 - I use your recipe for FLAX COOKIES you shared on the Cooking group from 5-12-2014 (which also requires ground pumpkin seeds). Your recipe above looks great, too. :-) I sprout pumpkin seeds to make them easier to digest, and look forward to trying the recipe. -Grainlady