The Complete Healthy Dog Handbook: a helpful addition to any dog owner's book collection

In 2008, our nation’s 44.8 million dog owners spent a staggering $11.1 billion at the vet’s office – and an additional $3 billion on prescriptions – caring for their canine family members.

Believing that about a third of all vet visits could be avoided if dog owners knew more about canine health, Betsy Brevitz, D.V.M. has written The Complete Healthy Dog Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Keeping Your Pet Happy, Healthy and Active. The 496-page guidebook offers comprehensive, yet reader-friendly advice to help you determine, among other things, whether you should rush to the ER, call for a veterinary appointment or treat your dog at home.

This just-revised book has oodles of information, organized into four sections:

• Preventative Health Care
  These chapters contain everything you need to know from choosing a breed to raising a puppy to caring for a senior dog.

• Common Canine Illnesses
  Consult each chapter’s emergency chart to determine if your dog’s symptoms require immediate action or a wait-and-see approach.

• Quick Reference
  Here you’ll find a treasure trove of “how-to’s” that every dog owner needs: how to give a pill, clean ears, take a temperature, care for wounds and more.

• Healthy Dog Resources
  This section of appendices details information on pet health insurance, alternative medicine modalities, veterinary specialists and helpful Internet resources.

Overall, this is a very complete and accessible book that is chock full of helpful information, engagingly written by a practicing veterinarian. The book is well-organized, easy to read and full of illustrations, diagrams and explanations of common symptoms that all dog owners will find useful. In fact, I made a veterinary appointment for one of my own dogs today, based on something I read in the book!

I do have to add that while I was pleased to find a section on alternative medicine, I was disappointed to discover that Brevitz does not condone raw diets. She believes it is too easy to create nutritional imbalances (especially in puppies) that can cause improper development when feeding a homemade diet. She states that creating a perfectly balanced raw diet is not simple and that “owners need to meticulously follow formulas created by a nutritionist” (page 78).

While I wholeheartedly agree that dog owners must thoroughly research any diet for their dogs, I submit that if we can raise healthy children without such stringent rules, and if wolves (who are biologically identical to our pups) can make it in the wild without regular, balanced meals and the help of a nutritionist, we can certainly raise a healthy dog without kibble. (And most commercially processed dog food, regardless of its balance, contains things dogs do not digest well, such as grains, but that's another article.) Of course, good nutritional balance is very important, but as one who has raised two goldens (who are now 13 and almost 12) most of their lives on a raw diet, (with the full support of my veterinarians) I find that “balance over time” works as well with dogs as it does with people.

My disagreement with the author on dietary issues notwithstanding, I am happy to recommend this excellent book, holding out hope that as studies are done proving the efficacy of raw diets, she will come to realize their important place in high-quality dog care. (She did, after all, mention changing her stance against adding fresh “people foods,” such as lean meats, grains, vegetables and fruits, to your dog’s diet!)

The Complete Healthy Dog Handbook is a thorough manual for raising and caring for a healthy, happy dog. It belongs on every dog owner’s bookshelf.

Author Dr. Betsy Brevitz practices veterinary medicine in northern New Jersey. After an earlier career in magazine journalism, Dr. Brevitz returned to her childhood dream of caring for animals and graduated from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, focusing on small-animal medicine. She shares her home with a husband, two children, a dog, a cat and a fish.