Quick Reads: Dogs for Life

By Alison Stokes

They are often our best friends and share a special bond with us. But what if your dog was more than just a pet? In Dogs for Life, we share the stories of animals with very important jobs to do. Heart-warming and inspiring, emotional and funny, Dogs for Life shows how some amazing animals are changing the lives of the humans who love them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rily
• Release date: Oct 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781849674171

Book preview

Foreword

Animals have always been part of my life. I am interested in the ways that animals and humans can benefit each other, and this has guided me throughout my career.

In my school holidays and during winter weekends from the age of 13 I worked on a small dairy farm near my home in Ayrshire, Scotland. I learned a lot, doing everything from milking cows to mucking out hens and helping with hay making. After I qualified as a vet I moved to Carmarthenshire to work in a vet practice that looked after mostly large farm animals, although I did sometimes treat sick cats and dogs.

It didn’t take long for me to realise that although drugs could relieve most common health problems of pets such as skin disease or ear infection, when the drugs stopped the problem came back. I wanted to be able to do more.

At about that time, I read an article about acupuncture. It was the mid-1970s and I heard how some doctors in Europe were using the ancient Chinese method of placing needles at certain points in a patient’s body to stimulate nerves and muscles. It was seen as a new, alternative way of treating disease without having to take so many drugs. I decided to learn more and qualified to become a human acupuncturist. At the same time, this led me to find out more about other complementary therapies. One of these was macrobiotics, which took the view that many modern human illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, mental illness, cancers and other degenerative diseases were a result of our way of eating. Our modern Western-style diet consists mainly of meat, dairy foods, sugars and chemicals instead of the more traditional diets of our forbears which were based around grains and vegetables, seeds and fruits. This was the root of many of our modern diseases. This completely changed the way I thought about what I ate, and I became a fan of health promotion rather than disease treatment.

I began to introduce this method of eating into my work to bring changes into the way I was treating sick animals. I thought that if this way of eating could benefit humans, why not pets? When owners brought their animals into my vet practice, I would use medication as a short-term fix but as a way of preventing the illness coming back, I would suggest a change in diet. My advice was to feed a home-cooked diet of brown rice, vegetables and meat. At that time, good quality organic brown rice was difficult to buy in west Wales (in some places it still is), so the practice stocked and sold rice for pet owners. In other practices, pet owners came in for wormers or medicines and tablets; in our surgery they came to buy brown rice! We saw fantastic improvements in the health of dogs (and even cats) when they were fed this type of natural diet. Skin, ear and digestive problems cleared up, never to return.

Most of my customers, however, did not have the time to cook for their pets so the idea of producing food they could buy was born. Burns Real Food for Dogs was launched in 1993 and the rest, as they say, is history.

Today, as the founder and owner of the successful Burns Pet Nutrition Limited business which sells pet food all over the world, I am in a position to use my company’s profits to help animals and their humans too.

I set up the Burns Pet Nutrition Foundation in 2006. When a customer buys Burns pet food, a portion of the cost is put back into the community. We run projects that help children to read, host coffee mornings for older people and work with people who have brain injuries.

Today, the John Burns Foundation employs 9 members of staff and has a sister charity in Ireland. Our aim is very simple, and that is to make a difference to the lives of people and their animals. At our headquarters in Kidwelly we run community gardens and arts and craft workshops, where people who feel lonely can come and learn new skills and enjoy themselves.

One of our projects is the Burns By Your Side children’s reading scheme. Poor literacy is a huge problem in the UK: one in six children struggle to read, and 12 million adults have the reading levels of an 11-year-old. At Burns we want to change literacy levels for the next generation by improving children’s confidence in reading with the help of canine companions.

Burns By Your Side was launched in 2015 and is active across west and south Wales and has also started in Ireland. We have over 70 qualified volunteer and dog teams in schools, colleges, libraries and other educational settings.

When these specially trained dogs (and their owners) come to hear children read, it’s fun. And that makes all the difference. Learning to read is often about overcoming fears rather than intellectual limitations. Animals are ideal reading companions because they:

Help children to relax

Listen attentively

Do not judge, laugh, or criticise

Allow children to read at their own pace

Make a session less scary than reading out loud to the class.

We are delighted that some of the dogs and their owners who are part of our scheme have shared their stories in this wonderful book, along with some other truly inspiring stories about dogs, their people and the incredible roles they play in our lives.

I defy anyone to read this book with a dry eye!

John Burns, Founder, Burns Pet Nutrition, Kidwelly.

Burns by your side