Zoë chats with Nick Thompson, aka The Holistic Vet
Bio
Nick Thompson is a vet. He has been fighting for responsible, species-appropriate raw food feeding for pets for over 25 years. His tireless drive for healthy pets from birth to graceful old age brought him to raw feeding in the mid-1990s.
Nick is Founding President of the international Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (www.rfvs.info) and has co-authored a pioneering worldwide survey of 79 vets and their experiences feeding raw food.
He has co-organised international raw food conferences for the RFVS since 2014.
In 1999, Nick established his specialist practice, Holisticvet (www.holisticvet.co.uk). Now based near Bath, he offers homeopathy, natural nutrition and herbal medicine and a lot of good old-fashioned common sense for dogs and horses.
His pet topics are gastroenterology and the microbiome and the misuse of pharmaceuticals in medicine. He loves researching all aspects of human and animal nutrition. Nick is a regular contributor to
YouTube discussions on raw feeding and blogs to forward the raw feeding cause.
Nick also shares his passion for raw feeding with a nutritional consultancy service to the premier raw pet food companies in the UK and Europe. He has lectured and consulted in Raw Food, Nutrition and Medicine throughout the UK, Eire, Northern Ireland, Finland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium, New Zealand, UAE and the Netherlands.
Nick embraces Social Media to spread his message: Facebook: Holisticvet Ltd; FB Public Figure: Dr Nick Thompson; Instagram: holisticvetuk. He has recently produced a beginners guide to raw feeding: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/rawfeedingthebasics and another on Bones and How to Feed Them: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bonesandhowtofeedthem
Nick is a founding member of Raw Pet Medics with Dr Conor Brady and Dr Brendan Clarke. They produce weekly FaceBook and YouTube programmes and podcasts on all things raw and nutrition for dogs. (https://www.facebook.com/rawpetmedics).
Nick is married to Elly and has two children, Arthur and Ophelia, and lives in Wiltshire, UK with six chickens, five peacocks, a Snowshoe cat called Ziggy and Whippet-Italian Greyhound crosses called Bluebell and Mouse. Jet, a 5 month old Lurcher rescue is a recent addition to the household, as are two kittens.
Show notes
Nick and I had never spoken, let alone met. You wouldn’t know it, as we struggled to keep this to an hour covering so much of interest to animal lovers and pet owners – as well as anyone interested in diet and health…
- Nick’s training as a vet and why he got into alternative medicine early on.
- A bit on the history of dogs and how they didn’t evolve to eat kibble!
- From being a farming vet, to being a family pet vet, to being a raw food vet, and now a dog vet (and the animal he would most like to be a vet for).
- The brand names in pet food and the companies behind them (spoiler alert – you’ll recognise them all).
- The four fears about raw food, how they came about and why they soon disappear.
- The reality of raw food. Which conditions it might help. Which meds are still useful.
- The good news about poo!
- How to ‘go raw.’ How to learn more about raw food.
- The low down on bones – what to give and when and what never to give.
- The tools that a holistic vet has: nutrition; acupuncture; and herbal medicine (including what dogs think of acupuncture!)
- We finish with some stories and the low down on Nick’s own animal family.
