Plant and herbal lore

Throughout its existence, the ancient ancestor of dogs – the wolf – has had the natural instinct to resort to the wonderful world of herbs as a source of essential vitamins, minerals, and secondary plant substances. It ingests them directly or indirectly via the gastrointestinal tract of its prey, thereby complementing its natural meat-based diet with healthy, high-quality plant-based food. Terra Canis has set itself the task of following Mother Nature’s example and naturally imitating this evolutionary nutritional principle to enrich all of its menus with valuable herbs. In addition to their nutritional advantages and wealth of healthy micronutrients, herbs are famed for their individual healing properties. The lore of understanding and using plants as pharmaceuticals to cure ailments is called phytotherapy and is one of mankind’s oldest healing methods. This approach is a pillar of the medicine practised by many different cultures and has its roots in naturopathy. Today, phytotherapy is an inherent feature of science-oriented Western medicine and is used to treat animals and humans alike. More than 250,000 medicinal herbs are currently known to man and used to cure a wide variety of ailments. In Germany, around 600 such herbs are commonly used today. Like almost all natural healing methods, the phytotherapeutic approach is holistic, meaning it targets not just individual symptoms, but whole organ systems or even the entire organism. Many phytopharmaceuticals already have a broad spectrum of pharmacological efficacy and are tolerated better by patients than synthetic pharmaceuticals. One of the main advantages of using phytopharmaceuticals is that they rarely produce side effects, and if so, only mild ones.