02/07/2026
The power of a real whole food diet! Thanks for sharing your success story with us Rooster. The incredible team over at Natural Pet Essentials & Dog Wash helped find this sweet boy just the diet he needed with our gently cooked recipes. Yay Rooster! 🥦🥕🫐🍓
Ok. It's Friday night. It's late. I have this 140 # South African Boerboel (Mastiff breed) on my lap and all I'm thinking about is how amazing he's doing since I've adjusted his diet and nutrition protocol.
Here's the story: This is Rooster. Aka Biiiig Woosty. Rooster is 4 years old and yes, he's already getting silver speckles in his muzzle. 😞 He was fostered and adopted by us through Green Dogs Unleashed . While being the forever bulldog lover, I also love many of the mastiff breeds. This is also an unsolicited plug for rescues and being able to find amazing purebred pets in rescue. (We have 2 purebred Malinois', a purebred Frenchie, a pure Olde English Bulldogge, a Bulldog, a Pomeranian, a South African Boerboel, and a poorly purebred Bull Mastiff, and several other mixes or poorly bred wannabes)
But I digress. We got Rooster at about 6 mos of age after his human fell on hard times and had to surrender him and his Boerboel house sister. I researched the breed before committing to fostering (he had been with a previous foster and we hijacked him 😅). I read about Boerboel behavior - potentially challenging. I read about health conditions. I decided we could handle whatever he would throw our way. In that research, I read that Boerboels can be prone to yeast. I thought, nah, not my Boerboel. He's gonna be raw fed and get the best supplements and best food available. No yeast-feeding kibble diet here. Fast-forward three years and I had been battling the yeastiest beasty imaginable. Maybe not the worst of the worst bad yeast but in my world it was.
But how? How could this raw fed dog, getting all the best food and supplements, have chronically nasty, ye**ty ears? And he didn't just have freeto smelling feet, too. His whole body reeked of yeast. The entire crate and area around him smelled of yeast. Like Pigpen from Peanuts and his dirt/dust cloud around him. Ironically, if you've ever seen yeast stained under a microscope, it looks kinda like a peanut. 🥜
I gave anti-yeast supplements. I did an anti-yeast diet. I gave oodles of probiotics. Apparently Olive Leaf is good for ye**ty things so I gave Olive Leaf tincture. I gave MCT oil because it's anti-fungal. According to a very popular holistic vet, Pork is a good protein for ye**ty dogs so Rooster got pork. And apparently oysters are also good at fighting yeast. So I went to Whole Foods and bought oysters (not inexpensive). No kibble. Nothing carby to feed the yeast. The only treats were 100% meat, freeze dried treats.
And still, I could not conquer the yeast. I tried different raw diets, including fermented raw food. And last year, in 2025, I decided to take a completely different approach. His gut was obviously off and I needed to do something. I switched Rooster from a raw diet with added goat milk and tons of supposed anti-yeast supplements and additives to a gently cooked food (as opposed to raw) and completely excluded goat milk. Over time, I discontinued MCT oil and focused mostly on Omega-3 sardine and anchovy oil. No more Olive Leaf tincture. No more oysters. No more "anti-yeast" specific supplements. I went bare bones and started feeding strictly gently cooked.
But not all diets are created equal, as you all probably know by now. So I didn't just feed any gently cooked diet, as many of them are still quite carb heavy. I started feeding this 140 # mastiff Goodness Gracious . I started giving S. boulardii by Biostar US primarily, and alternated it with Symbiota by BioStar. BioStar supplements are whole food supplements made right here in Gordonsville, VA. I also rotated in Green Juju 's mushroom probiotic and The Adored Beast Apothecary 's soil and sea probiotic supplement. The idea is to give varied probiotics to get the best of all worlds.
Rooster did receive an ear treatment for his yeast from the vet on his last visit, probably 4+ months ago and, knock on wood, his ears have never been cleaner and un-ye**ty at this point. His skin and coat, along with the help of a little melatonin after a flank alopecia bout, are amazing. His feet remain mildly ye**ty between those big toe pads but NOTHING like they used to be. Rooster is a totally different dog. His improved health is amazing. He still no longer gets goat milk. He's still getting Goodnesses Gracious - primarily turkey and occasionally beef proteins. BioStar's Hedgerow S. Boulardii supplement continues to be a top favorite.
After seeing the success of switching Rooster from a raw diet to a gently cooked diet, I have now switched 4 of our other dogs and 1 of our cats to gently cooked. The rest remain on raw or freeze dried raw (depending on their needs) and continue to do well, along with their delicious goat milk.
If you've read along with me to this point, thank you. I hope you've learned a little something here. And I hope, if you have a dog or cat that is struggling with a specific health issue, you can trust us at Natural Pet Essentials & Dog Wash to offer you sound, trusted, and tested whole food nutritional advice. ❤️🐾
