Over the years I've traveled the world, visiting many countries, where ever my work would take me, primarily throughout Asia. I've learned and experienced many cultures, and now live in Northern Thailand , surrounded by jungle, but not too remote.

The other day, I was looking across the jungle view, thinking back on all the pets I've experienced, and who have come and gone with time. I really have enjoyed to the fullest many Dogs, Cats, Birds through the years.

One thing really struck me though, being a pet lover. I realized a disturbing pattern of most of my pets which, well enlightened me to share my experiences, and hopefully offer some good common sense, preventive steps to protect your pets, as they can and do follow similar heath problems as people.

Preventive, is certainly the right word to use towards your pets life and well being.

I'm going to share an experience with my pets, and these aren't what you might think, shots, vaccines, give a pet a bath topics, but unique true experience, where many of my pets could have lived a much longer and healthier life, if I would have known these problems before hand.

It started with my favorite dog, a golden Lab-Retriever name Kruger, yes named after the Australian gold coin, do to his short hair and very gold color. He traveled almost everywhere with me, within the states.

I was working and traveling back in the early 1980s , taking many lengthy trips to South Korea, where I was setting up a factory in the middle of the country. After many weeks and months, on my return, my neighbors , sadly informed me Kruger had passed away at 7 years old. Now , these were great people, also animal lovers, their dogs played with Kruger, so a perfect match while traveling.

This shocking news was quiet a jolt, right to the heart, loosing your companion. In fact I went from sad to anger very quickly??I can travel the world, build a hi-tech factory learn a foreign language and survive, but loose my best companion was to much to bare, I was really angry, something like this, beyond my control, couldn't turn the clock back.

So I guess the anger drove me to read everything I could, and since I can speed read,I'm referring to dozens of books. That wasn't enough, I still was left empty with the why question. How could this have happened, he was so healthy, shots, vaccine, exercise, why I asked.

Well, I didn't stop with books, I made appointments with local vets, can you imagine an appointment, showing up without a pet. But I did.

These were my findings. I cared for Kruger so much, I made a fatal mistake from the begining , but I want people to wake up and learn from my unique experience, and mistakes.

Kruger had passed away do to a cancer tumor along side his neck.

I found the reason why this happened, simply based on nutrition. Diet, food, health is so critical for Pets.

I gave him extremely rich canned food, mixed with rich dry food. You see those cans all the time, the picture with rich meat and gravy look on the label.

So the lesson is simple preventive understanding on nutritional guidelines for your pets. If I had picked up a book, and educated myself, he may have lived a much longer life.

Think about this simple preventive , common sense approach as a pet lover, and this certainly applies to more than just dogs.