Animal Naturopath...Huh?

What is animal naturopathy?  If the idea of going to a human naturopath feels indulgent or foreign, then consulting one for your pet may seem completely ridiculous.  However, I’d like to challenge you to count up the number of hours you spend with your pet each day.  Does your pet’s health, demeanor, and emotional state concern you?  Do you want your companion animal to live a vibrant and, hopefully, long life?  An animal naturopath can help you address these concerns and provide education for holistic health and wellness for your pet.

You try and make the best possible choices for your family’s health and well-being.  Does this resonate with the way that you take care of your cat or dog?  Your pet can be showered with love and affection and still be suffering from nagging physical or behavioral quirks that you’ve just chalked up to them being a dog or cat.  The heart of naturopathy is that it addresses any being as a whole and takes the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects into account when addressing health.

When one being suffers within a household then everyone suffers in some way.  It’s easy to see this pattern with the human members of our family.  When our partner or children are ill or are having a rough time emotionally we feel their distress and may react emotionally or even physically to this upset in the environment.  These same forces have a remarkable impact on our pets as well but may manifest in a way that seems completely normal to us.  As the stress level in the household becomes more intense we may not notice that the dog has started vomiting more or that the cat has become a complete basket case.  Instead of accepting these incidents as normal, you might consider seeking the root of the problem.  There may be simple solutions to be found in diet changes, herbs, flower essences, essential oils, and energy work.

I would like to put forward the thought that this flow of energy is a two way street.  The health and well-being of human family members and pets can affect one another.  Only addressing the human side of the equation can leave the other half still suffering.  Our pets can help connect us to nature in a powerful way, but only if we let them.  You may want to consider a consult with an animal naturopath to see how you can raise the overall holistic health of your family.

Where's the Beef...from?

  The most recent pet food recall to rock the pet industry is Evanger’s Hunk of Beef canned dog food.  This news article is a little disturbing when you consider the usual suspects for a recall like salmonella or e. coli aren’t to blame.  While these nasty bugs are concerning, most dogs without a compromised immune system can handle these bugs without showing any ill effects.  The reason for the recall is due to contamination with a drug called pentobarbital.  This Detroit Free Press Article does a good job of explaining the nature of the recall.   http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2017/02/06/drug-dog-food-recall-evangers/97552080/ 

  Pentobarbital is used to euthanize animals and the most likely source is beef from their supplier – a supplier that is USDA approved.  While Evanger’s is taking steps to make it right they have certainly been let down by their meat supplier.  This just highlights that there is nothing stopping a 4D – dead, diseased, dying, or disabled animal from entering the pet food chain. 

  When looking through some of Evanger’s reviews on consumeraffairs.com I wouldn’t be surprised if this issue has been going on for a long time.  A review from Sept 27th, 2015 indicates a person with a small dog that began vomiting and having seizures after feeding Evanger’s.  Often, our small dogs and cats are the ones that are the most greatly affected by trace drug residues as larger animals may be able to metabolize the drug without outwardly showing any ill effects. 

  Careful observation or our animals normal behaviors can help identify an emergency as quickly as possible and administer aid if necessary.  Any time an animal starts to exhibit strange symptoms after eating – drowsiness, dizziness, prolonged vomiting, or seizures you should consider making a trip to your emergency vet.  In the meantime, rapid administration of activated charcoal could help reduce the amount of drug or toxin that is absorbed into the body and allow it to be excreted.  

Anthropomorphism - My Dog is Smiling at Me!

  Have you ever looked at an animal and made an instant connection to a human emotion?  An example of this may be when we swear our dog is smiling at us as he happily pants by our side.  The human tendency to assign human emotions or attributes to non-human objects or animals is called anthropomorphization.  This tendency is not in itself a negative thing until we begin making assumptions about the root cause of an animal’s behavior and respond in a negative or harmful way.

  You might wonder "What’s the harm in assuming that my cat or dog is happy or sad"?  The problem arises when we take the range of human emotion and attribute it to a specific action.  One of the things I hear of frequently is when an animal is exhibiting unwanted elimination behaviors.  A family comes home from vacation tired, happy, and with a list of chores a mile long.  As they rush to get back into their routine a puddle of urine is found on the floor by the front door.  Instantly, Mom and Dad are disgusted and frustrated.  The assumption is made that the cat was “pissed off” because they had been gone for a week.  As punishment, Dad mops the floor with Fluffy to clean up the urine.  Yuck!!!

  The cat has absolutely no idea what it did wrong and it most certainly is not going to learn its lesson, other than I think I need to avoid the tall man that shares my territory.  Upon further investigation, there’s a rather simple explanation for Fluffy’s behavior.  A few weeks before the family left for vacation a new feral cat had appeared in the yard and Fluffy made it clear that this newcomer was unwelcome by growling and screaming at the living room window.  I can almost guarantee that after the family left this cat felt a little more comfortable coming closer to the house and may have even started scent marking around the perimeter.  The only response that Fluffy could think of was to clearly mark his territory by the main entrance to his territory by spraying his urine as at the door as a clear warning. 

  In this case there’s no need to respond angrily to the cat for doing something that is as natural as eating and sleeping.  While the peeing behavior needs to be corrected, once we find the cause, we can come up with an effective solution to make it stop.  For this case, any urine should be cleaned using an enzymatic cleaner that actually breaks down the urine as opposed to just wiping up the mess with a standard cleanser or vinegar.  Without an enzyme cleaner the smell of the urine spot is still present to our companion animals even though we can’t still see or smell it. 

  In addition, the new feral would need to be relocated or encouraged to move further away from the house to prevent Fluffy from becoming so anxious about the encroachment on their territory.  This can be achieved by live trapping the feral and releasing them in a new area, setting up motion activated water sprinklers as a deterrent near the house, or placing citrus smells or planting rue around the house as a natural deterrent.  The end result is that Fluffy feels secure in his home territory and Mom and Dad are happy that he’s returned to peeing in the litter box.