How old are your pets?

Perhaps you have come across this chart, either at your vet's office, in a publication, or online.

One of my goals with holistic medicine is to help our pets outlive our expectations. I assume that my clients, just like me, want their pets to live as long as possible. Throughout the years of practicing medicine, our expectations have gradually been diminished, so that we no longer know what is possible for our pets.

For example, when I was a kid, our neighbor's Standard Poodle Billy was 21 and went for a walk every day. Our cats lived to be 22 and 23. The party line of conventional veterinary medicine is something like: "Thanks to modeern medicine, our pets are living longer and healthier lives than ever before!" And yet, on the ground, this is not true.

At a conference last summer, a vet from California began her lecture by saying, "As you all know, we're dealing with animals that have a ten-year life span." And we know that giant breed dogs (Great Pyrenees, Bernese Mountain Dogs, mastiffs, St. Bernards) are seniors with three feet in the grave by the time they're six. Cats are senior citizens by seven or eight.

In my little home experiment with natural care and feeding, here's how it's going: Tonka, who is 13 now and a 97 lb Malamute mix, is now officially off the chart. He still goes for a walk every day and does a happy dance at feeding time, although the dance is more sedate than it used to be. Tootsie, who is 14 years and 22 lbs, can still jump up on the dining room table and gets into everything she possibly can. Yesterday she ran away, ate lots of compost, and swam in the swamp. Ariel, at 8 years and 17 lbs, is a child in comparison. I hope she never grows old. When the other two are gone, I'll adopt a big goofy black dog and another snarky little terrier, just to keep Ariel on her toes!

Danger, danger! What you don't know can kill you!

In the April 2012 issue of DVM Newsmagazine, there's an article titled "CDC cautions public about raw milk consumption." Raw milk is illegal in some states (Minnesota included) precisely for this reason - it could kill you!
Here is what the CDC's research showed: Over the 13 years from 1993 to 2006, there were 4,413 illnesses, 239 hospitalizations, and three deaths - Yes, people DIED from drinking raw milk! This means that raw milk is BAD! It could KILL YOU!
OK, let's do some math. 4,413 illnesses in 13 years, that's, umm, let me see, roughly 339 people per year made ill by consuming raw milk. 239 hospitalizations, that's, oh, my...18 people per year. And three deaths, hmm, wait a minute! That's three deaths in thirteen years!
Honestly, folks, don't we have more serious things to worry about?
Here's some information from the New England Journal of Medicine in 1999: Each year 107,000 people are hospitalized from side effects caused by non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. You know, aspirin, tylenol, ibuprofen, etc. And each year there are 16,500 NSAID-related deaths among patients with arthritis. And that's just folks with arthritis, not the rest of us who might be taking these drugs for headaches, injuries, heart-attack prevention, etc.
Is the CDC telling us to avoid non-steroidal anti-inflammatories? Hell, no! There's money in them thar hills, I mean drugs!
But raw milk could kill you.
Beware.

Newsletter and Nutrition Classes

The May issue of my newsletter is up! Click here  or the side link to read: What’s New (I recently finished the Veterinary Spinal ManipulationTherapy course – a.k.a. Animal Chiropractic), What You Need to Know (about my practice), Why I Do What I Do (helping animals get healthier is my ultimate goal), and to get my Holistic Tip of the Month.

Did you know that what you feed your pets affects their behavior as well as their health? Click here  for more information about the Nutrition Classes for Dogs and Cats I co-teach with Katie K9, professional dog trainer, coach and radio personality. You will find our 2 ½-hour classes informative and entertaining.

Things That Drive Me Nuts

In the latest issue of Veterinary Medicine magazine there's an article about a dog with anal sac adenocarcinoma. This is a malignant tumor in dogs, and it's a sad story that ends badly for this little guy. Initially surgery was performed to remove the tumor, and it was repeated a month later because the darn thing grew back. During the second surgery, 40% of the anal sphincter was removed as well as part of his rectum.
Other than mild fecal incontinence (surprise, surprise) and bladder stones, which were not treated because they were not deemed to be causing any problems, the dog went home for a year and a half, at which point he had developed ribbon-shaped feces and was having trouble pooping. The tumor had not only reoccurred locally, but had spread to his liver and lungs.
Over the next 6 months this poor little dog went through chemotherapy, side effects of chemotherapy, feeling like crap, drugs, more drugs, drugs to treat the side effects of the first drugs, and eventually his kidneys shut down and he was mercifully euthanized.
The article is meant to be educational, in kind of a "this is the way it goes" presentation, with each actor - the surgeon, the oncologist, the clinical pathologist, the pharmacologist - playing their part in the drama of treating the tumor, um, I mean, the patient.
This article was tragic for me. I've treated some dogs like this with nutrition, correct diet, and homeopathy, and have had them live out their normal life spans in comfort at home. Not every pet will share the same level of success with treatment, depending on the state of the immune system, which plays such a huge role in these conditions. But when I think about my patients - at home, eating great food, benefiting from the gentle medicine of homeopathy - versus this little dog, who spent his last months of life ill, receiving injections of toxic drugs and having all kinds of pills shoved down his throat on a regular basis - it strikes me as very sad that there was no search for alternatives here. Even if homeopathy and other forms of "alternative" medicine wouldn't have offered hope of a cure, necessarily, well, this dog didn't get a cure from conventional medicine. He got suffering, from professionals whose oath states that their goal is to relieve suffering. And that's why I do what I do.

The Importance of the Physical Exam

The most important part of any visit to the veterinary hospital is the complete physical examination. This is a hands-on touch-and-feel external observation and evaluation of your pet’s physical, mental, and emotional state.

Much information in veterinary medicine has been misconstrued about the importance of the physical exam vs. the importance of the annual vaccinations. That’s why “shot clinics” exist, why at some practices if your appointment is “just” for vaccines your pet won’t be seen by a doctor, and why you can buy the vaccines from a catalog or over the internet.

A comprehensive physical exam is so worthwhile that it completely overshadows the financial advantage of just vaccinating the pet without an exam. But then it has to be a good physical exam. A friend of mine recently took her puppies to be spayed and neutered. I asked her, was the vet nice? Oh, yes, very nice. Was he professional? Yes, absolutely. Was he thorough? Not so much. His physical exam consisted of petting the puppies and saying that they seemed healthy.

In veterinary medicine we have a constant dilemma between the benefit of getting our hands on an animal and feeling for abnormalities, and the plethora of diagnostic testing available at a moment’s notice. Of course not everything can be diagnosed based on a physical exam, but it should give you a good guideline, along with a thorough history, to the diagnostic tests which might be most beneficial.

In the hands of an experienced practitioner, a good physical exam does not take long. If you are busy chatting with the vet or on the phone, you may not even notice that the physical exam has come and gone. Even so, you are better off paying for two physical exams every year than going to the shot clinic because it’s cheap, but not getting a physical exam performed on your pet at all. It is the best way to detect subtle symptoms of ill-health, and is the cornerstone of true preventive medicine.

Our Toxic Homes

In Minnesota, in winter especially, indoor air quality just goes to hell. between the crap shooting out of the air ducts, the mold growing in the walls, and the toxic chemicals offgassing from furniture, carpeting, and home chemicals (airspray, hairspray, cigarette smoke, cleaning products, scented candles, etc.).
Unfortuntately, our poor indoor pets get the worst of it. Trapped in our homes while we are out breathing the fresh air at work or at the grocery store, our pets are unable to escape the putrid chemical soup that wafts down to their level of the atmosphere.
People don't think twice about smoking with pets in the home, spraying their hair with toxic products while the dog sits at their side, and using floor cleaners that the dogs and cats are then going to walk through, and lick their paws when they're done. I tend to forget how many toxic things people have in their homes, mainly because I don't use airspray or hairspray, and I don't clean. Oh, I run the vacuum once in a while, and wipe things up with water, but I never use spray cleaners and only use environmentally safe(r) dish detergents. But I'll bet most people have a little toxic waste dump going on underneath the kitchen sink.
Folks, there's a reason toxic things have labels on them that tell you not to breath the fumes, get it on your skin or in your eyes, and not to ingest the stuff. Don't put your pet at risk for doing those same things.

Vaccinations and Reactions

On January 24th I gave a talk to the employees and clients of Dogue Spot, a dog training and day care facility in Otsego, MN. I'm sure that the information I conveyed was priceless, and will be remembered verbatim by all who attended. From my perspective, the most interesting part was the discussions about the animals that had their health damaged by vaccines. Just about everyone in the room had a story to share.
The veterinary journals (i.e. propaganda) tell us that vaccine reactions are rare.
It all depends on what you're looking for. If we were better as a profession at identifying the signs of ill health, and at allowing for the possibility of cause and effect, we might be more aware of the relationship between the vaccine event and the onset of health problems in the pets that we vaccinate. The issues do not always arise immediately after vaccinating.
Like many other holistic veterinarians, I am conscious of the fact that the vast majority of the animals that I treat are suffering from vaccinosis in one form or another. Vaccinosis denotes the variety of chronic conditions that are brought on by an aberrant response to vaccines. This is not rare or unusual, according to us, because of the harsh nature of vaccines, the toxic brew of the contents, and the likelihood that the immune system will sustain damage from the vaccine.
The main thing that I find lacking in general veterinary practice is the admission that once an animal has had a vaccine reaction, any kind, at any time, STOP. Stop vaccinating that pet. The risk of causing a chronic disease that will be incurable is too great.
In the clip from FOX news that I posted on my facebook page, a woman reports that now her dog has to get shots in order to prevent a reaction to its shots. During the interview, the dog, a Beagle, is lying on the couch facing the camera, unmoving, completely lacking in vitality. Yes, all Beagles look sort of sad, but this dog looks really sad. It looks like it has a chronic headache. But the show must go on, just in case little overvaccinated Buffy is accidentally exposed to some horrible disease she's already been vaccinated against ten times. The entire concept is ridiculous, this idea that we must continue vaccinating even in the face of hives, angioedema, thrombocytopenia, cancer, and any one of the other million bad things that can happen after vaccination.
It's time to stop. Once is enough.