Sweet and Deadly

August 27, 2012 By

If you’ve been in my office lately, you’ve likely seen the poison on my desk for show and tell. Right there for you to sample, on the edge of my desk. If you’re tempted to take some, I encourage it. It’s a chewing gum that’s actually good for your teeth. Sweet little chicklets of poison. But it’s not poisonous for you.

They are sweetened with xylitol, known by dentists the world over to discourage bacterial growth in your mouth, strengthen your enamel, and have no bad effect on your insulin levels, unlike sucrose, regular sugar. A Finnish study even points to a possible osteoporosis benefit.

So, when I pointed it out to Jeanne on Friday, and asked if she knew about its effects in dogs, she was surprised to learn that it was toxic. Her new pup would surely have a very different experience than her young son, if allowed to eat some.

Different Strokes for Different, Umm, Species

I remember well from my days in mixed practice in Wisconsin, some thirty years ago, using a drug to tranquilize horses and cows. The very same drug, xylazine, would do the its good work of temporarily “taking the edge off,” whether I had to do a minor teat surgery on a dairy cow or stitch up a horse who’d run through barbed wire.

But my, oh my, don’t mix up the dosage across species lines! A thousand pound horse might get 5 ml in his vein, and stand still while getting sutured, but a 1200 pound Holstein who’d tromped her teat and couldn’t get her milk out well needed barely ¼ ml to get the same dopey sedation!

One Man’s Meat, Oh Never Mind!

Same thing with metabolizing this sweet called xylitol, a sugar alcohol. Humans do it just fine, dogs don’t.

While we get no apparent blood sugar drop from eating xylitol, dogs can get a life threatening one, with seizures even possible within 30 minutes of ingestion. In addition, acute liver damage occurs in dogs, not in us.

The Dose Makes the Poison

How much consumption is a worry? As with most things, the more that’s consumed, the greater the risk. My gum has 0.72 grams (720 mg) of xylitol in a piece. The toxic dose in dogs is more than 0.1 grams per kilogram of bodyweight. So, that’d be a bit more than a single piece of gum in Jedi, the 17 lb French Bulldog who Jeanne brought in to see me.

And it’s an attractive poison, as it tastes sweet. Some of my patients have been so hungry they’ve been known to eat soap and other non-food things. So, imagine these characters getting into some yummy gum!

Signs to Look For

If your dog has gotten into xylitol sweetened things, you can expect vomiting, within 30 minutes. This can be followed pretty quickly by lethargy, imbalance, collapse, and seizure.

Get to the E.R.!

If you see this, and know the product consumed, grab it and your dog and head for the Emergency Clinic. If you want to try a remedy on the way, bring nux vomica and phosphorus along with you. Have your copilot put a pellet of one or the other on your dog’s tongue on the way in. If no response to the one in 5-10 minutes, change to the second one. I have no experience with either of these in this disease, but they both are prominent remedies for intoxication, collapse, and liver problems.

At the ER, they will administer glucose and liver protective medicines, like silymarin and, if the dose wasn’t too high, will have a chance of saving your hapless dog. There’s usually too rapid an onset of collapse to induce vomiting safely, without risk of inhalation.

Careful Is as Careful Does

So, if you have some of this good-for-you sweetener around your house (check the labels that brag about “Sugar free!”), pay special attention to how you store it and use it. It also comes baked into sugar free cookies and brownies and cupcakes. Read your labels. Mannitol and sorbitol, other sugar alcohols used as sugar substitutes, don’t have the same toxicity to dogs, and are likely to be safe.

Be extra careful if you feed your kids foods made with xylitol. Let’s face it: dogs know an easy mark when they see one! Kids with xylitol sweetened goodies may be no match for a big tongue coming at them, hoping for some yummy licks or bites of cookie.

So, hey, let’s be careful out there in sugar free land.

If you’ve had any experiences with dogs and xylitol, please share them in the comments.

 

Filed Under: Real Life Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Death: A Blessing for a Friend to All

July 31, 2012 By

I’ve been blessed yet again. 

My patient Amante came to see me this morning, before he was going to be put to sleep. What an amazing dog.

You see, Amante got a diagnosis, back in November of last year, that he had a tumor in his nasal passage. He’d begun sneezing, then finally sneezed out a piece of tumor, and it was analyzed and found to be a malignancy.

His loving owners were given two options:

  1. Take him to A&M for a month’s worth of radiation for $11,000, or
  2. Three rounds of chemo to see if the tumor would shrink

They opted to do neither. And his “dad” is an MD. That should tell you something about the perceived value of conventional cancer treatment from an expert who lives in that world.

Luckily, I got to be his doctor. Until today. I’m welling up with tears as I think of where he’s been from then till now.

Amante is this bigger than life white German Shepherd, weighing in around 128 pounds. With a heart as big as any I’ve ever met. Always came in with tail wagging, looking for petting, putting his head right in my chest.

He was given a two month death sentence last November. I wasn’t able to work any real miracles with him under homeopathic care, other than bringing a bony hard nasal tumor to soft, spongy, and discharging some. That’s when we got pretty hopeful that he was dissolving this mass, and might  just beat it.

But it wasn’t to be. He had ups and downs, discharging and closing the opening, and the tumor slowly, steadily grew. Until today, when I got to see him and help make the decision about euthanasia.

Friend to all

Amante loomed large in his family. He helped raise four kids, and got to be part of a third generation once a couple of grand kids came into his world. He loved to swim, go for walks, hated thunderstorms, and kept his work-from-home mom constant company. He was friends to the neighborhood dogs and their people. Everyone who knew him was fond of him.

And I got to be his doctor.

But today was inevitable. When the door opened, Amante strode right in and parked his head in my chest as I stroked him and welcomed him once more. His nose and forehead were misshaped by the tumor. He was breathing with a sort of snorting, choking sound at most every breath. But his tail was still fully wagging. Happy, bright soul, loving Amante (means “lover” in Spanish).

Bobbi told me his tumor had broken through the roof of his mouth. And came to see if I’d agree that he should be put to sleep now. Before he really suffered.

As I bent to examine him, I hoped I wouldn’t have to pry his mouth open and upset him by this act. He complied. He raised his head as I caressed him, and panted with his mouth open, showing me clearly, for as long as I needed, the ulcerated tumor on his hard palate.

What a difficult call!

But I had to agree. His parents had decided it was time to call it the end for Amante. I concurred. He was still eating, drinking, wagging, walking, even swimming. But we could see where this was going. And none of us wanted him to suffer.

Although I no longer offer this service, I recommended euthanasia. It would be a blessing to end his life while he still felt good. No need to prolong this till he couldn’t eat, started bleeding, or lost his love of life.

Amante’s family knew a house call veterinarian who would come. Come to where he was on familiar ground. Where he could leave this body that was failing him behind, without the fear of a strange place filled with stainless steel and odors of strange chemicals. Perfect. A blessing.

I only added some arsenicum album, a homeopathic remedy known to help the death process.

Adieu

So, Amante, you larger than life dog. Fare thee well. You’ll leave us, and we’ll miss you and all your hugeness, your benevolence, your deep lovingness for all you came in contact with. We’ll mourn your passing.

And I got to be your doctor. A truly great fortune.

Filed Under: Amazing Animals, Cases from homeopathic practice Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

When Shedding is Cool.

June 24, 2012 By

There’s shedding and then there’s shedding. You know? 

When shedding knows no bounds; make the most of it!

OMG. Really?

Oh, wait, that’s just me, who hears about hair on the floor, hair on the brush, dusty hair bunnies who breed under the kitchen table, and the like.

See, usually, shedding is a symptom. One that I catalog for evaluating my patients’ well being.

“Still shedding every day, are we?”

“Yeah, still hoovering up a rug every day, Dr. Falconer.”

“Ah.”

And I go back to work, keeping that symptom on my Working Symptom List for this beast I’m trying to get well.

Cause, I know, one day, this, too, will cease. When my Whole Patient is well.

Really well. You know, Whole Dog well. Or Whole Cat well.

It’ll stop.

Then I’ll smile and ask, “Anything else he’s talking to us about? How bout those farts at 4:00 pm? Those eye boogers? The big saucer eyes when you set down that lumpy bag of shopping?”

“How are all those things, eh?”

The name of the game in this homeopathy business is Curing the Whole Beast. It means we don’t stop while there are symptoms still talking to us.

Because symptoms mean: Not Well Yet. Still Trying to Get There.

So, you’ve got to imagine my delight when Tricia tells me, in passing, that both her Danes blew their coats. At the same time. For about a week. And then quit.

It doesn’t hurt that Tricia feeds me raw food!

“What? You mean they both did it on the same week? These two unrelated beasts?”

“Yes.”

“That’s amazing! And now they don’t shed any more?”

“No.”

“Oh, that’s too cool! That’s WONDerfull!! I’m so impressed!!! I’m telling people about this. Folks have got to hear this!”

Okay, so you’ve got to get the sense of the nerdiness of a homeopath like me. I wait for moments like this. And when they are just announced, in passing, my brain goes into high alert.

Did I just hear something that indicates high level wellness? I DID?? Oooooo. I want all the juicy details!!

This is Significant? How, exactly?

So, shedding. Pretty boring, right? All animals do it. It’s just part of having a dog or a cat, right? (excepting the few breeds who really don’t, like the Poodle Dudes)

But it’s deeper than that. Trust me on this. Shedding all year round is Not Normal.

Common, yes. Normal, no.

Animals who are well, really, truly well, don’t shed all the time. They do it seasonally. Boom. Done.

And, of course, lots and lots of animals coming in as patients do it every day. All year round. Yawn.

It’s so common, I sometimes forget to ask about it, in my pursuit of finding what’s bugging my patients.

Turning off the light.

The Big Goal here at Alternatives for Animal Health is to cure my patients.

Cure. Often confused with covering up symptoms. But decidedly not that.

Drugs are often likened to putting a piece of black electrical tape over the oil light that lights up on your dashboard, and driving merrily along your way.

To certain disaster.

How many miles away? It varies, but it’s ahead, that’s for sure.

No, we see that oil light, that shedding all the time, that pale, spotty nose, that waxy ear, that goober-y left eye, as an indicator that somewhere, deep inside, there dwells something needing attention.

That’s really all that symptoms are: little warning lights. My clients have all been trained to pay attention to them. And to get good at describing them.

And when they leave, when those warning lights go off, on their own, from deep inside, we know we’ve really done some good. The remedies have done their magic. That animal is left in its God-given state of Health, by God.

And then, we celebrate. And I exclaim. And the patient, that healthy animal over there just goes, “What? I feel good now. What’s the big deal?”

Filed Under: Cases from homeopathic practice Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

My Dog is Due for His Shots! NOT.

April 19, 2012 By

Really? Says who?

This is a common thing I hear, less and less from my clients who gain a deeper understanding the longer they work with me and explore and think about health in a new way, but quite common in conventional veterinary medicine.

You’ve seen them: the postcards that come, saying Spot or Puff is due for all those checked off diseases to be vaccinated against, with the date “due” prominently there.

“Make an Appointment Today!” “Don’t let your protection lapse!” “Be responsible!”

It’s worth taking a critical look at this before you leap into the car, pets in tow, for more vaccines.

Have you gotten postcards like this every year for you?

No? Why not?

Largely, it’s because you’ve been recognized to be immune from the vaccinations you had way back when you were young, and rolled up your sleeve and grimaced as the needle slid in.

Immunology has recognized this phenomenon for a great many years.
“A practice that was started many years ago and that lacks scientific validity or verification is annual re-vaccinations. Almost without exception there is no immunologic requirement for annual revaccinations. Immunity to viruses persists for years or for the life of the animal.”

The above quote is from Current Veterinary Therapy, volume IX, in 1992. The authors were not alternative or holistic folks, they were veterinary immunologists, widely known in that field. Here’s a link to part of the chapter, and some more efficacy information from my website.

So, why so much emphasis still on repeating vaccinations? Even in the face of major voices in vet medicine speaking out against it, including the AAHA and most veterinary schools?

Follow the money, honey. 

Who labels vaccines for yearly repetition? The manufacturers.

Based on studies showing the immunity disappears at around, say, day 364?

No, nothing of the sort.

Based on one thing, and one thing only.

$$$ 

Sell more doses, make more money. Science is not involved in this part of the label at all.

So, let’s put it this way. If your doctor said it was really in your best interests to get vaccinated every year, would you do it? What would you want to read that would convince you this was necessary? I suspect it’d be more than a label on the vial of vaccine, right?

Tell me what you think in the comments.

Filed Under: ILLogic Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Rescued Dog Now Rehabs Others

April 16, 2012 By

So, being a veterinarian, I get lots of neat stories sent my way about the things animals do that surprise or charm us two-leggeds. Here’s one that is quite remarkable. Enjoy.

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Jasmine

In 2003, police in Warwickshire, England, opened a garden shed and found a whimpering, cowering dog.
It had been locked in the shed and abandoned. It was dirty and malnourished, and had clearly been abused.

In an act of kindness, the police took the dog, which was a Greyhound female,
to the nearby Nuneaton Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary, run by a man named Geoff Grewcock and known as a willing haven for animals abandoned, orphaned or otherwise in need. Click for more info: http://www.warwickshirewildlifesanctuary.co.uk/index.htm

Geoff and the other sanctuary staff went to work with two aims to restore the dog to full health, and to win her trust. It took several weeks, but eventually both goals were achieved.

They named her Jasmine, and they started to think about finding her an adoptive home.

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But Jasmine had other ideas. No-one remembers now how it began, but she started welcoming all Animal arrivals at the sanctuary.
It wouldn’t matter if it was a puppy, a fox cub, a rabbit or, any other lost or hurting Animal, Jasmine would peer into the box or cage and, where possible, deliver a welcoming lick.

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Geoff relates one of the early incidents. “We had two puppies that had been abandoned by a nearby railway line.
One was a Lakeland Terrier cross and another was a Jack Russell Doberman cross.
They were tiny when they arrived at the centre and Jasmine approached them and grabbed one by the scruff of the neck in her mouth and put him on the settee.
Then she fetched the other one and sat down with them, cuddling them.”

“But she is like that with all of our animals, even the rabbits.
She takes all the stress out of them and it helps them to not only feel close to her but to settle into their new surroundings.

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“She has done the same with the fox and badger cubs, she licks the rabbits and guinea pigs and even lets the birds perch on the bridge of her nose.”

Jasmine, the timid, abused, deserted waif, became the animal sanctuary’s resident surrogate mother, a role for which she might have been born.

The list of orphaned and abandoned youngsters she has cared for comprises five fox cubs, four badger cubs, 15 chicks, eight guinea pigs, two stray puppies and 15 rabbits.

And one roe deer fawn. Tiny Bramble, 11 weeks old, was found semi-conscious in a field. Upon arrival at the sanctuary, Jasmine cuddled up to her to keep her warm, and then went into the full foster mum role.

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Jasmine the greyhound showers Bramble the Roe deer with affection.

“They are inseparable,” says Geoff “Bramble walks between her legs and they keep kissing each other.
They walk together round the sanctuary.

It’s a real treat to see them.”

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Jasmine will continue to care for Bramble until she is old enough to be returned to woodland life.
When that happens, Jasmine will not be lonely. She will be too busy showering love and affection on the next orphan or victim of abuse.

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From left, Toby, a stray Lakeland dog; Bramble, orphaned Roe deer; Buster, a stray Jack Russell; a dumped rabbit; Sky, an injured barn owl; and Jasmine with a Mothers heart doing best what a caring Mother would do.

Filed Under: Amazing Animals Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Smiling Dogs and Vaccine Illness

April 7, 2012 By

I saw my canine patient Caleb again this week, a few weeks after I’d given him one dose of a homeopathic remedy for vaccinosis. His story is typical, so very worth sharing. (If you missed his great smiling face, just back up a post).

Caleb had come to me then because he was exhibiting tumor growth on his body, most notably a small-orange-sized lump right on the center of his sternum. He’d had several past ones removed and checked, but luckily none were malignant.

He had also been on Rimadyl since he was hit by a car at 2 years old, and Caleb is now 11 years old, and a pretty big guy, a mix of probably Pit Bull and Queensland Healer, running about 68 pounds. His owner, Catherine, recognizing the risks associated with this drug, had taken him off it about a week before I saw him. Interestingly, his liver checked out fine in blood tests done prior to my seeing him. (Deaths due to liver failure have been caused by this drug. Search it out.)

So, after a lengthy questioning of his owner and a physical exam, here’s my list of what struck me about Caleb, things I asked Catherine to follow as we headed into homeopathy to help him heal himself:

  1. Large fatty tumor at the front of his chest, lemon sized.
  2. A bald spot on his tail that had been bare for many years, maybe since Caleb was two years old and hit by the car.
  3. Stiffness getting up and, even worse, on lying down, with difficulty getting into the car on the way here.
  4. Spookiness with certain things, like a laundry basket, or something he’s seeing that’s new to him. A broom leaning on a wall could do it, or a shadow.
  5. Slow to get up in the morning, and when he does, he has 3 big sneezes daily.
  6. He’s chilly, even to the point of liking the Austin sun in the Summer (!)
  7. He humps a pillow (and he’s a neutered male!) about once a week.

So, in comes Caleb on Wednesday, looking like a happy camper, and Catherine tells me the great news:

  1. The tumor has shrunk to the size of a small walnut!
  2. He’s got peach fuzz hair growing on his bald spot of 9 years!
  3. He doesn’t seem to be so stiff.
  4. He’s less spooky.
  5. His morning sneezes stopped. None.
  6. He’s humping the pillow even more!
  7. And, coolest of all, he’s initiating play now, not just waiting for his owner to do this. Like not since he’s been a puppy!! (Did I mention Caleb is 11? Oh, good).

So, we’ve still got some work to do, but my goodness, what a neat turn around for an old guy, right?

What did he get treated for? Vaccinosis (click here for more info). The illness of being vaccinated, and he got plenty of vaccinations, as do most pets and horses today. When the postcards came saying he was “due for his shots,” his owner dutifully complied. Yearly, until she stopped in the past year, thinking (rightly so!) he’d had enough.

So, think along with me:

  1. Caleb came in with a laundry list of complaints.
  2. Caleb got a vaccinosis remedy, known to help illness that came from being vaccinated.
  3. Caleb got wayyyyy better.
  4. What caused a whole lot of his illness? Vaccinations, you bet!

We’re going for a more constitutional remedy now, to see if we can take him further, which I’m confident we can. But Caleb’s story is worth spreading around, I think. So here’s Caleb, smiling at the world, and telling it like it is.

Thanks for joining me in this adventure called veterinary homeopathy.

P.S. For the budding homeopaths in the readership, the remedy given was thuja 10M, one dose.

Now, for those looking for short cuts, I’ll mention that there are lots of remedies for vaccinosis, and they won’t work the same in every individual, so this kind of prescribing, for chronic disease, is best not done at home. Seek out a professional homeopathic vet, trained, and ideally, certified in homeopathy. Lists of them are on the AVH site, which is referenced on my Resources page.

Filed Under: Cases from homeopathic practice Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why is This Dog Smiling??

April 6, 2012 By

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This is Caleb, a “senior” patient of mine, who’s not acting like a senior any more. Why? I’ll tell you this weekend, it’s a great story.

Hint: he had a very common disease that starts with “v.” Lots of animals have it. Caleb lost his, and got really playful.

More tomorrow.

Filed Under: Cases from homeopathic practice Tagged With: , , , , ,