I was doing some research on something and came across a website:  www.srdogs.com which is The Senior Dogs Project.  Because seniors are near and dear to my heart, having lost one this year, and having two more seniors still at home that I know I will be losing sooner rather than later, I paws'ed to spend some time on the site.  I migrated to the memorials page (I lost the redhead on the left in the picture above this year at 16 years 9 months) and ended up reading the below memorial which really touched me.  In fact the story touched me so much I wanted to do a blog post about it.

Like I have said in the past, I have tasked myself to not rant on this blog so here's a picture to express the flavor of my thoughts about Rimadyl:

But in truth, according to some doggie mom and dad's, there is a 'good' to Rimadyl. As a doggie mom myself, I was not aware of side effects to Rimadyl, but I tend to avoid pharmaceuticals for myself and for my dogs when ever possible.  Never the less I have given my dogs Rimadyl in the past for pain, just as I have given myself Tylenol 3 for severe tooth pain that kept me from sleeping.  But I have never given my dogs Rimadyl continuously for arthritis or the like.

After reading Maggie's story from The Seniors Dogs Project memorial's page (a screenprint of the story is below), I started to do research into Rimadyl.  Whoa.  Here's the bad.  There are serious and severe known side effects to Rimadyl.  Like it did with Maggie in the story below, it can kill your dog.  In the year 2000, an investigative reporter named Chris Adams who worked for The Wall Street Journal at the time, did an article on Rimadyl entitiled:  'Most Arthritic Dogs Do Very Well On This Pill, Except Ones That Die".  I have a copy of this article in the DoggieResearch.com Document Library in the Arthritis section.  Rimadyl is very commonly prescribed by western medicine vets, and I would classify this article as a very important read for doggie mom and dads.

As for the Ugly?  Well, I don't want to spend a lot of time on the ugly.  The Senior Dogs Project has a section dedicated to Rimadyl and the lawsuits, deaths, side effects, manufacturers information, etc.  This is a really excellent resource, and you can find it here:  Rimadyl:  News, Views & Advisories  It is not an anti-rimadyl resource.  It lists all info it can find, which enables you to do your own research.

The bottom line is, you have to do your research.  Your dog cannot do it for himself or herself.  You cannot necessarily trust your vet to do it for you.  As with any medical doctor, vets have a lot of continuous education reading to do.  What if they haven't read this one yet?  What if they are negligent about the side effects?  What if your dog is one of the dogs that gets liver toxicity from taking Rimadyl?  Do your research. 

Go to this page for a review of the signs of a potentially life-threatening reaction to Rimadyl and 10 steps to take if you suspect your dog has had an adverse reaction to Rimadyl.

The more you do research into diets recommended by vets who focus on nutrition as a healing tool, the more you notice the emphasis on using spinach as a very acceptable non starchy green in your dogs diet.

The trick is, how to get them to eat it.  My dogs are so
use to eating their raw vegetables, that they eat broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and spinach.  I occas- ionally give them carrots as a treat, and sometimes yellow squash, zucchini squash, and pea pods, but not a lot due to how starchy these three items are.

They do on occasion give me grief about spinach.  They try to eat it then gently spit it out.  They don’t want to offend me as the giver of food by spitting it out and making loud hacking noises like I am trying to poison them, so they gently chew on it to commune
respect for the giver, then sort of pretend not to notice when it happens to fall out of their mouth while they look at me expectantly in hopes of something else.

What I have found is that if I chop up the fresh spinach, and mix it into their meal, they gobble it up. Unfortunately, my dogs like a two course meal.  They want their meat first.  And then, they want their fresh veggies.  If I mix the veggies into the meat all at the same time, they feel cheated.  So another thing I do is chop the spinach up, and then sprinkle Halo Dinner Party on it, available here on Amazon.  This helps ensure they also
gobble it up. Here is a picture of my container (almost empty!).  Using this helps me to get Baby Bella to eat it.  She is pretty finicky still. The spinach photos are fresh spinach chopped up with Halo Dinner Party (shown) sprinkled on it.

As you can see above, Gus gobbles his. I also have Halo Dinner Party available in the Products store via the menu at the top of the page.

I was doing some research and came across an article by a holistic vet, Dr. Alfred J. Plechner, DVM, concerning treating recluse spider bites successfully with calcium montmorillonite, by turning it into a paste with water.  You can read the article on his website here, as well I have a copy of the article in the DoggieResearch.com Document Library.  

Reading the article reminded me of the time my little girl Penny (the red-head on the left in the above photo) came walking in to join the family on the couch for movie-night, limping.  Penny was always very stoic about pain, as many dogs are, but when I looked at her feet to see what was causing the limp, I was alarmed at how swollen it was right next to the pad.  Finally, we determined it was a spider bite from an agressive house spider, or hobo spider.  The picture is of the bite the evening after it occurred.  The bite progressed with more swelling, there seemed to be a hole inside the swelling, and eventually it started to drain out of the dark pink area you can see in the picture.  At the time she got bit, I had her on herbal remedies for Cushings Disease, which included one along the lines of the Essiac formulary, which is a major immune system supporter.  She healed just fine, but it took about two weeks and there was some necrosis, but nothing like you see with brown recluse spiders.

While I was reading the article, I realized that the calcium montmorillonite could have also been used to treat her bite, and the more I've looked into this clay, the more I think it would be a beneficial item to have in an emergency first aid kit for both animals and humans.  I think it warrants more research, but it seems to me you could use it for bee stings, infected slivers, septic wounds, etc.  The product is available on Amazon, here.  We also have it listed in our Products store, found at the menu at the top of the page.

Dr. Plechner says the treatment for a brown recluse spider bite usually involves steroids and anti-biotics.  He was able to heal a brown recluse bite with this clay.  The article makes for some very interesting reading.

On behalf of my dogs, I'm a hypochondriac.

If I wasn't, I wouldn't do half the research that I do, or have my dogs as healthy as they are despite age, genetics, environmental factors, etc.

So I'm comfortable being a hypochondriac on behalf of my dogs.  I want to be prepared for anything, and of course, one of my biggest concerns is canine cancer.  I'm always on the look out for success stories about beating canine cancer, especially ones that don't involve chemotherapy.  I am not saying chemotherapy is bad, but if one of my dogs got cancer, I would want to try to heal it or reverse it, or put it into remission, without chemo-therapy if I could.   Because maybe I won't be able to afford chemo for my dogs.  Or maybe I won't want to put them through it.

If you have read my 'About Me' page you know I have Crohn's Disease, and have gotten it in remission.  One of the supplements I take is colostrum.  I have tried various formularies, but currently I am very happy with and get it from Synertek, their website is www.synertekcolostrum.com.  You'll see a picture of Apollo Ohno on the front endorsing the product.

 After buying the product for myself and my dogs, and using it, and signing up for email alerts so I could catch all Synertek discounts, one of the emails had this story:

In summary:  A doggie mom wrote to Synerkek that her little pomeranian developed a tumor on his front leg.  It was misdiagnosed as a lick gram.  The doggie mom put her little boy on colostrum because of disrelated symptoms to the tumor.  During the colostrum supplementation the tumor went away as did the other symptoms.  She stopped colostrum supplementation when she ran out.  Later the symptoms and the tumor came back.  The tumor turned out to be cancerous, and had to be removed immediately.  It was a type of cancer that is usually gelatinous and difficult to get all out, but in the case of this little Pom who'd been on colostrum, the cancer was walled up and all of it was able to be successfully removed.  Doggie mom felt the colostrum supplementation earlier cause the cancer to not be able to maintain it's normal traits, and enabled her dogs immune system to fight it.

When the tumor was removed, it left a large chunk in his leg, where the artery was exposed.  And here is where the magic occurs.  You really need to read the story found here.  Synertek has a product called liquid colostrum.  After reading this story again, I bought some and keep it in my fridge.  Just so I'll have it on hand.  The healing power of colostrum cannot be underestimated.  Whether in liquid or powder form.  I also have a copy of this story in my DoggieResearch.com Document Library under Cancer Healing Information.

I love the ASPCA for what they do to help animals.  They are worthy of support and my husband and I are set up to donate to them monthly automatically.  However, I was a little bummed to recieve a 'Holiday Tips' email from them with what I consider -  based on my research -  to be erroneous information about dog diets.  I won't detail it, so I just want to re-iterate:  do your homework when it comes to dog diets, and all things dog.  Do your DoggieResearch!

Since I tend to think about eating food on this day, I'll share with you this funny Talking Dog video which is all about eating food....

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When I started this blog, I tasked myself with not letting my personal opinions bleed through so that I was ranting with an activist mentality about what I knew to be true and everyone else was misinformed.  So instead of saying anything about something that I feel strongly about, I'll just put this picture there and let it speak for me.

Luckily, one of my favorite sources to refer to, Mercola Healthy Pets Holistic DVM Dr. Becker, an animal medical doctor who doesn't have a soap box that I see, (and is certainly not an activist from my view), wrote a beautifully presented article entitled:  Why Haven’t Pet Owners Been Told These Facts about Heartworm?  From my research perspective, this is a very, very important read as a pet owner/animal companion, and I've got a copy in the DoggieResearch.com Document Library as well. 

Please go to the website via the link, or read the copy in my Document Library.  What I feel is extra special about the article is she gives you a prevention protocol, for heartworms, which I'll list here:

"Safe and Sane Heartworm Prevention

If you live in a region of the U.S. where mosquitoes are prevalent and you've determined your dog's risk of exposure to heartworm disease is high, my recommendations are:

• Go the natural route -- using heartworm nosodes and/or other homeopathic treatments and/or herbal/dietary supplements -- under the guidance of a holistic veterinarian, with heartworm testing every three to four months (checking more frequently is critical as all natural heartworm prevention doesn't guarantee your pet will never contract the disease).
• Providing your dog is healthy with good kidney and liver function, go with a chemical preventive at the lowest effective dosage (compounded if necessary for dogs that weigh at the low end of dosing instructions), at six (not four) week intervals, for the minimum time necessary during mosquito season.
• Don't use 'silver bullet' all-in-one products that prevent against every known GI worm and external parasite. If you use traditional heartworm preventives, the goal is to use the least amount of drug that successfully prevents heartworm. Using the heartworm 'plus' products, which unnecessarily deworm your pet monthly for GI parasites she doesn't have, are more drugs your pet doesn't automatically need.
• Follow up treatment with natural liver detox agents like milk thistle and SAMe, again with guidance from your pet's holistic vet. And don't add to your dog's toxic load by administering chemical flea or tick preventives during the same week.
• Calculate the month you need to begin (and discontinue) prevention based on temperatures in your area."

Heartworms have long been a very scary thing to me in regards to the health of my dogs.  But recent research made me realize that heartworms are not as scary as they are made out to be.  Like your usual trusting animal medicine customer, I accepted the information of the authority figures, and bought Hartgard(R) and other toxic chemicals to supposedly protect my dogs from getting heart worms.  The problem is, as with much western medicine, human and animal, the side effects of the toxic medicine can be as harmful as what it is endeavoring to correct.

I am not under-estimating the harm heartworms can cause to your animals.  For sure they can kill them.  But I came across an article researching today, on one of my favorite sites "Mercola Healthy Pets", by holistic vet Dr. Karen Becker, where she says: "...low dose ivermectin therapy in dogs with no sensitivity to the drug, in combination with the antibiotic doxycycline, can be an extremely effective, inexpensive option for treating heartworm infection."

Dr. Becker goes on to say later in the article:  "Using this therapy, the gradual death of adult heartworms dramatically reduces the risk of pulmonary thrombosis -- blood clots in the lungs that pose a serious adverse effect associated with other adulticides. This is the protocol I have used in my practice with 100 percent success."

 It is important to read the whole article, especially if you have a dog with heartworms, or live in an area with a high incidence of infections by heartworms.  The name of this article is:  Heartworm Drug Shortage Prompts Use of Cheaper, Safer Therapy and you can click on the title to go to it on the web.  I also have a copy of this article in the DoggieResearch.com Document Library, Heartworm section.

I was doing some research today and noticed a paid google advertisement entitled "how I helped my aging dog".  The website name it went to had nothing to do with dogs.  Curious, I clicked on it.

It wasn't a canine health related site.  A woman who sells Shaklee (R) products created a blog, (nothing wrong with that obviously), and the Google ad went straight to a blog post about her aging dog, who had lost quite a bit of weight, so she started making meals for it.  She detailed how she cooked up sweet potato, rice, and turkey, and the dog gobbled it up.  Well, dogs will gobble up chocolate too, splintered chicken bones, and rat poison, but that doesn't mean any of it's good for them.  The woman included how she gave her dog Shaklee Alfalfa supplement and Shaklee Joint Health supplement.  Both of these items are manufactured and designed for humans, not dogs.

The dog is a 15 plus year old black lab - the woman should be applauded for caring so much for her aging dog.  But it caused me concern that the article portrays the idea that it's acceptable to just throw together a meal from the fridge for your dog, without realizing dogs need a balanced diet.  As well she pushes giving supplements specifically formulated for human consumption, to dogs, in this case Shaklee supplements, which she is selling on her website.

 Where's the Vet advice in all this?  Dogs are not humans. Shaklee distributors are not experts in canine nutrition.  

 The possible things that can go wrong with not researching and making sure you are supplying a balanced species appropriate dog food, are very expertly detailed by Holistic DVM Dr. Karen Becker via Mercola Healthy Pets, here.  I also have a copy of her article in the DoggieResearch.com   in the Document Library, Dog Diets and Food Category, entitled 13 Pet Foods - Ranked from Great to Disastrous.

It would be a shame to accidentally reduce the golden years of your special canine friend, because of imbalanced nutrition.  Dr. Becker has a cookbook for homemade dog food with a lot of recipes.  You can find it on Amazon, here.  I bought a copy and recommend the book.  On page 17 of the edition I own, she says:

"You will not find rice, barley, oats or any high-carbohydrate foods in our program (except for small amounts of sweet potatoes and squash)."
"A starchy diet is a pro-inflammatory diet."

Another favorite, homeopathic DVM Dr. Charles Loops has a free recipe available on his website, here.  I have also created a copy of it and listed it in the DoggieResearch.com Document Library, Dog Diets and Food Category.

P.S.  I did find "Vet advice" as I called it, concerning giving dogs Alfalfa, in Dr. Becker's Dog Food book.  She lists out 9 super green foods, one of which is alfalfa, on page129 of my edition of her cook book (Amazon link above) and then says:  "In our previous version we advised against the use of kelp and alfalfa.  This was because we've known many animals that developed allergies to these fine foods by eating them every day."  In the next paragraph, she says "We recommend rotating through them all, switching products every time you run out to avoid any allergic reactions..."  I strongly urge getting the book for the full info, or, seeing if your Public Library has a copy.

It's true, playing fetch with a dog requires a warm body, In addition to a pumping heart and breathing lungs, not to mention a brain in the brainpan. Hum... unless you are a smart fellow and create a device to play fetch with your dog (see second video).  The dog in the first video looks like a short-haired collie or collie mix, and I am surprised he thinks the ... non-warm body would play fetch with him. The next thing you know we'll have robots to do our dog walking and game playing ... 

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Seriously.  I know that may sound odd, but in the grand theory of the way things are, it is the only logical place for them to be from, if men are from Mars and women are from Venus.  I've never read the book this blog post refers to (seen here on Amazon.com) but one time when I was staying with my Aunt and having some deep conversation about something, she pulled her copy down from the bookshelf of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" and showed me a section about men and hierarchy, as proof of whatever it was she was telling me.  

While I don't remember exactly what the book was saying, the concept of groups of any living thing having a hierarchy, or as a group of chickens might say, a 'pecking order', stuck with me.

Later in my life, as my two dogs got older, and I added more dogs, some old, some younger, I started to try to train and educate myself to be a good caretaker for my best friends. I started to feel I needed to pay attention to the hierarchy of the dog pack, and do what I could to support it and keep peace in the pack.  And let's admit it.  I had a favorite, and she was oldest, and she was the first, and I was not going to see her knocked to the bottom of the hierarchy rungs, not once I understood that there was a hierarchy.

Most of us have heard of the concept of 'the alpha dog', and that is not really what this is about, but I may blog about it at a later point in time.  No, this is about the possibility that there is a job and duty to help support and preserve the hierarcy of the pack, so there is peace at home and everybody is happy.  Or as happy as they can be, cause in my house, everybody wants to be NUMBER ONE in the pack pecking order.  That's just the way weiner dogs are.