Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats

I
first heard of Richard Pitcairn twenty years ago. I had been practicing veterinary medicine six years and had developed confidence in my veterinary skills—at least I no longer felt that I was a “new graduate” with only book learning and limited experience. Alongside that confidence, however, I was beginning to see that my new skills often lacked answers for many of my patients’ illnesses. I could offer temporary relief, but little else for so many animals with skin disease and other chronic illnesses, who constituted a large portion of my patients.

I began to seek other healing methods and attended a conventional veterinary conference that offered a one-day overview of holistic medicine by Carvel Tiekert, the founder of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association. Dr. Tiekert’s lecture covered many modalities, including acupuncture, nutrition, and homeopathy. After the presentation, I asked him where he recommended I begin my journey into holistic medicine. He spoke three words: “Get Richard’s book.” I pressed him a bit further, wondering about courses or other classes, but he merely reemphasized, “Get Richard’s book!”

I followed his advice and immediately, as I began perusing the book, I understood why he tendered such a simple recommendation. I found Dr. Pitcairn’s (and Susan Pitcairn’s) book chock full of advice ranging from nutrition to homeopathic and herbal recommendations for quite a range of common ailments in cats and dogs. Additionally, the Pitcairns offered advice on how lifestyle, emotional support, and toxins affected animal health. While I was not unaware of these factors, I had certainly
not learned anything of significance in veterinary school about how central such conditions are in creating healthy animals. My copy quickly became dog-eared, as I referred as often to it as to my texts from veterinary school.

I also ordered several copies to sell in my veterinary hospital, as I believe my primary role as a doctor is to educate my clients in animal care. I feel that I have done my best when my clients no longer need to call me, and Dr. Pitcairn’s book helps me lessen my clients’ dependence upon me.

A few years later I studied homeopathy with Dr. Pitcairn, and I was immediately impressed with his dedication, his scholarship, and his concern regarding the inadequate education we had received in veterinary school on nutrition and other methods to improve animal health. I also understood why his book was so thorough, well rounded, and clear, as he brought the same qualities to his seminars.

When the second edition of the Pitcairns’ book came out, I again purchased a copy for myself as well as copies for my clients, though I had by then sold my veterinary hospital so I could focus on homeopathy, for I also developed (in part through Dr. Pitcairn’s teaching and friendship) a love of this unusual branch of medicine.

Now, as I read this third edition, coming twenty years after I first saw the book and twenty-three years after its initial publication, I continue to be impressed with both the evolution of many aspects of the book as well as with the fact that its core information remains as useful and accurate as when it was first written. Additionally, this new edition has the benefit of those extra two and a half decades of Dr. Pitcairn’s experience. I especially value the updates and continual emphasis upon nutrition and lifestyle, factors that I also see as paramount in healing. I see in my own practice that feeding animals well and maintaining a healthy, stress-free home (emotionally healthy as well as toxin-free) remain the most important factors in keeping animals and people healthy. And as an ecologist, I deeply appreciate Dr. Pitcairn’s guidance in limiting our impact upon nature, offering less toxic options for parasite control and health care.

The treatment sections, of course, contain excellent guidance for what to do when an animal does become sick, with herbal and homeopathic suggestions. You will often be able to treat your animals at home, avoiding the stress of driving them to a veterinary clinic, hospitalization, injections, and the like, all of which can impede healing because of the stress. A rather unexpected (to me, anyway) benefit of holistic medicine is its gentle approach to health. For, while veterinarians all wish to help their patients, those patients tremble at the idea of visiting veterinarians. This was one of my biggest disappointments as a veterinarian. I wanted my patients to like me, but they all feared me—until I began using non-painful, holistic methods like those in this book.

I still refer occasionally to the book for
ideas when I need help with my patients, as there are a lot of gems within its pages. And it remains in my “short list” of recommended reading for my clients. I remain grateful for those like Dr. Tiekert and Dr. Pitcairn, who have guided so many veterinarians and non- veterinarians toward a better understanding of how to heal those animals with whom we share our lives. I believe you will feel the same once you spend a little time with
Dr. Pitcairn’s
Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs
and Cats
.

Your animal companions will be grateful as well, not only for helping them stay healthier, but also, more importantly, for keeping them at home, out of those dreaded veterinary hospitals!

—Don Hamilton, DVM

Author,
Homeopathic Care for Cats and Dogs:
Small Doses for Small Animals

PREFACE

I am a very lucky man.

There are few of us that have the good fortune to have their dreams come true. One of my dreams, from an early age, was to be able to relieve the suffering of disease, and even cure (in the true sense of the word) the terrible diseases that afflict our animal friends. Twenty-seven years ago, I “discovered” homeopathic medicine. Along with nutrition, this wonderful method of treatment became the tool that I needed to bring this dream to fruition.

Since converting my practice to the use of homeopathy and nutrition, my experience of being a veterinarian has been transformed. I am really, truly seeing animals get well from conditions that are simply considered incurable or hopeless from the conventional perspective. Not all patients can be helped, of course. It depends on how much damage has been done. However, a much larger percentage of chronically ill animals can be brought to health than one would ever expect from our experience with the dominant school of medicine.

To me, this has been a most illuminating experience. I never thought that there was a system of medicine that could do a better job than what I was taught in veterinary school. How could I have gone through all those years of training and not have heard of it? I now realize that this is the situation for many veterinarians who are looking for a better answer. Responding to this need, in the last few years I have turned my attention to the training of other veterinarians in this system of healing. As I put this third edition of this book “to bed,” we are in the middle of the twelfth Professional Course in Veterinary Homeopathy,
a post-graduate training program for veterinarians. We have well over 400 veterinarians that have taken this training and are using homeopathic medicine in their practices. In 1995, the Academy of Veterinary Homeopathy was established and serves as the guiding organization for training and research. This is the first veterinary homeopathic professional organization in the United States.

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