Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats (52 page)

To give most solid medications like herbal capsules or vitamin pills, open the animal’s mouth by grasping around the upper jaw, as described for liquids. Hold the capsule or pill between your thumb and the first finger or else between the first and second fingers. Use the remaining fingers to press down the lower front teeth and thus pry the jaw open.

Insert the medication into the throat, pushing it as far back as you can. Then induce swallowing as described above. At first this will seem difficult and awkward. After a few tries, however, you will become more experienced and find it much easier.

USING HOMEOPATHIC MEDICATIONS

To give a homeopathic or tissue salt tablet, use one of two methods.

Give the tablets or pellets whole.
Administer them from the cap of the vial or from a clean spoon (it’s best not to touch them).

Crush pellets to a powder (use three pellets).
To do the crushing, make a crisp fold in a heavy paper. (A small file card is very good for this.) Pour the tablets from the bottle into the open fold. Fold the paper flat, with the pellets inside against the crease, and put the folded paper on a hard countertop. Tap
against the pellets (in the paper) with a heavy glass to gradually crush them to a powder. The pellets from some pharmacies and other suppliers can be very hard, so don’t try to do this on your antique wooden table.

With a word of encouragement, invite your animal to lick the powder off the paper (it tastes sweet). If he is not interested, use the same holding and prying technique described for other pills to get the medicine in. Prepare by pushing the powder down to the edge of the paper with your fingernail, then open the mouth and flick the powder from the paper onto the animal’s tongue.

This method both eliminates the possibility of your pet spitting the medicine out and also keeps it from being contaminated.

There are distinct advantages to using homeopathic pellets or tablets. Because only a small number are given, they are easy to administer. Also, in many instances only one or just a few doses are needed during the entire course of treatment.

The homeopathic remedies mentioned in the Quick Reference section can be either ordered by mail (see the list on www.drpitcairn.com) or, in many cases, purchased in health food stores.

H
OW
TO
P
REPARE
F
LOWER
E
SSENCES

Dr. Bach’s flower essences are available in 38 individual “stock” bottles. The specific preparations are made by combining them and diluting them into a formula. Here is how it is done: If you wanted to make a formula of Chicory, Heather, and Clematis (three of the flowers out of the available 38), for example, you would first put two drops from the stock bottle for each of these flowers into a clean, 1-ounce dropper bottle. Then you would fill the bottle with spring water (not distilled) to make the dilution. This is your “treatment” bottle; a standard dosage is to give two drops four times a day. The drops can be put on the tongue, inside the lips, or added to food or water. Usually, this treatment is done for several days or weeks, depending on need.

YOUR HOME REMEDY KIT

Don’t wait until your animal needs treatment to track down basic supplies. Like a Boy Scout, be prepared. Some preparations will have to be ordered by mail from the suppliers listed on www.drpitcairn.com. Others can be obtained at your local health food store, herb shop, or even grocery store. And, of course, you can grow or collect many herbs yourself. But in all cases, it’s best to have a group of commonly used substances on hand. Most are really quite inexpensive. See chapter 17 for more suggestions for your first-aid kit.

You can also gather together a kit of the basic homeopathic remedies most often mentioned in the Quick Reference section or obtain a kit ready-made. That way, when the need is immediate, you will already have what you need.

PART TWO

Quick Reference

HOW TO USE THE QUICK REFERENCE SECTION

T
he very best medicine is prevention. Good diet, exercise, and a healthy environment are all essential for excellent health. But sometimes, regardless of wm, animals get sick. If that happens, what can you do to help care for your pet and optimize its chances for full recovery?

In this section I describe many health problems common to dogs and cats and suggest specific treatments. Some of these treatments can be used in conjunction with conventional veterinary treatment, if necessary. Others, particularly homeopathic medicines, should not be used with drugs or other treatment methods like acupuncture. If possible, work with a cooperative, holistically oriented veterinarian or at least one who is sympathetic to your viewpoint. A list of veterinarians I have trained in homeopathic practice is available on my Web site, www.drpitcairn.com.

You may recall from the first part of the book that I believe total health requires a total approach. At the start it’s important to consider and address any causative or contributing factors in the lifestyle, environment, or diet so that there are no external obstacles to your animal’s recovery. Then, as much as possible, select from the treatment choices the one that best fits your pet’s particular situation and most accurately corresponds to what you see as the problem. This will require careful observation on your part.

For treatment you can use herbs or homeopathic remedies that you obtained at local herb suppliers or natural food stores, if you have these in your area. Some of the medicines I advise using can be ordered from a homeopathic pharmacy. I believe in
keeping a ready-to-use kit of common remedies on hand as an aid to timely treatment. Homeopathic remedy kits are available at a savings and are wonderful to have on hand. One that I put together is listed on my Web site.

HOW TO LOOK UP A PARTICULAR DISEASE

To find an elusive topic, check under a larger grouping. For example, canine distemper, chorea (a common aftereffect of distemper), and feline panleukopenia (often called feline distemper) are all listed under “Distemper.” Many conditions are grouped according to the body part or organ they affect:” Stomach Problems,” “Skin Problems,” or “Ear Problems,” for example. The cross references should help to lead you to the right category with a minimum of difficulty.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT

Except in some acute conditions that may clear up rapidly, healing generally takes time. It took a while for the body to get out of balance, and it takes time to restore it. Of course, if we give a painkiller or a suppressive drug such as cortisone, we may see some rapid relief, but this is not a true cure. Take away the drug and the symptoms are likely to return eventually, often worse than before.

Since our aim is to address the underlying weakness and restore health permanently, it’s important to recognize the progressive stages and understand the gradually changing picture of symptoms in healing. That way we can tell if our treatment is really helping or whether another approach should be tried.

When a treatment is working, in the sense of health being recovered, an acute illness (sudden, self-limited) generally responds quickly (within a few minutes, a few hours or, at the longest, a day or two). Chronic illness, on the other hand, changes slowly. It often takes a couple of weeks or more to see a change for the better, and months, or even a year or two, for
complete
recovery.

The chance of complete recovery depends on several significant factors, including the age, level of vitality, and extent of illness in your pet. Though a disease that has progressed far enough to do extensive damage to the body cannot be completely reversed, it can be alleviated, sometimes very significantly. Of course, it isn’t reasonable to expect organs or tissues to return to their previous undamaged state, but we may be able to stop the progression of the chronic disease permanently and enhance healing to the limit of the body’s abilities.

For example, an old cat with kidney failure can be brought from a state of debilitating illness to one of relative normality. The treatment, however, may have to continue for the rest of his life, with occasional use of homeopathic medicines, a restricted protein diet, and fluid therapy as needed. Internally, our treatment may only have improved the kidneys’ functioning from a level
of 25 percent to 30 percent effective use. That 5 percent, however, can make all the difference.

On the other hand, if your animal is younger and has been ill only a relatively short time (not years), with little physical damage in the organs or tissues, there is a real chance of restoring the animal to its original healthy state.

Another consideration is the extent of previous drug treatment or surgery. The long-term action of drugs such as cortisone, for example, can damage the glands and organs of an animal so that a healing response cannot be aroused.

Surgery is the most irreversible of all treatments. Obviously, if an organ is removed (a common example is the removal of thyroid glands in cats with hyperthyroidism), it cannot be healed. If a client brings such an animal to me, I know at the outset that a cure is not possible. This is because we have to restore the thyroid glands to normal functioning to return this animal to true health. But if there are no thyroid glands …

I can say that in general, however, improved nutrition and use of healing methods like homeopathy, herbal medicine, and nutrition will surely improve the quality of your animal’s life—often dramatically.

SIGNS OF PROGRESS

Many natural therapies include the notion of the “aggravation,” a brief increase of symptoms that occurs just before the patient really starts to recover. You need to understand the significance of this favorable sign. Otherwise, you might jump to the conclusion that things are getting worse and load the animal down with a host of heavy-duty drugs that could actually interfere with the cure.

How can you tell whether your pet is going through a healing process or is actually getting worse? Here is a good general rule: If your animal has an increase of (usually) one symptom (diarrhea, for example) but, at the same time, seems to feel better overall, then the change is favorable. Equally important, a temporary healing increase in a symptom is almost always over quickly. Typically, in my work with homeopathy, this reaction to effective treatment will be gone in 12 to 24 hours.

In other words, although with a healing therapy some of the symptoms may temporarily worsen,
this is brief and followed by definite improvement
. If your pet goes through a period of increased symptoms that lasts for days and she still seems sick, it is probably not a healing crisis and the situation should be reevaluated.

It is important here to understand that the animal that is getting worse in general, or with several symptoms, is
not
being healed—the disease is getting worse. What is different with a healing process is that one or two symptoms may be mildly increased for a brief period, during which time your pet feels better and acts more normal.

Many physicians and healers have noticed certain patterns that the body expresses in its
attempt to cope with health imbalances. Homeopaths have formalized these patterns as “Hering’s Law of Cure,” named after a famous American homeopathic physician, Constantine Hering. Here is the way I understand the process.

There is an underlying intelligence in the body (in homeopathy it’s called the vital force) that is in charge of maintenance and repair. To do this, the body utilizes a few basic strategies to limit the problem and protect its most vital and important functions. Specifically, it attempts to:

• Prevent disturbances from spreading (for example, creating a local abscess instead of allowing the infection to spread throughout the body).
  
• Keep the disease on the surface of the body rather than let it get to the vital organs.
  
• Focus disease around the limbs, rather than on the trunk.
  
• Confine disease to the lower end of the body, away from the head, and therefore away from the brain and sensory organs.
  
• Maintain the problem at the physical level rather than the emotional or mental level, which would interfere more seriously with the overall functioning of the individual.
  

Therefore, a patient’s health is taking a wrong turn if symptoms start to spread or begin to involve deep-seated organs. Common sense tells us that the more the condition disturbs the functioning of parts of the body that are most crucial to its survival and governing capacities, the worse it is.

Hering’s Law can also help you to recognize a turn in the right direction, toward greater health, which can initially require a careful reading of more subtle indications. It is a favorable sign, for instance, if an animal with a chronic degenerative disease affecting vital organs begins to develop a skin rash or discharge, thus shifting symptoms away from organs toward the surface. Overall improvement will take place during this process, and, gradually, the surface problem will lessen as the internal disorder is healed. The vital force of the body focuses on this surface lesion as a way to rid itself of the disturbance.