Natural Remedies & Holistic Care

Bees may sting, but they create some of the world's most valuable, versatile products. Honey, bee pollen, royal jelly, beeswax, propolis, and even the venom from bee stings are all touted for their human health benefits – and many experts say that dogs derive the same advantages.

Next month, on May 6, the first day of National Herb Week, lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) becomes Herb of the Year for 2007. A dog-friendly plant with a distinctive lemon-mint fragrance and flavor, lemon balm is best known as a nervine, a calming herb that soothes and relaxes. It's also a digestive aid that neutralizes gas in the stomach and intestines.

When spring is in the air, every dog knows it. Spring is the season when dogs want to run, play, and stretch their bodies, when their eyes brighten, and their natural zest for life flows through their veins. Spring is a time of action. There are so many canine performance sports today that require peak levels of running, twisting, turning, jumping, and pivoting. Anyone watching a canine agility trial or flyball competition can see the adrenaline pumping through every ounce of the dog's being. Adrenaline can override the senses and the animal can unknowingly hurt himself badly, especially early in the season. The risk of injury is very high when a dog is not properly conditioned. Also, dogs need to be given the opportunity to warm up before engaging in the burst of excitement and energy they experience at the moment they are released for coursing, a herding test, or on a sledding trail.

The world of herbal medicine offers hundreds of choices to consider when treating your dog. Some are rather obscure; almost inaccessible to anyone but those who are connected to an exclusive, exotic source. Yet others are within such easy reach that they are often overlooked, considered mundane and useless simply by their abundance. After all, who would think first of the dandelions growing along the back fence when looking for an herbal approach to a rare and inoperable cancer?

Does a worried dog sing a worried song? A dog's worried song" is often expressed in quirky

Responsible, holistic puppy care begins long before the puppy arrives at the homestead. In fact, the first step to creating a healthy puppy is the selection of the puppy’s parents! The best predictors of long-term health of puppies are the health history and personality of the parents. Breeding stock should be proven to be sound in body, mind, and socialization.

What if animal healthcare practitioners were only paid if animals were healthy? In times of old in China that is the way it worked. The Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctors, known as “barefoot doctors,” would go from village to village and receive housing, food, and payment only if the community was healthy.

Your dog just had surgery, stepped on broken glass, caught her tail in a door, has a puncture wound, got bit or scratched, tangled with barbed wire, or has an abrasion that came from who knows where. You want the wound to heal quickly without bleeding, pain, or infection. The following strategies help achieve that result.

Readers of canine health books and magazines, including this one, can be forgiven for assuming that holistic or natural pet care is a recent breakthrough, something developed during the past two or three decades by a handful of revolutionary veterinarians and researchers. Not so. Today's holistic pet care movement began over 70 years ago when Juliette de Bairacli Levy defined natural rearing.""

In mainstream medicine the mechanisms of detoxification are often viewed as unpleasant symptoms of illness that need to be remedied. Eye drops are administered for goopy eyes, dandruff shampoos for flaky skin, surgery for removal of cysts, and so forth.

Willard Water is one of life’s mysteries. Most people have never heard of it. Those who have, tend to use it religiously, even though they aren’t sure what it is or how it works. They say it improves digestion, reduces migraine headaches, relieves arthritis, improves skin health, heals burns and wounds without scarring, helps balance blood sugar, treats gum disease, supports detoxification, lowers high blood pressure, alleviates pain, and is helpful in the treatment of dozens of other conditions, including cancer.

Frequently, we refer to “holistic” veterinarians in the pages of Whole Dog Journal, as in, “Discuss this with your holistic veterinarian.” What we generally mean by this is a vet who offers her patients complementary and/or alternative methods of healthcare, in addition to her conventional Western medical treatments. The goal of holistic practitioners is to look at the entire animal patient – body, mind, and spirit – and to do more than treat his illness in times of crisis; they must also promote his total wellness, with an eye toward disease prevention.