A Path With Paws

If we are lucky our animal friends only have to go through surgery once, when they are spayed or neutered. However many animals do need to be under anethesia other times either for a dental cleaning, to get sutures, or to have surgery. Whatever the reason, surgery and anethesia are hard on our animal friends. But there are things you can do to help them recover faster and more comfortably.

As always, check with your veterinarian on any supplements you use.

1. Arnica
Arnica is a homeopathic remedy which helps with bruising and trauma. Over the years I have been amazed and impressed at how much difference this very safe remedy can make in healing. I have seen incisions heal in half the time and dogs have very little bruising and swelling in situations you would normally expect to see it.

I always recommend Arnica for all my animal patients who have to undergo surgery or any other procedure that there will be tissue or bone trauma. Because it is a homeopathic remedy it is very safe ever for old and debilitated animals.

I use the Arnica 30c pellets and dose them at 2-3 pellets (usually 2 for cats/small dogs and 3 for dogs) the morning of surgery, the evening after surgery, and then three times a day for three days. Because the pellets are so small they can safely be given the morning of surgery.

Arnica can be bought at most health and supplement stores or by clicking on Arnica.

3.Yunnan Baiyao
While I don’t recommend Yunnan Baiyao (also called Yunnan Paiyao) for all animals undergoing surgery or anethesia, it is still one of my most important herbal formulas. I mainly use it in any procedure or surgery where there is a concern about bleeding. This includes many tumor removal and abdominal surgeries. I have seen this wonderful herbal formula save animal’s lives before.

Please see my article, A Magic Vial of Yunnan Baiyao and the wikipedia article.

I usually dose Yunnan Baiyao at one capsule twice a day for a few days before and after surgery for your average sized dog. Cats and small dogs, I use the powder and put about a 1/8 of a teaspoon in their food twice a day.

Yunnan Baiyao can be bought in most international districts and by clicking on Yunnan Baiyao above.

I hope these simple suggestions are helpful! I know they have helped many of the animals I work with and my own beloved animal companions.

It’s sad to see our animal companions no longer be able to do the things they once could do as they age and grow older. All older animals have some amount of arthritis although some have many more problems with it. Western medicine has very few options for treating arthritis and uses mostly drugs, to cover the pain. Many times animals are on three different drugs and it still isn’t enough.

In some animals arthritis manifests as weakness caused by the inflammation pushes on the nerves. Many dogs walk around like their feet are asleep, tripping over things, stumbling and no longer having the strength to jump into the car or onto the bed. Unfortunately because they can no longer walk as far or do as much as they used to, their muscles start to atrophy or waste away, causing a vicious cycle. As the weakness increased, they do less, which causes more atrophy from disuse, leading to more weakness and more atrophy and less activity. In the end many of these animals can no longer get up on their own or even take a short walk.

In other animals arthritis will manifest as pain, which can also prevent movement and cause the weakness/atrophy cycle. Many of these animals will become moody and withdrawn and may even snap and bite at their people out of fear of pain. It is so hard to see our friends have so much pain that they no longer want our affection.

In most animals there is a combination of pain and weakness.

Usually dogs suffer more than cats because they carry more weight and are used to daily activity. Also people often don’t notice that their cats are painful because they spend so much time sitting and sleeping

So what do we do for our friends to help them live out their old years happy and pain free?

• Acupuncture Being an acupuncturist, I always recommend acupuncture first. Of course this is also because I have seen how well it works in the animals I treat. I often find that if I can work with animals when they first have problems, they do so well we only need to treat them every one to three months. Unfortunately most of the animals I see have had problems for a while and their people only learned about acupuncture when they had tried everything that western medicine had to offer. In these animals acupuncture can still work and work well but usually treatments need to be closer together.

  It is so nice to see these animals happy and able to enjoy life again!



• Hydrotherapy is a great option especially in dogs who have muscle atrophy. Unfortunately it cannot be done with cats although Sheila Wells at Wellspings has told me they have worked with rabbits before. Hydrotherapy is done in a small swimming pool and involves massage and physical therapy in the water. I have seen excellent results with hydrotherapy especially combined with acupuncture. Hydrotherapy helps to rebuild muscles, increase range of motion and work out sore and sensitive areas of the body without the impact on the body of exercise on land. My favorite pool is Wellsprings in Seattle Washington. They have a great website with lots of information and photos that I love to refer people to. Click on the link to check it out!



• Herbs
  I have worked with Chinese herbs with many of these arthritic dogs and some cats. The combination of acupuncture and herbs usually helps with pain and movement and helps animals maintain between treatments. Some animals do not do well on Chinese herbs and it is important to work with an herbal practitioner to find the right combination to help your particular animals. I rarely use Chinese herbs in cats because they are very sensitive to them. There are also commercial products available, my favorite is Dog Gone Pain



• Fish oil/ Omega oils
  The Omega 3 Fatty Acids in fish and cod liver oil actually helps decrease arthritic inflammation in dogs (not true for cats although it helps with other things). Adding a little fish oil to the diet can help many animals.
• Glucosamine/MSM/chondroitin
  These supplements help to decrease inflammation and rebuild damaged cartilage. They are often sold in combination. The nice thing about these supplements is that they have few side effects and are very safe. Some animals have a wonderful response to them and some have almost no response. It usually takes a month to six weeks to see if your animal will have a positive response. Adequan, similar to glucosamine is also available in an injectable form and works better in some animals. It is also a lot easier to give to cats who are hard to medicate daily. After the initial series of injections it usually only needs to be given once a month.

Chiropractics
Many animals have subluxations of their spine especially as they age. A good chiropractor can often help with mobility and pain. I have found that chiropractic adjustments work best in animals with a very tight back and more pain then weakness. For my own cat, chiropractic adjustments have worked better than anything else we have tried and have made his life much better. Make sure you find a chiropractor who is used to working with animals and knows animal anatomy.




• Massage/Acupressure
  Massage can help to loosen tight muscles and increase blood circulation. It also can help with pain.We know it works for us, why not for our animal friends. Once again make sure you find a massage practitioner who is certified to work with animals.

  Acupressure works with the acupuncture points and helps decrease pain and relax muscles.

  There are many great books on acupressure and massage for animals. Here are a few
  The Well-Connected Dog: A Guide to Canine Acupressure
  Acu-Cat: A Guide to Feline Acupressure
  The Healing Touch for Dogs: The Proven Massage Program for Dogs, Revised Edition
  The Healing Touch for Cats: The Proven Massage Program for Cats, Revised Edition
  Four Paws Five Directions: A Guide to Chinese Medicine for Cats and Dogs



• Reiki/Bowen/Polarity/Craniosacral and other energy therapies These therapies help stimulate the body to heal and can decrease pain and improve quality of life. Since there is little regulation of these therapies it is important to get a referral before seeing someone. This is especially true of Reiki since there are so many people who practice it. A good practitioner can make a huge difference in an animal’s quality of life.

It is better to do one thing and stick with it than to jump around between therapies. Often times animals will began with me doing acupuncture and herbs and then we will add in other therapies as needed. If I can’t help an animal with acupuncture I will refer them to another practitioner to try something else. Don’t make too many changes all at once in an old animal’s life. Go slowly instead.

Coming soon - Comparing the western arthritis drugs

From my past notes-
Treating Serena today. She was very resistant, trying to get away and glaring at me. Finally I offered to take her static head energy away but I told her it was up to her how much to give me. She began to calm down and started purring. She was ok with that as long as she was in charge. She also didn’t want me to tell her mom what I was doing. Somehow it was important to her to not only be in charge but to not have me be viewed as the healer. This was about her not me.

When I came to visit her a month ago she was ready to leave. She had this amazing headache and was very open to me removing it because she had given up and just wanted the pain to end. Many times with animals they need to feel what it feels like not to have pain before they can get there themselves. This visit she felt better and was ready to be in charge again.

A few months after I wrote this Serena passed away from complications from her brain tumor. I’ll always remember her as being the spunky blond girl she was, very confident, loving, and opinioned.

Another little dog I work with named Buddy came to see me a couple years ago, in extreme pain and desperation after re-injuring his back and becoming unable to move his back legs at all. He would have happily left this plane of existence at that point. After I was able to work with him and decrease the pain and get a little bit of sensation back in his legs he was a whole new dog. He was ready to live again and he knew he could get better. And he did in happy little steps along the path of healing until today he walks almost normally again. He believed what he felt and used that to heal himself.

Us humans are so focused on words that we don’t often pay attention to the real cues our bodies are sending us. These are the cues I work with when I do acupuncture treatments. We end up with thought patterns stuck in our heads which tell us what we should feel and believe. Many times these develop from what doctors or family members have told us and aren’t even our own thoughts. We tend to believe these thoughts more than the reality of what we are actually feeling. Often these thought patterns are harder to change than to just deal with the pain or disease. In humans, treating chronic pain involves both the body and the mind.

How many times have you been sick or hurt and not listened to your body telling you to slow down or do less? And then ended up getting sicker? Animals don’t argue with what their body is telling them, they just do it. I know I still have a lot to learn about this from the animals I work with.

With animals they believe what they feel so if you show them they can have decreased pain they will respond and believe that with their whole body and not just their minds. Animals don’t get stuck in their heads in the same way we do and because of this they can be present with the current moment and have no attachments to what the next moment will bring.

In my work, I help these animals find the healing energy that is already there. Their bodies know how to heal, but sometimes they need help in finding the way. Once they know the direction to go, they naturally travel there themselves, I just give them a hand to hold along the way.

Maggie tries really hard to be a good guard dog. When you come to the door of her home, you can hear her barking in a strange muffled way, which makes you wonder until the door is opened and you realize she has a teddy bear in her mouth. That being said Maggie loves people and once she meets you she is all smiles, teddy bear or no teddy bear. Maggie has a way of smiling with her eyes that just draws people in.

When I meet Maggie she had been diagnosed with osteosarcoma or bone cancer in one of her front legs. At the time her family were exploring options to treat her but one thing was almost certain, regardless of treatment, in a year she would no longer be with us. Bone cancer has a very poor prognosis, usually causing death within three months with no treatment and within 6-12 months with aggressive treatment.

I could tell when I met Maggie’s family how important she was to them. Her family lived in a wonderful older home with one of those grand living rooms and they really liked having photos of those they loved in this space. When I walked in I immediately noticed that there were as many photos of Maggie and the kitties of the household as there were of the human family members. Her family told me how difficult it was for them to have Maggie sick because their previous dog had died of lung cancer and now Maggie also had a cancer that usually spread to the lungs.

We talked for a long time about the options that were available for Maggie. They had already seen an oncologist and had set up appointments for radiation and chemotherapy but they really were hoping for some way for Maggie to completely beat the cancer.

I always like to give people hope and tell them that not every animal follows the textbooks and that acupuncture can sometimes dramatically change the course of an illness but at the same time I try to be realistic. I explained that we could probably double Maggie’s time here and make her feel better but that it would be unlikely that we would completely get remission. I remember looking at this beautiful dog so full of life and her family who loved her so much and thinking that it was so tragic that she would not make it to old age.

As time passed Maggie did not get sick but she did become incredibly painful because of the tumor in her leg. I would show up to treat her and she would no longer get up most of the time. When I looked in her eyes, I saw so much pain. I felt so bad that not even the strongest drugs we had and the acupuncture could keep the pain away for her.

Amputation became the only option to stop Maggie’s pain but what a difficult decision. I saw her family struggle with the decision of what seemed like a major mutilation of her body to them. Maggie had lived almost a year with the cancer at this point and by everyone’s assessment she was supposed to be gone by now. Was it worth doing an amputation only to have her die a few months later?

Amputation is one of the hardest decisions for an animal’s human companions to make. So many thoughts go through their mind. Will they still be whole? Will they want to be alive with only three legs? Will they still be able to do the things they love? Will they understand why I did this or hate me for taking away a part of their body?

One day Maggie got up and when she stepped down on her front leg it broke right in two. The cancer had weakened the bone so much that it could no longer support her weight. At this point it became a much easier decision to make and Maggie had the leg amputated almost immediately.

With three legs, Maggie may not be able to go for long walks like she used to and the stairs are sometimes hard for her to navigate but Maggie greets each day with a playful spirit and a happiness to be here. She loves to greet neighbors who walk by and many people in the neighborhood know her as the dog that cancer could not take.

These days I do not treat Maggie as often and our main concern is keeping her legs healthy so she can continue to get around. I feel like coming to treat Maggie is like seeing an old friend.

She rolls over on her side after the needles are in and I stroke her belly and neck. If I stop for even a moment she lifts her head to look at me with those big eyes, “please don’t stop.” There is a familiarity and a comfort in visiting Maggie and it feels like I have been included in her special family of people who she shares her happiness, love and the journey of her battle with cancer.

When I stopped by Maggie’s house this week she bounced over to greet me with a tennis ball in her mouth and than run to the other edge of the yard to pick up another one. She raced around with the two tennis balls and a big smile, “look what I can do.” As I walked up to the door she bounced up and down next to me, “mom, look who’s here, look who’s here!”

It has been almost two years since Maggie lost her leg and close to three since she was diagnosed with cancer. This happy golden retriever with the sparkling brown eyes has beaten the odds.

Part 2 of this story

When I first started my career treating animals, I would greet them and say, “I want to take away your pain and suffering. I will pull it out of your body and then you will be free of it.” I remember towards the beginning of my career I met a dog, who was boarding at the clinic, who couldn’t walk and was very painful. It was a slow day and so I decided to do about an hour of energy work. After that hour to the amazement of the technician, who jumped up like she had seen a ghost and shouted,” Fred’s walking,” he stood up and walked out the door. However he only continued to walk for about two days and when I worked with him again he only ended up with about a day of relief. I remember being so frustrated that I had tried so hard only to have him get worse again. But I was just removing pain, not helping him to work with it himself. I don’t know, if I had know what I know now, if I would have been able to help him get better or not, but the approach I was using then did not work. The relief I gave him clearly did not last. In addition it took a large toll on my body to work this way and I would physically hurt and weaken myself to take the pain away. I would also have animals who would get upset and not let me work with them; anytime I would try they would pull away. Their pain was part of them and I was acting like that part of them was bad and that they were not whole. They wanted to learn how to live with their pain and work with it, not for me to magically remove it. I was also invading their personal space without their permission.

I have since realized that what animals want is compassion and acceptance. Isn’t this what we all want after all? They want help but also they want to be involved in the process of healing their illness. They have their own wisdom that needs to be respected and listened to. I have learned to approach animals I am working with and say,” I will sit with you and be here for you; together we will look out from the same place (and not me staring at you like there is something wrong). From this place of togetherness, we will explore how I can help you work with your illness/pain and see if there is a way that I can help you to heal yourself.” Not only have I found that this works best in the long run and I don’t hurt my own health but animals are much more open to working with me.

Like us all, animals have an amazing ability to heal themselves and to deny them the opportunity is stealing from them an amazing experience for growth. Through their own path of healing they grow stronger. Through this strength they are able to show us what it means to fully live with illness and heal from illness.