When you see something causing illness in your animal, and you’ve seen it happen before, you know in your heart of hearts that it would be best to avoid this thing next time, right?
You don’t want to do anything to make your animal ill. That’s just basic, isn’t it? This animal is in your care, day in and day out. Who is better than you to know when something causes your animal harm?
The Power of Careful Observation
You, of all people, have the best bead on what “normal” looks like, because you live close to this animal, feed her, groom her, walk her, play with her, maybe even sleep with her. You also know, without blood tests or radiographs or ultrasounds when something is wrong, when abnormal appears. It’s obvious. After living long with normal, abnormal is easy to observe.
If something preceded abnormal, you’d also be aware of that.
“Last night, when that thunderstorm was approaching, my Hermione really got nervous.”
“Whenever I give her the monthly heartworm pills, she goes off her food for a couple of meals and sleeps more.”
“We had way too much fun in the lake yesterday, and today, Sophie’s really acting sore.”
When that something that preceded abnormal came at the hands of your veterinarian, who would be the first person you’d want to know about this, so it’s never done again?
Your vet, of course! And if Dr. WhiteCoat shines you on?
Here’s a sad tale from a reader that came to my inbox just this week:
“I adopted an English Setter, she has terrible allergies. My vet referred her to dematologist and she has been on shots for 1 1/2 years, doing okay. Yearly shots, allergies went crazy. When I tried to bring up shots as possible reason, they politely ignored me. Just gave Heartguard, major upset stomach. She had tapeworms and when I gave her the treatment from vet, she was very sick for days, they said it was not the tapeworm treatment My question, can she just have a problem with chemicals being introduced into her body. I have spent thousands of dollars and feel hopeless. I am afraid not to do as my vet says but I feel I am harming her. My other 3 dogs do not have these reactions. Are there natural alternatives for her? So worried. Linda”
My heart went out to this poor woman in equal measure to my heart rate rising, as I read this. Politely ignored? Denied what you’ve repeatedly seen, with your own eyes in your own animal? That’s amazing hubris on the part of the vets.
What’s a Responsible Animal Owner to Do?
You’ve got two choices, as I see it:
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Ask your veterinarian to look deeper. Reconsider. Research further.
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Fire your veterinarian and seek another who listens to you, respects your observations, and is willing to work with you.
[Hint: you may want to try a homeopathic vet, who often takes an hour or more for an initial intake, and takes notes of your observations! I advised Linda that yes, “sensitive to medicines” is a very real symptom and would help a homeopathic vet cure her animal.]
This week coincidentally, I also saw an email on our homeopathic vet list from a colleague:
“I was at a (hospital) management group meeting a number of months ago. The speaker was a new grad and he was talking about how to make more $. He kept emphasizing vaccines. I bit my tongue cause I felt sorry for this really nice young gentleman who was testing his talk on our group. Finally, when the discussion was opened to the room of my colleagues, I couldn’t take it anymore. I mentioned “allergies” as a sequelae to vaccination. Everyone agreed they had never seen this happen. I asked them if they were LOOKING FOR THE CONNECTION! They all agreed they weren’t.”
When To Jump Ship
Do you have an allegiance to your vet because you’ve always gone to him? Do you feel the need to maintain that relationship even at the expense of your animal’s well being? Are you paying to have your valuable input in your animal’s health care ignored?
What’s wrong with this picture?
This may simply be codependence. Like staying in that abusive relationship, waiting for the guy’s heart of gold to shine forth. You know it’s in there, you saw a glimmer way back when.
But, what ever this is at the heart of staying on in a relationship that’s making your animal ill and you broke and hopeless and worried, the most obvious (though perhaps not the easiest) solution is to:
Kick the bum out!
I’d hope none of you would continue to pay someone to make your animal ill. You’d do well to seek veterinary care elsewhere, and the sooner the better.
We know from the immunologists that repeated vaccinating your animal throughout life flat out don’t work.
And, we know from those who care to look for the relationship, like Linda saw for herself, those same vaccinations make animals ill. Allergies are one of the commonest aftermaths of vaccination.
So, repeatedly paying for something that A. doesn’t work and B. causes illness sounds pretty crazy, doesn’t it?
Heartworm drugs are pesticides, and can make your animals ill, even kill them with autoimmune disease. And topical flea tubes all come with warnings to not get their pesticides on you. Or your children. Or your clothing. And conventional vets recommend and sell these by the boat load.
Why more animals don’t react like Linda’s dog is a real puzzle.
Looking for Connections
As my colleague observed above, unless you’re looking for it, you could miss some really valuable correlations. Illness after vaccinations, especially itchy skin or inflamed ears from allergies, often occur about a month after vaccination. Weeks after the event. If you weren’t considering that a possibility, how would you ever see it?
But Linda saw it. More than once. And homeopathic vets in practice, looking back carefully at the histories of their allergic patients, also see it, time and again. If your vet doesn’t, why doesn’t he?
Dr. WhiteCoat needs to start looking or you need to start looking for a new vet. Simple as that. Denial of what you see and denial of what other professionals know, like immunologists, let alone holistic vets, is grounds for divorce.
Have you been in a relationship that wasn’t serving your animals’ health? Tell us in the comments.
