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Texas Ray the Cat

And the Cat Came Back! (Thanks to Raw Food)

Last updated on April 14, 2022 By Will Falconer, DVM 5 Comments

I saw Texas Ray a while back.

He’s a big old Texas-sized guy of a cat, who has the whole neighborhood loving him, because he’s such a character.

Texas (“Not Tex, he’s too big for shortening his name,” says Shelly, his proud owner, who took him in as a bony young stray so many years ago) had a clear case of ADR.

You know this diagnosis? Many species, including ours, succumb to ADR now and then.

It stands for Ain’t Doin’ Right!

Texas wasn’t himself for several weeks, and when Shelly wrote to me, seeking an appointment, her list of how that ADR looked included:

  1. Pale gums.
  2. Lethargy, sleeping all the time, tired.
  3. Grumpy. You know, with that twitchy tail you see when a cat’s irritated.
  4. Odd breathing. Texas Ray’s chest would rise and fall without a normal, smooth rhythm to it. Looked kind of jerky. Maybe too fast.
  5. He’d been snoring and wheezing, too.
  6. Sleeping hunkered down on cool tile, instead of in his usual belly up, legs akimbo, “It’s All Cool” posture.
  7. Texas’ shiny coat had gone dull, disheveled, and the black parts were looking rusty reddish. Smooth had turned to coarse since ADR set in.
Funky Cat Hair
Funky, used-to-be-black coat

So, clearly, not a normal state for this guy.

The patient speaks!

And he was talking to Shelly.

How?

Showing symptoms that weren’t his normal way of doing his life. And she paid attention.

As is not unusual in my busy homeopathic practice, I couldn’t see Texas Ray right away. No room in the inn. He’d already been through the conventional diagnostic tests (blood screens, radiographs, even ultrasound) and nothing appeared abnormal.

So, I was able to see Texas 12 days later, and, lo and behold, he was already better! I took my usual full history to hear where he’d been in his health, and the first, most striking thing was that he had gotten wayyyyy better.

Before he got any homeopathic remedies from me.

What kind of magic was this?

Shelly took away his high end, healthy label commercial food and started tossing him raw quail.

Real food. Raw food. Whole raw food.

Texas Ray took to them like a lion to a wildebeest. Devoured them.

And never looked back.

He lost the attitude. The twitchy, edgy business. Gone overnight.

He perked up. Got engaged with his humans once more. Quickly.

His gums pinked up a bit, though they still had a ways to go.

I was happily, though knowingly pleased, with this success story.

And a wee bit surprised.

He’d been on a commercial food known to be one of the “healthy” brands, no byproducts, and not preserved with BHA or BHT or any of the toxic chemicals.

But: it wasn’t anything like prey.

Which is what he was waiting for.

And when he got it, boom, he headed for greener pastures.

I still saw room to help him, and started homeopathic medicine, as he still had some symptoms.

But what a lesson.

Texas Ray: “Feed me real food. I’ll do (most of) the rest.”

Tell ‘em, Tex.

Filed Under: Homeopathic Practice Cases Tagged With: bones, cat, health, holistic, Homeopathy, nutrition, raw bones, raw food, veterinary

Portland, OR

CE (and hope for the incurable patient!)

Last updated on May 2, 2019 By Will Falconer, DVM 5 Comments

I’m back from Portland. Spent a long weekend with my homeopathic veterinary colleagues, sharing info and attending lectures from those who brought something to present to the rest of us. Continuing Education. It was sometimes heady, sometimes sleepy, sometimes funny, and always interesting.

One of the coolest ideas came not from a lecture, but from chatting across the aisle in the airplane before take off from Houston with a friend I’d spent time with in the Fall, learning alternative homeopathic methods for treating cancer. “I get amazing results treating my difficult skin cases with this remedy!” A remedy I’d rarely had success with, so had abandoned. But now, having heard her great successes, I’ll dust it off and try it again. Gave a dose to my itchiest patient today, in fact. The jury will reconvene in two weeks to see if it worked.

Portland is home to one of the oldest naturopathic colleges in the country, the National College of Natural Medicine, where they teach human medicine in the natural vein, with courses in homeopathy, herbs, hydrotherapy, manipulation, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, among others. A nice sister city to Austin, Portland is suitably hip and alternative and green, just a whole lot cloudier and cooler than we are down here.

Here’s where we met:

Portland, OR

Another memorable lecture was from Julie Ann Lee, who’s a Canadian homeopath who, while not a veterinarian, has found a lovely niche treating animals under the auspices of a vet clinic, and who has an amazing ability to think outside the box and get sterling results in her patients. She gave us a couple hour lecture on a new way of looking at the allopathically damaged patients that we see so often.

These are the animals who’ve been vaccinated repeatedly, then, when they became ill from that, suppressed repeatedly with strong immune suppressants and antibiotics of every imaginable stripe, and they’ve not only not gotten well from all of this, but they’ve slowly but surely become more ill. Seriously, sufferingly ill. They’ve got very advanced pathology from all the treatments they’ve received, and they are a bit like a ticking time bomb. They can “blow up” on the homeopath who starts to try to unwind all the suppression and get them well.

But they can also, more commonly, just frustrate the daylights out of the homeopath, because they often don’t respond to remedies well chosen for their situation. Or, if they do respond, it’s not in that beautiful, awe inspiring way of running for the goal (called cure). They’ll get just a bit better on some symptom, and it won’t last. Or they’ll get a bit better on one, and a new symptom pops out.

These poor guys have been so damaged by the multiple drugs to suppress their symptoms that they’ve become “confused” or “complex” disease cases. It means the drug-induced illness has engrafted itself onto the inherent illness, and now it’s a real mess to try to discern any clear symptoms. And boy, are they tough to treat.

Julie Ann found her way through several of these with a novel approach. She began to look simply at the physiology where the bulk of the disease is showing up. Maybe the blood vessels and heart. Maybe the skeleton. Or the nervous system. And rather than prescribing on the totality of the case, which was very difficult to see, she began prescribing acute, almost “first aid” remedies, but ones that fit those areas of pathology. Some of these were seemingly simple injury remedies, like arnica or bellis. And, lo, the patient began to respond. For months, or even years, these poor guys were able, through judicious repetition of the “acute” remedy, to find their way back from horrible pathology, to a life they could once again enjoy. It was remarkable.

And now, another tool joins my tool box. Thanks, Julie.

Continuing education. It’s a great way to get a fresh perspective after being in the trenches for a good while. Glad I can do it in homeopathy, where my heart lies.

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: Homeopathy, veterinary

Amish Farm Kid and Father

Amish Farm Kids Have Very Few Allergies

Last updated on June 22, 2019 By Will Falconer, DVM Leave a Comment

A lovely example of what avoiding vaccines and eating food as Nature provides it brings you.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/04/us-kidsallergies-idUSBRE8431J920120504

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Living Naturally Tagged With: raw food, vaccination

Dog Getting Vaccinated

My Dog is Due for His Shots! NOT.

Last updated on August 22, 2020 By Will Falconer, DVM 30 Comments

Reality Distortion

Due for his shots. Really? Says who?

This is a common thing I hear, less and less from my clients who gain a deeper understanding the longer they work with me and explore and think about health in a new way, but quite common in conventional veterinary medicine.

Pet Vaccination PostcardYou’ve seen them: the postcards that come, saying Spot or Puff is due for all those checked off diseases to be vaccinated against, with the date “due” prominently there.

“Make an Appointment Today!” “Don’t let your protection lapse!” “Be responsible!”

It’s worth taking a critical look at this before you leap into the car, pets in tow, for more vaccines.

Have you gotten postcards like this every year for you? [Read more…] about My Dog is Due for His Shots! NOT.

Filed Under: ILLogic Tagged With: cat, dog, vaccination

Jasmine - The Rescue Dog

Rescued Dog Now Rehabs Others

Last updated on May 31, 2018 By Will Falconer, DVM 2 Comments

So, being a veterinarian, I get lots of neat stories sent my way about the things animals do that surprise or charm us two-leggeds. Here’s one that is quite remarkable. Enjoy.

Jasmine - The Rescue Dog

Jasmine

In 2003, police in Warwickshire, England, opened a garden shed and found a whimpering, cowering dog. It had been locked in the shed and abandoned. It was dirty and malnourished, and had clearly been abused.

In an act of kindness, the police took the dog, which was a Greyhound female, to the nearby Nuneaton Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary, run by a man named Geoff Grewcock and known as a willing haven for animals abandoned, orphaned or otherwise in need. Read Jasmine’s story here.

Geoff and the other sanctuary staff went to work with two aims to restore the dog to full health, and to win her trust. It took several weeks, but eventually both goals were achieved.

They named her Jasmine, and they started to think about finding her an adoptive home.

Jasmine the Rescued Dog

But Jasmine had other ideas. No-one remembers now how it began, but she started welcoming all Animal arrivals at the sanctuary. It wouldn’t matter if it was a puppy, a fox cub, a rabbit or, any other lost or hurting Animal, Jasmine would peer into the box or cage and, where possible, deliver a welcoming lick.

Jasmine and Fox Cub

Geoff relates one of the early incidents. “We had two puppies that had been abandoned by a nearby railway line. One was a Lakeland Terrier cross and another was a Jack Russell Doberman cross. They were tiny when they arrived at the centre and Jasmine approached them and grabbed one by the scruff of the neck in her mouth and put him on the settee. Then she fetched the other one and sat down with them, cuddling them.”

“But she is like that with all of our animals, even the rabbits. She takes all the stress out of them and it helps them to not only feel close to her but to settle into their new surroundings.”

Jasmine and Rabbit

“She has done the same with the fox and badger cubs, she licks the rabbits and guinea pigs and even lets the birds perch on the bridge of her nose.”

Jasmine, the timid, abused, deserted waif, became the animal sanctuary’s resident surrogate mother, a role for which she might have been born.

The list of orphaned and abandoned youngsters she has cared for comprises five fox cubs, four badger cubs, 15 chicks, eight guinea pigs, two stray puppies and 15 rabbits.

And one roe deer fawn. Tiny Bramble, 11 weeks old, was found semi-conscious in a field. Upon arrival at the sanctuary, Jasmine cuddled up to her to keep her warm, and then went into the full foster mum role.

Jasmine - The Rescue Dog

Jasmine the greyhound showers Bramble the Roe deer with affection.

“They are inseparable,” says Geoff “Bramble walks between her legs and they keep kissing each other. They walk together round the sanctuary. It’s a real treat to see them.”

Jasmine the Dog

Jasmine will continue to care for Bramble until she is old enough to be returned to woodland life. When that happens, Jasmine will not be lonely. She will be too busy showering love and affection on the next orphan or victim of abuse.

Jasmine and Strays

From left, Toby, a stray Lakeland dog; Bramble, orphaned Roe deer; Buster, a stray Jack Russell; a dumped rabbit; Sky, an injured barn owl; and Jasmine with a Mothers heart doing best what a caring Mother would do.

Filed Under: Amazing Animals Tagged With: animals, dog

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