Dogs Are Individuals Introductory Episode

Hi, this is Rita Hogan and welcome to the Dogs Are Individuals podcast. I'm a clinical canine herbalist and I've been practicing for almost 20 years. This podcast is all about seeing our dogs as individuals through an herbal lens. So let's get to it and dive right in. Hey everyone, I'm Reta Hogan and this is the first episode of the Dogs are Individuals podcast. This podcast is all about herbal medicine and you guessed it, dogs. It's going to be about herbs, diet, bodily symptoms, bodily systems, how you can use herbs, different remedies. Sometimes we're going to talk about protocols. Each episode will include question and answers. You can write into the podcast through my website, canineherbalist.com and ask questions. I'll answer them here on the podcast. So directions for asking questions will be inside the podcast notes. It's pretty simple. You can go to k9herbalist.com and click contact. Use the subject podcast and I'll answer your question here on the episodes. So I'll also give you actionable tips on each episode. These tips will give you something easy to do, but at the same time, it'll be a tip that makes a difference in both your life and your dogs. So basically, it's a win, win. Will I have guests on my podcast eventually? I definitely think I eventually will. But I'm going to start out keeping it simple. I'm going to stick to my herbal, basically my herbalist ramblings. So, okay, a bit about me in a nutshell. I'm a clinical canine herbalist. Not the canine herbalist, but a canine herbalist. I'm an advocate of individual medicine, raw feeding and using herbs to help people and dogs. I guess you would say achieve balance together, definitely in nature. I have a full time practice in Olympia, Washington where I live with my partner and five dogs. I have two bulldogs, Gertie and Wheezy, one basset hound, her name is Lola, and two pugs, Ronin and Fig. So in my practice, I use a combination of herbs, flower essences, phytoembryonic therapies which use stem cells of plants and homeopathy to help really balance out the body and stimulate healing. So in essence, I don't treat disease, that is practicing medicine, which I do not do. As herbalists, we help people balance themselves out. We help the body remember how to heal by using plants. So you might be saying, what is this lady's story? What makes her so special? While I don't think I'm special, I'm definitely determined to make a difference in how People use herbs. And I've been learning herbalism on and off for most likely, if we had to count it all up pretty much the past 40 years. My story really began when I was a kid growing up on my family's farm. I mean, we had pigs and cows and horses and chickens. We also had a lot of dogs and cats. I spent an inordinate amount of time with my father in the garden and tending to the animals in the barn and in our field. We had about 50 acres that I explored and roamed around on with my horse, thunder. And my father probably wouldn't consider himself an herbalist, but he knew a lot about plants, what each plant was. He would send me out into the field to get certain herbs to feed our animals when they weren't feeling well. I think the only time the vet ever came to the house is when my dad needed help with, like, a complicated birthday. On the other side of the family. My grandmother of my mother's side raised 16 kids in the great depression. My mom was born in 1930, and her mom, my grandmother, used to go into the woods. My mom loves telling this story. She used to go in the woods with a big basket, like in herbalism. I would call that a wild crafting basket. But she would emerge in, like, three to four hours later with a full bounty of herbs. And she used this to heal her children from ailments that would happen during the course of their lives. So I think definitely herbalism is in my blood, and I can definitely kind of feel it there, you know, churning and keeping me excited about what I'm doing as a profession. I didn't get into herbalism hardcore until I purchased a piece of property in the hills of Tennessee. It was about an hour outside, east of Nashville. I was about 30 then, and by, like, right around 2002, I was pretty much knee deep in experimentation and getting to know the plants on my land. Shortly after moving to Tennessee, I started a pug dog rescue called music city Pug rescue with a friend and dog trainer I met in Nashville. And it was the first holistic dog rescue, one of the first holistic dog rescues in the country. I had a pug named Finbar, Finbar, the Irish pug. When I moved to Tennessee, and he kind of started everything for me, Because I think before finbar turned two, we were at the vet probably every other month, with him having a respiratory condition and he had pneumonia. I remember we had to give him steroids, and steroids saved his life that day. And I couldn't figure out why my pug at 2 years old was so sick. And, and one day I turned his kibble bag over. It was Purina with yogurt. And the picture of the bag was so beautiful. I mean, it had like cascading pieces of beautiful, like chicken meat, you know, falling down the page of the paper, of the COVID And then it had like a side, or should I say like a carafe of yogurt. And it just looked so healthy. And then I really started paying attention to the ingredients and I was like, I don't even understand how this is legal. You know, I looked up those ingredients online and I was just, I was aghast. I was like, oh my God, no wonder my pug is so sick. And I switched him to a fresh food diet and all of those symptoms went away. We never really even needed to go back to the vet. It was phenomenal. And you know, I had been eating really well in organic as a person, as a human interested in holistic health at that time. But I didn't think of it in canine terms. And that really woke me up. And that was over 20 years ago. But it really was the catalyst for my life, my current life, my current mission. In the six years that Peg and I rescued pugs working with music, pity that would be for pitbulls, but Music City pug rescue, we ended up rescuing over like 332 pugs. We, I think I would kind of say we were pioneers in the fact that we would require this class for anyone that wanted to adopt a pug from us. They would have to come and sit through two to three hours of us going over holistic feeding. Um, Peg is a dog trainer, so she would teach them, you know, how to avoid issues when you were bringing a new dog into the home. Um, we talked about like minimal veterinary care. We talked about over vaccination, we talked about skin issues and using different types of natural remedies and definitely focused on diet. And after that you could adopt a pug from us. And we required and made people sign a document saying that they wouldn't go back to the bottom of the barrel kibbles at that time. And it made a big difference in how the dogs kind of settled into their new homes. And it also gave the new adoptees a better chance at having a good relationship with their new pug. So while we did the rescue, I met a very gentle and kind vet named Dr. Brummett. He was in Mount Juliet at the time and he would help us with the pugs that needed medical Attention. And he would give us a diagnosis and some guidance. And we worked together with him so we kind of knew what was going on with the dogs we rescued. And then I would use herbs and we would use diet to help turn these pugs around. During this time, like coinciding with this time, I started a boarding dog facility, a kennel free boarding dog facility on my land. And it was called Almost Home Pet Farm. And we did this. My partner and I did this. In fact, it was like a whole family affair. My brother, his kids, my partner, my mom, we all boarded dogs kennel free. And in about 12 years, working with dogs, free roaming and kind of having them in our home helped me see the different patterns in dogs, the effects of poor diet, the difference between my boarding dogs and my own dogs who are on a fresh food diet. Some of my dogs at that time were on, I would say a higher end kibble as well, depending on the dog I had over, like, I think I had about 10 dogs at that time. Working with my clients, my boarding clients really helped me see that poor diet over vaccination and flea and tick meds were having a huge effect on, on longevity and the quality of life that dogs were having. It also affected the owners because a lot of the owners of these dogs were very frustrated in their health affairs and how going to the vet wasn't fixing any of the problems. It was just like kind of like a cycle. So first I started helping my clients get on a better diet, and then I helped many of them switch from the like band aid pharmaceuticals to like flagyl and steroids and chronic steroids, I mean, and like chronic antibiotics for skin conditions. And we help them get to a more supportive place and using healing herbs. This is, I think this is where my practice really began and pretty much the rest is history. So while I was building my practice, it really became clear that using herbs allopathically wasn't the answer either. I definitely, as an herbalist, I definitely started out trying to find replacements for pharmaceuticals. And when you're trying to find replacements for pharmaceuticals, if that's your main goal like this for that, you're not going to have that much success with herbs or formulations. I had a lot of success in general, you know, looking back at it for what I was doing. I would also say I had a lot of luck with the protocols I was creating and the herbs I was using together. I kind of equate it to translating English to Spanish or Spanish to English. So you miss so much in the translation people's culture is in the language that they speak. And I definitely can say this is the case with plants and herbalism. I had to learn the language that the plants were speaking to really fully understand how to use them. And that's what I am working on right now, to deliver to people the plant language and what they're saying so that people can use herbs more effectively and more individually. So veterinary medicine, I would say, has made huge advancements in diagnostics, surgical methodology, and emergency medicine. Right. But what's sad is preventative medicine has been ignored. The standard of care approach that western medicine doctors use. Veterinarians use a lot of veterinarians, not all veterinarians. And I'm not anti veterinarian, just so we can put that out there. I mean, I have a long list of veterinarians I absolutely love. But again, what's sad is preventative medicine is not in the equation. They use the standard of care approach, and it's where a set of symptoms denotes certain drug regimens or tests. Despite the dog's individuality, despite the dog's diet, the environment, what's going on in the home, you know, did a new baby just come into the picture? That causes a lot of behavioral and physical issues for dogs. And we can talk about that in a different episode, but it's just an example. And because we are pharmaceutically conditioned, we're doing the same things with herbalism. And I definitely say that that's one of the things I'm out to change. Not only are your dogs individuals, but so are plants. And for any of you that have heard me speak or that have been one of my students, I repeat myself a lot. And I'll be doing that throughout all of the episodes of my podcast. I repeat things over again so that the important things kind of stick with you. And so I repeat, plants are individuals. Holistic herbalism looks at a dog as an individual with their own needs, their own sensitivities, and their own energetic patterns. So it looks at the underlying cause of all symptoms. And why is that? It's basically because herbalism, like homeopathy, believes everything is connected. Allopathic herbalism replaces pharmaceuticals with herbs without any understanding of the patient's individuality or the emotional considerations of the client. The basic, I mean, it's called in herbalism, I hear a lot of people talk about, it's the basic this for that switch and using herbs as replacements for drugs and hoping the disease or the condition won't come back and doesn't always work, and it leaves people very frustrated. So placing emphasis on treating your whole dog rather than looking at their symptoms or trying to suppress their symptoms is important. Yes, we want to make that dog comfortable so there is some suppression going on. And every case is. Every case is individual. So there's a lot of times when you do need to bring your dog to the vet. I am not saying do not bring your dog to the vet when it's warranted, but like the standard of care, let's just take diarrhea. So your dog has diarrhea. The standard of care approach for diarrhea is a medicine called Metrodyzenol or Flagyl, and it's an antibiotic. The standard of care is if there's no reasoning behind the diarrhea. We're going to give Flagyl because it might be bacterial, and Flagyl annihilates the microbiome in the gut, and we're going to have long conversations about the microbiome on future episodes. But the microbiome is very important to a dog's health. And so the standard of care does not always apply to every dog. In fact, it doesn't apply to most dogs. So health ebbs and flows. Okay? We can't keep it in stasis. So if you go to my Facebook page, my business Facebook page, Canine Herbalist, you will see a banner that says, a healthy dog is a way of life, and it is. A healthy dog is a lifestyle. It's not solely the absence of disease. Okay? Because many times we can't see disease. So we need to come from a preventative care kind of starting point. And focusing on the underlying cause rather than symptoms is embraced by pretty much all holistic modalities. And this is because the body wants to heal itself. It always is looking to achieve balance. Symptoms are usually your dog's body communicating with you on the exterior or on the interior. Many times the exterior can be a warning signal about the interior. This is one of the aspects we will explore on this podcast. Symptoms are like a warning beacon. Something inside your dog is out of balance. So when you use herbs acutely, that's for a short period of time, the symptoms go away a lot of times, not all the time. Remember, there's a lot of gray, and I'm going to talk about that before this episode is over. But there's a lot of gray, okay? We don't have definite answers all the time, but when symptoms go away in an acute situation, like a urinary tract infection, this doesn't mean the imbalance causing the symptom disappeared. Holistic Herbalism sees the symptoms as something larger, a warning that the ecosystem is imbalanced. Your dog is an ecosystem. So, for example, the uti, you can use herbs to deal with the immune, like the immediate emergency. That's acute herbalism, while giving your time, your dog time. Well, actually, not your dog, but you giving you time to address the root cause, the urinary system, okay, the kidneys, the bladder, the uterus. Allopathically, you just treat the bladder infection and go about everything the same. Basically, everything's the same, doing everything the same before you received your diagnosis. So using herbs holistically, you'd treat the bladder infection because we don't want the dog to be in pain. And then you're going to look at diet, you're going to look at lifestyle, you're going to look at stress, you're going to look at what herbs can strengthen and balance out the urinary system to correct the root issue. So just because the UTI disappeared doesn't mean your dog's urinary system is good. It doesn't mean that it's fixed itself. The UTI is a huge red flag, and it's an opportunity. It's letting you know there's a lot of work to be done. In this podcast series, we're going to learn strategies and about herbal medicine. We're going to learn how your dog is an ecosystem, how your dog expresses himself or herself as an individual, how to get to the root issue, and how to balance your dog in different areas of holistic expression. Another aspect I want to address in this first episode is, as I said before, the color gray. So in herbalism, not everything is exact. There are many gray areas. And by working with people, I've realized many of you want exact measurements, exact amounts, exactly, exactly what to do, and exact results. And that's not how herbalism works. You have to see how the herbs sit in the body, how they work themselves through the body, how they balance, and then that'll give you a good idea, basically a good idea of what direction to take. And it's always about figuring out the root cause. And sometimes that's tricky. Most of the time it's pretty straightforward, but again, there is a lot of gray area. Okay, so as I said in the beginning, during each podcast, I am going to give you a actionable tip that you can use. Today's tip is to get outside. Get outside with your dog. The average American dog gets less than 15 to 20 minutes of outdoor exercise daily. And that is a travesty. The reason why is. Because dogs have. Their history is in being outside, in breathing fresh air, in putting their paws onto the ground. The convenient lifestyle, I would say, in industrialized countries is really taking its toll on not only our dog's health, but our health. Sedentary lifestyles are. They're poison. I think our dependence on the. I would say the virtual world, the computer world, and our face and our phones, I think it's really kind of disconnected us from, like, our innate need for nature, for plants, for breathing fresh air, for being out and being present and being connected. I don't know if anyone's noticed, but our dogs, their lives, their health, our. Are starting to mirror ours. And I'm not telling you to keep your dog outside all the time, but for the last 58 to 60 years, we've been slowly bringing our dogs inside and keeping them there. They don't get to move around as much. And again, I'm not advocating leaving your dog outside. My dogs are inside with me a lot, but when I go outside, they're also outside with me, and I need to get outside. Otherwise I feel like I'm going insane. So the average American dog, again, spends approximately 15 to 20 minutes outside daily. And if you take that a little bit further, the time their paws are touching the Earth is a lot less. Contrary to our pampered lifestyles, humans and animals were designed to sleep on the Earth, to be connected to the Earth. Actually, science has figured out that all animals, fish, plants, bugs, and people live off the Earth's natural source of energy, and that's found in the ground and in flowing water. So the Earth gives off a low current, and this allows us to recharge when we connect with it. When this doesn't happen, our body's ecosystem gets off balance. And bodies, our body, our dog's bodies are electric. And electricity needs grounding or it becomes unstable. So this instability causes our cells to run at a lower voltage and frequency than they should. And that's where disease comes in. By getting outside and sitting on the earth with your dog or going for a walk and kind of going under the tree, standing on the earth with your bare feet for A while, it's 20 to 30 minutes, will give you good grounding. And, you know, I remember reading Dr. Steven Sinatra's book, it's called Earthing, and he talks about that the movements of nutrients and water into the cells is regulated by electric fields. And each type of cell has a frequency range in which it operates. All of your movements, behaviors, and actions are energized by electricity. That is a quote from Dr. Sinatra. So with the high levels of chronic illness that I know that I have been subject to, as well as our dogs, I think grounding ourselves to the earth and spending more time in nature is more important than ever. Because as old cells die, the body's voltage, that signal that the earth is giving you and the voltage at which our cells are humming, plays an important role in producing new, healthy cells. And that's where preventative medicine is found. Going for a simple walk with your dog and spending time connecting to the ground with him or her can like. It can actually stimulate circulation, and it can support elimination through the lymphatic system, which is a system of waste and nutrition that goes all around your dog's body, and it can help move waste throughout the body. It can help support self healing. It can help oxygenate cells. It can help regulate hormones. I could go on for a long time, but we're going to talk more about cellular voltage in upcoming episodes. But an actionable step is really get outside. Start walking your dog more. You'll feel better. They'll feel better. Sit on the ground. You know, for those of you that don't want to sit directly on the ground, what I do is I bring a breathable mat. So I have, like, a little bamboo mat that I sit on. I'll sit on that mat. Bamboo allows the earth's magnetic field to come through the mat. So you're getting. You're getting those grounding effects. And my dog really doesn't care where they lay, so they'll lay right on the grass. But, you know, that's just a tip for something so simple and so easy to make such a huge difference. And if you do this consistently, like, a few times a week, you're going to notice a huge difference. You'll come back to me and say, oh, my God, Rita. Like, this has made such a huge difference. My dog has more vitality. I'm starting to feel better. You might even see some of your chronic issues start to fade. Cellular voltage is a really interesting subject, and science is giving it more and more attention. But what an easy, actionable thing that you guys can do with your dogs is get out there and get connected to the earth. I'm not telling you to do it in the dead of winter, but in these summer months, in the spring, the summer, and the fall, these are great opportunistic times in which to do some grounding with your pup and lots and lots of walking. Okay, so there's your actionable tip for this episode. And again, I encourage you to write into the podcast. Send an email through canine herbalist.com subject line podcast and you can give me your questions which I will answer here on the episodes that I'm putting together for you guys. So I have. I always like to give people value. I always like to share information. So I have put together a flea prevention mini course and I will have the link for this in the podcast notes. But it is going to be on canineherbalism.com and it is pretty comprehensive. I'm getting some really great feedback about this course and it is 100% free. When you sign up for the course, you're going to get an email saying thank you for purchasing this course. You're purchasing it for zero money. So don't be alarmed when you get that email. It's just kind of telling you, hey, you're, you've been registered, you're ready to go. This is a work at your own pace course. It's a written course, it has links, it has PDF downloads, it has print friendly downloads. And the platform that I use for my courses is called Kajabi. I know, it's a weird name. K A J A B I And you can go to the Google App store or the Apple App Store and download the Kajabi app. And you can do the course on your phone or tablet. You can also do it on your computer. I'm a computer person so I do almost everything on my computer. I'm not a big phone person. But you can do it on your phone. You can do it on your tablet with that app called Kajabi. Some things that I do have on canineherbalism.com I have an energetics course which helps you learn about your dog as an individual. I have my monthly monographs which is basically a detailed explanation of one herb per month, how to use it, what doses to use, how to use it for different systems in the body. Really great information. And then I have my subscription community and this is $10 a month. It's kind of like Facebook, but it's uncensored. It's. I give a lot of protocols in this group. I answer questions daily in the group. Membership definitely has its privileges. I put a lot of my efforts into this group instead of on Facebook. I do have a Facebook group, a private group called Canine Herbalist. I also have a business page called Canine Herbalist. You can join both of them. I'm on there. We have some really great herbalists on our private page in the group answering questions. So there's a lot going on. I am writing a book called the Herbal Dog and I will be talking to you about that in the next episode of this podcast. And in future episodes, I'll be keeping you abreast of the progress I'm making on this wonderful book that I'm putting together on herbal medicine for dogs. So for being a listener, there's a 10% off discount that you can get for listening to this specific podcast and it is 10% off@the canineherbalist.com store. And the coupon is all CAPSindividual1. That's it. So we have come to the end of the first first episode of the Dogs Are Individuals podcast. Again, I'm your host, Rita Hogan, a clinical canine herbalist. On our next episode, we're going to be talking about mushrooms. They are all the rage right now. And I'm going to go over certain mushrooms, how to use them, what to expect, how to get them in your dog's body, different mushroom products, a whole bunch of ramblings on mushrooms. So I hope you'll join me. And again, thanks for listening to this episode. If you liked it, please share it with people that you know. Take care and bye bye.