Herbal Guidelines 101

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 over 20 years. This podcast is all about your dog.

Through an herbal lens.

So let's get to it and dive right in. Welcome back to the Dogs Are Individuals podcast.

It's been a week. I don't know about you guys, but I am telling you, so much to do on this side of the green path. For sure. We are gonna talk about using herbs today. I've been working on my upcoming book and it has been a roller coaster of writing, writing, writing, and I was working on the using herbs chapter and just thinking about how to kind of go and look at what are the best things to tell you guys about using herbs. So I'm gonna go over a few of those things today, trying to refine, refine, refine. But first, I wanna say thank you to realmushrooms.com for being our sponsor of the podcast along with adored beast Apothecary. I like to talk briefly about products from my sponsors because I think it's important to understand, like, what the products are and how they can help your dog or if they can help your dog, because dogs are individuals. And whether I have a sponsor or not, I'm gonna talk about that product for your individual dog and help you figure out if that product will help you. So today I'm gonna talk about mushroom immune pet chews. And these are kind of like a semi soft kind of glycerin based. You know it has glycerin when it's soft. They're probably gonna be using glycerin. So one thing you wanna know is if your dog takes these chews and gets nauseated, it could be the glycerin in the chew. And that has nothing to do with the company, it just has to do with your individual dog. Just not. It's not working out. And if you get them in my store, I will give you a ref. You haven't used them all up. And I think that real mushrooms will help you out as well if you get them off the realmushrooms.com store or you can find them across the web, I believe. So the real immune shoes have turkey tail, reishi, shiitake, maitake and chaga extract. And that's just a blend of very common immune modulating mushrooms. And they're adding in ashwagandha powder, astralagus, blueberry powder, aerciola extract, and olive leaf extract. So it's pretty energetically balanced between warm and cool. The reason why I'm talking about this mu chew is because this is the time to really use something like this at the end of the season. Here in the northern hemisphere, we are coming out of winter and moving into spring very, very slowly. But this is the time when you see weird things come up in dogs and where dogs need extra immune support. And this is a really good way to do that, especially for finicky dogs that don't like powders in their food or don't like the bitterness of, like, for, say, reishi mushroom. A chew that has this has chicken liver in it and kind of a natural bacon flavor. It might be a good choice for your dog. You know, I'm not huge on flavorings, but sometimes, you know, those things don't outweigh the benefits of the product. And definitely chews need to be flavored. I get it. I get it. My dogs, not all my dogs, but two of my big dogs, love these chews. They're the type of dogs that I really can't hardly get near their mouths very much. They don't like to be touched in that way. I can get something in their mouth if I really have to, but I try to minimize it and make it count. So they love these chews. I like to give them between the seasons. And again, it's pretty energetically balanced. So check it out. Mushroom Immune pet Shoes. You can get them@canineherbalist.com or realmushrooms.com or across the web by Googling or putting it in your search bar. Real mushrooms. Mushroom immune pet shoes. Okay, so let's talk about some general guidelines for using herbs. I'm not going to go through all of them because I don't want to give the entire book away, but let's go through a few of them. This is just one, you know, couple pages out of my book. And of course, it's going to be edited and all that kind of stuff, so it's not going to read the same. But I think there's some really important things to know. One, I love energetics. I think energetics is the key to learning about your dog as an individual. So always consider energetics and your dog's, like, core pattern, the pattern that they're born with. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, check out canine herbalism. Check and join my energetics course. It's $75, and it's definitely worth its weight in gold. So energetics, you know, it's. It might be differing from what's happening like if your dog gets a bee sting, you're not going to worry about energetics. Energetics is really something that you're going to deal with when you're giving something consistently. Okay. Not really in an acute issue or a healing crisis. Something when you're giving consistently. Another thing is expectations are really important. So you should see in most cases a positive result in about six to eight weeks. Okay. If your dog isn't moving in the right direction on your herbal protocol or your protocol in general, you want to reconsider the herbs and supplements that you're giving. And the biggest way to figure out if something's working is just to stop it. And then observe your dog. Don't do anything else, because otherwise you won't know if it's this or that. Right? Just observe your dog over the next, like, two weeks to see if their health declines or if their health improves. And that will answer some questions for you. You can always put them back on the herb that you discontinued or the supplement that you discontinued. Another thing is, you want to know your herbs. Intention. Intention is huge when it comes to kind of learning about using herbs with your dog or any supplement. Your dog, what do you want it to do? And that question needs to be answered. And this will really help you understand what delivery system you want to use. For example, powdered marshmallow root in a gelatin capsule, an animal based gelatin capsule is good for the lower, like lower intestinal dryness and inflammation. But a decoction which is like a simmered tea on the stove or a really hot water infusion, I like to use a decoction. But if you're in a hurry, you could use like infusion with dried marshmallow root that's cut up in little pieces that's gonna give you some mucilage. It's like gooey texture and thick. It's like really thick water, right? It's gonna coat the intestinal system. And that's good for the bladder, it's good for Epsom stem stomach, it's good for acid reflux or the urinary tract. So you want to know your delivery system and that the intention for your herbal protocol will help you figure out that delivery system. And another thing is timing. The timing for each herb or formula can vary and it can get a little complicated. So as a general rule, you want to give powdered herbs with food, give tinctures before meals in the mouth if you can, or in a little warm water, squirt it into the mouth if you have to. You could Drip it on a treat and then if all else fails, put it in the food. It's not gonna work as well, but you can put it in the food. Infusions or decoctions. A decoction again is like a tea made on the stove. You're gonna simmer the roots, seeds or berries of something, or an infusion for flowers and leaves. You can learn all about that in my upcoming book, but you can google that. Go to Mountain Rose Herbs. You can learn. They have some great education on infusion and decoctions and how to make those. But infusions and decoctions can depend condition you're using them for. Don't forget about the nervous system. In almost anything that you do, you want to make sure the nervous system is being taken care of. You can use flower essences, you can use nervines. We'll have a episode here on the podcast about nervines. People say, oh, herbs don't have side effects. They do. So herbs can have side effects, especially if you're using the wrong herb, if it's a poor quality herb. Again, incorrect herb, an herb that you're not supposed to be using with your dog or that your dog just doesn't do well with, or you're not giving your dog enough time to get used to that herb. Or you could be giving too high of a dosage. So you want to look at that. And I know that I talked about this a couple weeks ago when I talked about excess and deficiency, but know that disease rooted in excess, which is too much. A lot of heat is excess. They're easier to heal than those rooted in deficiency. Where you have coldness, because coldness affects the vital force where excess you have too much energy. Okay, if you have an acute condition happen when you're treating a chronic condition, you want to treat that acute condition first. Forego the chronic condition. Treat the acute condition first. In acute situations, always know your maximum safe dosage for your dog of the herbs in your emergency kit. So say that you had, let's just say turmeric in your emergency kit. You'd want to know the maximum dosage for the weight of your dog in case you needed to give it a large dose. You want to know also how your dog reacts to everything in your emergency kit. So you might want to try them, try it on them when it's not an emergency. Okay, I write down my maximum dosages in my on a like a index card and keep it in my kit. With chronic conditions, start slowly and you work your way up. Don't Be in a hurry. It's very important to let the herb that you're using, you know, let your dog get used to it. It takes at least three days for that to happen. So don't judge it too much unless you have a life threatening symptom, which I've never really seen with non toxic herbs. But start at a quarter dose. And remember, dosages on packages are generalized, they're not for your individual dog. So always, always, always start lower. You know, you can always go up, but you can't go down. If your dog shows symptoms like diarrhea or loose stool acid reflux, you want to cut back on the dose. I'd cut by at least 50%. And if it's still happening, stop for a couple of days. Well, not really. I'd probably stop for about four or five days and then start it over at like just a minuscule dose and see how that goes. If your dog is still having a problem, then discontinue that remedy. They're probably not going to do well with it. And you know dogs. Herbal tolerance can vary herb to herb and formula, formula. And remember it has, it may not have anything to do with the company that gives you the herb. A lot of times it's your dog unless you're using dried herbs and they don't resemble anything. You know, they don't resemble the herb that it came from and they look really poor and old. That could be a problem, but that's not usually the case. I definitely say that for acute conditions I would use a tincture or an infusion, not a dried herb. You know, for chronic conditions you can use dried herbs, but for acute you want something that is really highly absorbed like a tincture. Unfortunately, dogs don't get the short term benefits from dried herbs or encapsulated herbs because they have a short digestive tract. So they don't work well in acute situations. A lot of herbs aren't meant for long term use. You want to, you know, if you have, if you've had your dog on herbs for over a year, the same herb, you want to look at that, discontinue it, see how your dog does off of it and see if their health declines or improves. You can get some guidance from herbalists on how long you should use an herb. I definitely will have some information on the herbs I cover in my upcoming book in the Materia Medica section. The goal really is to help the body heal and slowly go off the herb and kind of watch how your dog reacts. A general rule for healing Kind of adheres to the schedule of, you know, one to three months for every year of disease. So I would definitely go, you know, I like to fall in between kind of two months or for every year of disease. But usually I would say it takes three to six months to see really good improvements in dogs on an herbal regimen. If it's not, you know, if it's really well indicated, it could be a lot quicker. And it depends on what delivery system you're using. You're gonna get quicker results with extracts versus dried herbs, but it just depends on the dog because dogs are individuals. So for long term treatment with non toxic herbs, I would take one day off a week and one week off every six weeks and a month off every six months. That's called like a standard pulsing schedule. It's not individual to the dog. It's just kind of me not knowing anything about your dog and is what I would do if you're giving your dog herbs long term, when talking about delivery systems, it's really important because whole herbs are usually mixed into the food or given in capsules. I like to mix them in the food, but sometimes dogs don't like them in their food. Vegetable capsules really disperse well in the gut. So if you're not trying to target the large intestine, I would use like a vegetable based capsule and it will open up and get processed by the stomach. And earlier I mentioned, you know, animal based gelatin capsules, usually they're beef based or pork based, have a better chance of reaching the intestines. So let's talk about safety for a minute. So dogs can be sensitive to any type of herb and you have to keep that in mind. So if you see signs of kind of an allergic response, like shaking, destructive chewing, lethargy, I would stop the herb immediately. And it's really important when you start herbs do not. Or supplements. Herbs and supplements together or separate, don't start them all on the same day. Start them about five to seven days apart. It takes about 72 hours to really know how well your dog's going to do with a supplement or an herb. Go slow, don't be in a hurry because you're not going to know what is working and what's not working. Okay, Very, very important here. Slow down and how your dog will react to an herb. Can change herb to herb and formula to formula and batch to batch sometimes because herbs, one of the reasons why they don't do really well the way they come in like clinical trials and standardized, randomized like clinical studies is that they can change batch to batch because they're natural. And it depends on the soil and the water content and the humidity and even wind can affect herbs so, like their potency. So sometimes your dog can do fine on one batch and you get a new bottle and it doesn't do as well. Now, this isn't like, this doesn't happen a lot, but you want to keep it in mind because it definitely can happen with different proteins that you're feeding your dog. It depends on, you know, the animals that it came from for that batch of food. That happens quite often. And another thing you want to do is you want to get to know that herb. And for those of you that have heard me talk, I. And maybe I've mentioned it on the podcast before, you want to, like, look at the herb's monograph and you Google or put in a search, any search that you use, like, let's just use marshmallow root or marshmallow monograph. And then you could even put the word herbalist in there because you want a monograph that an herbalist has written, not like WebMD. Okay. You want traditional knowledge about that herb. You want to get to know it as a plant. Plants are individuals too. So it's really important to get to know your plants before you start giving them to your dogs, because you want to know if they're well indicated. You want to know the energetics of it. I'm gonna have a lot of this in my book, and then I'm also coming out with two volumes of Materia Medica. That means different herbs. We're gonna do, when it's all said and done, we'll have 50 of the most common herbs and every single which way know how to use that herb with your dog. But that's gonna be a few years. So look up monographs. Look up monographs, and that will give you some of the side effects of that herb. It will give you any known interactions for that herbal. I do have on k9herbalism.com I have what's called monthly monographs. It's a new monograph every month. We have quite a few on there so far, it's $12 a month to be a member, and you can really get to know one plant every month. And by the end of the year, you are getting to intimately know 12 plants. And you could in two years know 24 plants. Knowing 24 plants really, really well gives you a lot of play in the herbal world to work with your dog with confidence. So you can do that as well. You Just want to know side effects. CO factors. That's like how well indicated is that herb for your dog? That's co factors. I write those for almost every herb that I put out. I did mention this before, but the first three days can aggravate. Your dog needs time to get used to it. I would wait at least 72, see if your dog is okay with a remedy, a formula or a supplement. You may get loose stool or mucousy stools or gagging or a little vomiting in the first three days. If it's not life threatening, just let it go. Continue to give the herb. If that symptom is not gone after 72 hours, you want to discontinue that herb for a few days, start at a lower dose, try it out for another three days, and if it's still happening, it's not the herb for your dog. Now when I say vomiting, I don't mean like projectile vomiting all over the place. Can't keep anything down. I'm just talking about spitting up a little yellow bile or just, you know, vomiting their food just like maybe once or twice during those three days. I'm not talking about life threatening diarrhea or vomiting. You want to quit anything when that happens. So non toxic herbs are really generally safe. You know like chamomile, marshmallow roots, slippery elm, you know, things like that, nettles. Those are non toxic herbs. Then you have herbs that have a little more toxicity because they have a greater effect on the liver. Things like goldenseal, Oregon grape, echinacea, things like that. You want to know how to use those herbs, how long to use them for? Even though serious side effects are pretty rare, Research the known side effects again monograph of that herb before giving it to your dog. I always taste any formula or tincture before giving it to my dog to let me know how much I need to dilute it. Because if it tastes like crap to me, it's probably going to taste like crap to them. And know this, most herbs are diuretic and they make your dog pee more. It's not abnormal. Okay, it's not abnormal. You don't want your dog to have incontinence with whatever you're doing. But it's not abnormal for them to pee more and drink more. It's also not abnormal, which this isn't an herb thing. But there was a small question. I answered it. I didn't answer it on the podcast, but someone wrote in and asked, is it normal for my dog not to drink any water when they're On a traditional raw food diet. And the answer is yes, because the raw food has a lot of moisture in it. Especially if you're using any type of dehydrated, where you're giving a lot of water with that food or freeze dried food, it is normal to not drink a lot of water. I like to use infusions if I think my dog isn't getting enough water and I put them over the food to help hydrate. So for dogs with reactions to tinctures or liquid infusions or decoctions on an empty stomach, you'll need to add it to their food if they're having a major problem. That or add it, add less of it, Let them get used to it over a couple of weeks and then you can increase the dosage. You know, I usually try five days, they might need longer. Dogs are individuals. There's a lot of gray area to herbalism, so. But you could give it to them after they eat a meal by like at like maybe an hour or two afterwards too, and that might help. If your dog is on pharmaceuticals, separate any type of herbs for by about four hours from when you're giving the pharmaceuticals. And to get the maximum benefit from using herbs with dogs, less is more most of the time. Try to keep yourself from googling too much and, you know, going down the rabbit hole. And use the slow and steady wins the race mantra because you want to add, you know, one supplement at a time, one herb at a time. Find out how your dog does on it before you start adding a bunch of other stuff. You know, I have a lot of clients that, you know, when they first meet me, their dog is on like 22 supplements. We don't need to give our dogs 22 supplements. We have to figure out what supplement is working and why. And that's really important. You want to know the intention behind that supplement and you want to know if that supplement works okay with other supplements. I, you know, I'm writing this book, I'm trying to figure out, you know, what I can put in the book and what I can't. I'm limited to a hundred thousand words, so trying to figure out what's the best thing to do. One of the things that people have requested and I'm trying to work it into the appendix of the book is, you know, what? Herbs don't work with other herbs. I'm hoping I can fit it in there, but if I can't, I'll get it to you either on the podcast or on my blog or in a course or Something alive, we'll get it to you. But knowing that is really important. And going slow is a good way to figure that out. And some people want to double dosages because they feel that if. That if, like, if they're giving their dog 10 drops and they're doing really well, let's give them 20 drops. No, don't do that. If they're doing well on 10 drops, then, you know, you could go up by a drop or two and see how that goes. But sometimes it doesn't work out the way you think it's going to. And then your dog is having a reaction. So you need to find the dose that they can go back to, you know, the one that they were doing well on. Doubling the dose doesn't double an herb's effectiveness. That's. That's a very pharmaceutical kind of allopathic way of looking at it. And it may burden your dog's body and cause really unwanted and uncomfortable reactions. Okay. So be mindful. Another thing is, know what kind of herbs you're using. Read the labels if you're using, especially if you're using dried herbs, standardized herbs. And the biggest ones, these, like the ones I can think about, is curcumin, which is turmeric, from turmeric, and also silymarin, which is from milk thistle. Milk thistle and turmeric extracts are standardized a lot of the times, and sometimes you don't want a standardized extract because you're going to have more side effects. Standardized herbs kind of lack that synergistic constituents found in non standardized herbs, and they create more side effects than their whole plant counterparts. So some signs of toxicity is, you know, excessive chewing, diarrhea, drooling, loss of appetite, restlessness, shaking, vomiting, and definitely hair loss is too much too soon. If an herb causes the hair to start kicking out, stop whatever you're doing and give it a few weeks and start over again with one herb at a quarter of the dose and then start your journey again. I think that's about it for now. I just wanted to go over a few of those things. There's a lot more to cover, especially in the safety department. But that kind of gives you a good idea of how to use herbs. I'm sure you might have to listen to this over again and write some things down. I think we might have notes with the podcast. I think we're getting fancy like that. I'm not sure. Don't quote me. Take a peek. See again, if you have any questions for me on the podcast. It's just Me, I don't have any guests right now. I really don't plan to add guests until I would say 2024. I might add a few guests for the year there. I'm just rambling. So if you like rambling, share this podcast with your friends. I really appreciate it. Sharing is caring. And I want to thank Adored Beast Apothecary. Adored Beast is awesome and I appreciate them so much for sponsoring my podcast. So I like again to go through a product and I want to feature their roots line. Adored Beast makes a couple different lines of products. They have their ancestral line and they have their. This is their roots line, and they have come out with the Wolf tincture. This is an ancestral species probiotic, and it's mixed with turkey tail as a prebiotic. Now, from my experience with it, I've been using it for the last couple months. It is very potent. Okay. So I suggest to refrigerate it after opening it. Okay. It's got like, lupine probiotic strains, and it also has an enterococcus faecium in it as well. It's going to be quite strong. And I would take the dosage that's recommended on the bottle, and I would probably cut it by 75%. And then start out really slow and work your way up to the generalized dosage, which you may not get to once your dog starts showing any type of negative reaction to it. Don't start anything new while you're working with this probiotic. You're going to go back to the dosage where they did well. You want to shake it really well and put it in your pet's mouth. That's the best way to do it. You can mix it with a little water if you have to. You can put it on the food. It's not going to work as well, in my opinion. I love this probiotic. It's very unique. It's definitely ancestral line. It comes from wolf poopy. And I'm excited about what this probiotic can do for our domesticated dogs. And, you know, I think Julianne is brilliant for coming up with this probiotic tincture called the Wolf. And I would definitely give it a try and cycle it in and out. You know, Adored Beast has a ton of probiotics and prebiotics, and you're like, well, what one do we do? And I think that's gonna be a different episode of the podcast. I think just going through their probiotics and prebiotics and figuring out what, you know, what does this one do? What does that one do. And I like to rotate, rotate, rotate when it comes to probiotics and prebiotics for variety. So this is definitely one that you can add to your rotation if your dog does well with it. All right, I will talk to you on the next episode of the Dogs Are Individuals Podcast.

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Okay, so thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dogs Are.

Individuals Podcast and I'm going to talk to you in our next episode. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for veterinary care. This podcast doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor, veterinarian or healthcare provider first before starting anything new. And that includes herbs. I'm not a doctor and I don't treat disease or prescribe herbs anything. I'm a traditional herbalist providing herbal support education only. Regarding any products I may suggest the statements made regarding these products have not.

Been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

The efficacy of these products has not been confirmed by FDA approved research. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. All information presented here on the podcast is not meant as a substitute or alternative to information from your vet. Please consult your veterinary professional about potential interactions or other possible complications before using any product.