New Years Resolutions For You and Your Dog | Shorts

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 to another edition of Canine Herbalism Shorts. Hi, I'm Rita Hogan. I am your honorary canine herbalist. And so I was talking today with one of my clients, and she has a little tiny dog that is old and has a lot of, I would call atrophy in his muscles. And he's very, very sweet, and she loves him so, so much. You know, like, you know, we all do. We love our dogs, right? At least I hope you do. I love my. And I don't want anything bad to happen to them. But this year, in the new year, I think we should all take on giving ourselves some room to be human, to make mistakes, to not have all of the answers. Right. We really need to do that. We're holding on to our dogs so tightly in many ways that it puts a lot of pressure on them, but it especially puts pressure on ourselves. And then our dogs can smell our stress, and then it's just a vicious circle of stress. Cortisol, acetylcholine, adrenaline. Your dog can smell all of that and is a lot of times worried about you. I know that my client tried to help her dog today by doing some gentle stretches with him and it didn't go well. And now he doesn't want to put weight on his leg and he's holding his neck all weird. And she was completely distraught and I was helping her through a text communication and I just wanted to reach out and give her a squeeze. We brought some homeopathics on board right away. Arnica, the Adored beast. Go to adoredbeast.com, one of my lovely sponsors, we did the Adored Beast Go to. I suggested it for her and her dog. It's a mixture of arnica and aconite. It's one of my favorite products on the market. I love it so much. I use it all the time. And it works so quick, quickly. And it also works over a period of time in a different way, kind of like flower essences, like Rescue Remedy works quickly, but it also works on the nervous system and that fight or flight response over a period of time. And you can add rescue remedy and homeopathy together. They work differently in the body on different pathways. So I really love adding those two together. We also brought in some hypericum, which is homeopathic St. John's Wort for any type of nerve pain. And she is doing that throughout the day. I'm going to check in with her later. One of the things that, you know, we have to do is that we have to look at our intentions. You know, if we accidentally hurt our animal, it's our intention. You know, were we meaning to hurt them? Absolutely not. And a lot of times when we work with our dogs, you know, a lot of people use like the Assisi loop. They use like a PEMF pad. We could do ozone therapy through your veterinarian. We could do, you know, water therapy. There's lots of different modalities that we can utilize to help our animals. Massage, acupuncture, chiropractic. And there's always a chance one of those modalities is going to have a negative effect and give yourself some broom to make a mistake. Even though the intention was not to make a mistake. We can't hold our animals health in stasis. We don't have a crystal ball. You know, if you use an animal communicator, right, one that's really effective, I know a few that are absolutely amazing. You can't have them on standby telling you about your pet nonstop. You don't have all the answers. And yes, you are going to mess up. You know, I mess up all the time with myself and others. It is part of being a professional. It's part of being a human. And holding on to guilt and self resentment and is not healthy. And we do have to give ourselves some grace and we do have to give ourselves some room. So this year let's make a promise to ourselves that we are going to remember that we don't have all of the answers. Right? We don't have all of the answers. And a lot of people that I work with have so much fear that their dog is literally going to explode before their eyes if they are not on task 24, seven, seven days a week. And that's exhausting. And it's not only exhausting for your dog, it's exhausting for you, right? And for you and for your dog. We have to practice breathing. We have to practice getting some air. We have to not be afraid to leave our animals alone for a little while and give them some space. And we want to make sure that our feelings of fear and doubt and insecurity and shame and you know, these are conditioning. These are conditioned responses to things that play out when we have our animals. And our animals are some of the best healers that I have Ever like that I've ever met in my entire life. In fact, in my new one, my upcoming book, I don't know the title yet because my publisher hasn't told me, and they have been running behind. And so I've been talking about my book for a while, but I'm still talking about it. Yes, it's true. I am still talking about it. But when I. It is coming out at the end of this year between, I would say, October and December. So that has been guaranteed to me. But in the beginning of the book, I use a quote by this wonderful Native American healer who I learned about through one of my mentors, Matthew Wood. His name is Tismel Crow, and he has a lovely, lovely quote that I use in the beginning of my book. And it says, we believe that the domestic animals were sent here to accept the diseases of humans and to show them how to heal those diseases. That is so powerful. It is so powerful because, you know, I can't tell you how many clients I have that share the same disease as their dogs, especially diseases of the nervous system or emotions around the nervous system, or heart conditions, ptsd, heart murmurs, heart failure, you know, different types of heart situations. Because I think as pet owners, we hold a lot of things inside. At least I find that to be a commonality. And when we take that fear and transform it, we can really move through a lot of healing for ourself and our dogs. I think fear and doubt are. Well, I would say fear, doubt, and shame are three of the things that really stand in our way of clearing disease and clearing a space for us to really manifest our dreams. And so this year, 2024, let's commit to giving ourself more grace. I know this sounds completely corny, but I. If you know astrology, I have my Venus in Pisces, and I can be quite the cornball. And I'm proud of it. I am very proud of my corniness. I embrace it, and I use it to help me be an even bigger cornball. My partner definitely says, I'm a cornball all the time, and it's fine. Again, I embrace it. But fear, I really believe that there's two emotions. There's fear and there's love. And fear is one of those things that breaks things down. It collapses things, it closes in on things and stagnates. And love opens things up, and it makes room for healing, it makes room for growth. I don't think fear does any of that stuff. It's the opposite of love. So when you find yourself being Afraid, Just stop and start breathing. Deep breathing is one of the best things we can do. And it's this great bonding exercise that you can do with your dog. You can sit there with one hand on your dog and just breathe. They absolutely love it. If any of you ever have done yoga with your dog, it's amazing how your dog will just lay down there. You'll see some dogs just even start to stretch. And they love it because when you're doing yoga, when you're meditating, when you're breathing, deep breathing, not holding your breath, when you're deep breathing, you're calm. And that gives them the permission to be calm. Right? Can you see how that would, like, connect? I think that all of our dogs want what's best for us. You know, we are always focused on what is best for them. But have you ever thought of what's best for you? Like, they want that for sure. I know that in my cells that our dogs want what's best for us. And I think that they want us to believe that we are worthy of, of love. We're worthy for everything great in the world. They want to show us that through their love. How corny am I? It's true, though. I mean, I'm sorry, it's just. It is. They want us to be healthy. They want us to mentally and physically be in abundance. And that's where being grateful comes in. So this year, be grateful for what you have. Accept the life that you have right now. It doesn't mean you can't change it. But I think when you remove resentments, when you remove fear, when you remove guilt, guilt is a big one. And shame, and work through shame. If you don't know how, look up Brene Brown. She's fabulous. She works specifically on shame and has a lot of great information that you can deal with. Because I feel like a lot of people hold shame in for like, things that they have done or things that they feel they haven't done with their animals and especially haven't done. Well, I should have known better, or if I would have known what I know now, my dog would have never died. I think that that is the human condition and we have all experienced that and we have to let it go and move forward, you know, honor what has happened in our past. But don't put it in a steamer trunk and attach it to your waist and drag it along with you. Our dogs don't want that. So let's commit to breathing, to getting outside, to exercising. Age appropriate exercise for you and your dog. Walk, walking, meditating, stretching and do it with your puppy. He will love it or she will love it.

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Any questions here online. Okay, so thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dogs Are Individual 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.

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