Obsessing Over Your Dog’s Health | 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. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of our shorts brought to you by Green Juju. Greenjuju.com thanks. They are our newest sponsor to hear on the podcast. I love kind of bringing you guys new sponsors, finding out new products that we love and new companies that are doing awesome work out there. Green juju is definitely one of them. Their owner, Kelly and her vice president, Billy Hokum are just awesome, awesome people, doing wonderful work. Before we begin our short, I just wanted to highlight a couple of products from Juice Green Juju that I love. They have freeze dried and frozen greens and blends that you can add to your bowl to improve the bowl. And one of them is called Just Greens and that is a blend of celery, kale. It has dandelion greens and coconut oil and zucchini and lemon juice, turmeric and ginger, and I believe bison bone broth. And all of this is organic. I love that Green juju really focuses on organic produce and growing organic produce. Kelly is just, you know, her history in this company is phenomenal. She's very inspiring to me for sure. And then they have another one called Bailey's Blend. The Just Greens, I would say is definitely on the warming side. It is offset with celery and dandelion greens for cooling. Bison's not too warm, but the lemon, turmeric and ginger are a little warming. So are kale. So it would just, it would be, you know, it's pretty balanced, but it was leaning towards warm. And then we have organic cucumber in Bailey's Blend. This is named after one of Kelly's dogs. Bailey's Blend has organic cucumber, green cabbage, broccoli, turkey bone broth, cilantro, chard, organic coconut oil, blueberries, turmeric and lemon. That's definitely leaning towards the cool side. And then their golden blend, butternut squash, organic celery, duck bone broth, organic cauliflower, golden beets, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar, ginger and turmeric. So love these blends. I think I'm gonna start carrying the freeze dried versions of these blends in our store in a couple weeks from now. So just wanted to highlight these products for you. And we are talking today on the pod all about energy transference and kind of obsessive compulsive. Overseeing of our dog's physical conditions. I want to just briefly touch on this. I know that, like in my upcoming book, the Herbal Dog, I share some kind of, like, I talk about the nervous system a lot. And there's definitely science to prove how positive and negative emotions can affect your heart's electromagnetic field. And that magnetic field is something we share with our dogs and any. Our cats or any animals that we have, like, living in our homes, since we spend so much time in our homes. And the Heartmath Institute studies the physical and emotional kind of aspects of the heart. And one thing they have scientifically proven is that positive emotions affects kind of this harmonizing of the heart's output. And again, we share this with our dogs. Right. So we need to be mindful of that rhythm and that vibration that we share. And when we obsess. Yes. About our dog's health, you know, I think a lot of us feel so responsible for it. And so we feel like we have kind of this false sense of control. And we have control by feeding our dogs a good diet, by giving them the best lifes we life we can. But there's a lot of things, factors out there that we're not privy to and that we can't control. And we just want to come from a place of integrity. We want to come from a place of kindness and love and care. But when that starts to switch over to obsession, I think our dogs can get very confused. They can have those emotions of, you know, what am I doing wrong? You know, my owner is constantly thinking about me, constantly obsessed with me. Their cortisol is up when I'm around. Their breathing is up when I'm around. You know, they're constantly checking me and seeing if I'm okay. And that is kind of like, again, more of an obsessive outlook on our dog's health. And it's hard not to go there sometimes. I'm not saying there's a. I'm not saying anything. Anybody's doing anything wrong. But the issue is dogs can physically interact with our emotions through our heart and our nervous system. They can smell stress. I've talked about this before on the pod. They can smell stress. And our hearts and their hearts are controlled by the ontomic nervous system, which switches from parasympathetic, which is rest and relaxation, where we want to have nice control over. And sympathetic activity, which is that fight, freeze, or flight. And as your dog interacts with their environment, if you are in a sympathetic state, which happens immensely and very often when you are on your cell phone, when you are watching television, when you are interacting with electronics, when you are fighting with your partner or your children. These are all things that switch us into fight or flight. And we build cortisol. We smell like adrenaline, and our dogs interact with those types of smells. And, you know, it's just like, again, I know I've said this and you know, as, as you know, if you've been listening to the pod, I repeat myself. But horses can smell fear. You know, you want to work with a horse. You'll see a horse's body completely relax around people that are generally relaxed around horses. It's one of the reasons why horses can give kind of that mental support and do therapy with people that have high anxiety, because just being around them brings your anxiety down. Just like dogs, you can be around them and bring your anxiety down, but also that dog needs support for their anxiety. This pod, this short podcast, is about you, the person interacting with your dog. Right? What do we do for ourselves, for our emotional relationships where we're being kind of obsessive and we just don't know how to stop manifesting the. That in the physical and, you know, anger. When we get angry around our pets, it's associated with liver tension. And our livers are definitely things that we need to care for. And besides helping the liver and supporting the liver, which we can do, and that's definitely another podcast podcast. We want to work with our emotions. And one of the best ways to do with that, to deal with that and to work with our dog at the same time, working with ourselves and being more consistent with our emotional display, right. Of what's going on and our stress levels and our sympathetic excess. Our fight, fight, fight, light or freeze. Okay. Working with our vagus nerve. One really great way to do that is through flower essences. And I'm going to share with you some flower essences that can help with obsessive thoughts, can help with, you know, that kind of obsession we have with if our dogs fail, we failed. And how am I supposed to take care of myself when I can't even take care of my dog or I'm a failure? If something happens to my dog, I won't be able to deal with the grief. I won't be able to deal with life in general. So I have to make sure that they are okay 24, seven, seven days a week, which is not a realistic, realistic goal. But if we can change our emotions about our dog to the way of supporting them as best we can, having the intention of love and security and doing. Coming from a place of caring, you know, our intention is never negative when it comes to our dogs. At least we hope we're not dealing with those types of people. Right? We don't want to be those types of people. We want to show our animals love and kindness. No matter what animal it is, no matter, you know, what interaction we have with an animal or the end result, we always want it to be love and kindness and support. And so when we have these types of emotional obsessions, it can interfere with our daily life. It can interfere with our daily activities. It can cause a significant amounts of stress, which causes this cycle of, like a train that we just can't stop. So using flower essences can be one way to really get in there and calm ourselves down. Right? We need to calm ourselves down. Meditation is one way. But flower essences, I have found to just be a gentle, continuous, daily support to help us change our chemistry so that we are not obsessing. There are a lot of flower essences out there that I could talk about, but I am going to touch in this first episode. We'll talk about this more as time goes on. And I'm coming out with a lovely flower essence course that's gonna cover some really great essences. But there are some commercially available essences called Bach flowers, which some people call them batch flowers. And I'm just gonna work with those right now and just going, like, alphabetical. The first one that I recommend, and you can blend these together and take them as a single formula is crabapple. Crabapple is definitely for when you're upset with yourself, right? You've taken on these feelings that you haven't done a good enough job with your dog. Okay? There's something wrong with you, either physically or mentally. And that's not a place to be. Ourselves are listening. We wanna be kind with ourselves. You know, I work at this every day just to be as kind as possible with myself. And it definitely takes. It takes something. You know, I'm the first person. I'm the hardest. We're all the hardest on ourselves. And being kind to ourselves is very important. So it's a cleansing remedy. And it helps with negative thought patterns, and it helps with not being okay with your surroundings. You know, that obsessiveness, constantly on edge, constantly looking for the negative. I really love crabapple. Another essence that I love for this type of issue is Aspen. And Aspen is for that fear that you're waiting for the shoe to drop. You know, things are going fine today, but I'm sure. Something bad is gonna happen. It's coming, right? It's coming. And that also is not a good place to be. Cherry plum is wonderful, and that really helps control our negative thought patterns, you know, get us out of that negative thought patterns where Aspen is again, that constant fear that something is going to happen. And I think that you can add a essence, sweet chestnut essence for when you feel desperate or you have anguish around your dog's health, when you feel that you're not doing a good enough job. You can add a Bach flower essence called serrato. When you feel like you're insecure about what you're doing, even though you know you're doing your best job, you just can't be with it, then I would add in some serrato. And I think one of my favorite essences is arnica. And arnica really helps with those of you that struggle to be positive, that struggle with being not, having as much hope and kind of trust that you need. Arnica is really wonderful for that. And then white chestnut, I think is the last one to talk about. And that is for when you get the obsessive thoughts, the cyclical thoughts that sit there in your brain that you have a hard time to getting rid of. Okay? And this is the thoughts that keep you up at night, and they just cycle and go around and around and make you feel kind of crazy. And then lastly, rock water, which is a good Bach flower essence. It is, you know, that perfection, that seeking perfection nonstop with your dog's health. Like, you know, we can't hold our dog's health in stasis. And so it can be really horrible to be in that spot where you're looking for perfection all the time. And again, there's no shame in the game. This happens to all of us. And I hope this helps you, you know, to pick a few remedies that you can put together and take a few drops of them every day, a few times a day. And you'll notice over a period of weeks that things will start to calm down. And if you're asking yourself, how much do you use of each? If you use them singularly, you can have a couple drops or you can add them all together. Just add them together. If you in a bottle, equal amounts of each, and then start taking a few drops of that formula after you give it a good shake. Thanks for listening to this episode of Dogs are Individuals. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app. And don't forget, sharing is caring. So if you love Dogs Are Individuals podcast. Share it with your friends and family who love dogs. This will help me so much. And remember, as a listener, I appreciate you much. Thanks to Resonant Media, my podcast production team. This podcast is produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. Any questions? Email the show, go to k9herbalist.com click podcast contact in the menu and then fill out that form and I'll answer any questions here online. Okay, so thank you so much for listening to this episode 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 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.