Unlocking the Power of Canine Herbalism with Rita Hogan | S7E6

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Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Canine Culture podcast. This is your host, Brittany, and today we are joined by Rita Hogan. She is the author of the Herbal Dog and she is a holistic canine herbalist. So, Rita, thank you for joining us.

I am excited to be here. Love it.

So tell us a little bit about you and what you do.

So I am a clinical herbalist. I work in clinic, in my own clinic with a. I have worked with probably thousands, thousands of dogs over the last 20 years. It's been two decades, kind of like, you know, wearing different hats along the years. But I work with dogs that are having a hard time finding healing modalities that are working for them. And I work with a lot of vets and I help them. I am a member of the Veterinary Botanical Medical association, which is a veterinary association. I'm a non veterinary member. And it. It's kind of a mix between consulting. I do a lot of formulating for companies. I do a lot of writing. I'm an author, and I make a lot of medicine. So I make a lot of herbal medicine. I teach other people how to make herbal medicine. I do a lot of teaching. I have a teaching platform. So it's a. I have a podcast. So I do a lot of teaching in all different levels.

Mm, yeah, you definitely do a lot. And we're gonna jump into some of that. So for those listeners who are not familiar with herbalism or being an herbalist, tell us a little bit about, like, what does that mean? How did you get into this line of work?

So being an herbalist means that you're working with plant modalities. So you are working with different forms of plant medicine and directly with the plants. And herbalism can take on many hats, but my hat is working with dogs specifically. I also work with cats and some horses, but I do work with people. Usually it's people who have dogs. So I got into this. My dad was a very avid farmer and gardener, and he taught me a lot about the plants around us. And I would go pick things for my dad and bring it back and he would give it to the horses and cows and chickens and he wouldn't consider himself an herbalist. But people knew herbalism back then, right? I'm in my 50s and so, you know, I was doing things in the, in the 70s and as a kid. So then fast forward until like I studied an eastern medicine modality called Ayurveda when I was in my late 20s, middle 20s to late 20s, and it just didn't click for me. I went back to the plants that I grew up with, which is what's called Western herbalism and not to be mistaken for western medicine, but they are the plants that are in our northern hemisphere, in the United States, Canada and parts of Europe like England, Ireland, places like that. They're the plants that are right outside your doorstep in many places, unless you're in the desert. But we still encompass those types of plants too. So a lot of people don't. Can't identify the plants around them, but they're there and there are a lot of them that I use to better the lives of animals all over the world. So I'm definitely, I'd say I'm knee deep in it right now. Those plant remedies, they are dried plants, dried powdered plants, dried bulk plants, tinctures, extracts. Like with dogs, a lot of them will have glycerin based extracts, some alcohol extracts. I work with plant stem cells in a different capacity. I'm definitely a nerd. And flower essences, essential oils. A lot of people are familiar with essential oils. So I have a lot of different modalities and I work with mushrooms and, and cannabis medicines. There's a lot that it come. It just depends on where you want to go as an herbalist. What you.

Yeah. So in the past few years and anyone that's listened to this podcast, they know that I've become more and more, I don't want to say obsessed, that's not the correct word here, but more inclined to lean on plant medicine, whether it be different mushrooms. So people have heard me talk about my older dogs that are 16 and 14 developing somewhat dementia, like a do doggy dementia, and how lion's mane made a tremendous difference in their behaviors using. One of our dogs had cancer. We got the tumor removed after that, started using turkey tail because I know turkey tail has a lot of cancer fighting agents and the cancer he had was very aggressive and they said it might come back. We've been lucky it hasn't come back. So, you know, I've started working with in the mushroom realm. My dogs have always taken a CBD product which we've switched several times because you Learn more as you go, especially as you work with other professionals. But I don't think I've really worked with any other kinds of plants, any, like, everyday plants. And I know for myself, I've tried a little bit of, like, oil of oregano. So oil of oregano is my antibiotic of choice. If I get strep throat, if I get a virus, whatever it might be, oil of oregano has been my go to. And so this topic is interesting for me because I think we can learn a lot for humans and for dogs. And so we'll stick with dogs, of course, because it's a dog podcast. But let's talk a little bit about canine herbalism. And so are there conditions you see more frequently than others that people come to you for, or kind of like top conditions that people want to use different herbs for?

Absolutely. So the main things that people come to me for are things like pain, arthritis, acid reflux, leaky gut, you know, not being able to eat proteins, itching, scratching, biting, yeast infections, definitely cancer for a cancer support protocol. Nervousness, anxiety, restlessness. You know, some people, I don't treat disease because I'm not a medical doctor. So I work at. At helping the body balance itself out. So if someone comes to me for like, a heart murmur, I'm going to give heart herbs that will help balance that heart out so that it doesn't have a murmur, but I'm not treating the murmur specifically.

Right.

A lot of things that I deal with because I'm a holistic canine herbalist, so I deal with the dog as a. As an ecosystem, as a mind, body, spirit. You know, a lot of people understand that kind of as a definition of holistic, but I, you know, I come to. I come to the table with everything is connected. A lot of times we don't realize that the heart's connected to the lungs, connected to the lymphatic system, connected to the nervous system, connected to the kidneys and liver. And. And I think the nervous system is one of the most important things in the body along with the lymphatic system. And some people don't even know what the lymphatic system is.

Right.

So I'm. I'm really big on educating and educating people on how the body works so that we can use herbal remedies to help balance your dog out. And a lot of. I'm a big proponent of low vaccination. Not no vaccination, but low vaccine in the animal. In the dog world, it's. It's literally only one area that where we vaccinate our dogs and cats over and over and over and over again for the same vaccination. And that's not how vaccines work. And so we see a lot of vaccine damage. I see a lot of it. Itching, scratching, biting, you know, toxic heavy metals. We do. I do. I'm a big advocate of testing. I love testing. I work with a couple labs in the United States. Innovative Pet Lab, Pet Mandela, Omegaquant. These are things that. Checking omega 3 levels and checking vitamin D levels, which is essential. You don't want to supplement vitamin D until you check. But a lot of dogs are either too high or too low. So I'm a big proponent of working with your veterinarian or working with some of these testing facilities that. So you can figure out what's going on. And then we can help with diet and water quality and food quality and just kind of do baby steps to improve a holistic lifestyle. Because for me, a healthy dog is a way of life. And it's not just. And it's not something you can keep in stasis. Right.

Right.

You can be healthy on Friday and then start ignoring your dog or your. All of this applies to humans. You know, ignoring yourself or your dog. Monday, you start eating Big Macs and chips every five minutes, that level of health is going to start going down. Or you get exposed to a toxin or there's so many things going on in our. In our world right now. It's very polluted. You know, a lot of people have climate change discussions. Well, here's the thing. Change the language. Let's talk about pollution. You cannot deny pollution. Pollution is everywhere. It's affecting all of this, all of us, and it definitely affects our dogs. And I also, you know, the mind and spirit part, I'm a big proponent in taking care of ourselves because when we are healthy, our dogs are much healthier in that they share our emotions with us. That's a big proponent of herbalism in that I do a lot of herbalism for the. For the nervous system, like lion's mane, you know, or things like passion flower or California poppy and. And ashwagandha. Different things that help nettle, nettle bud, nettle seed. They help the body deal with stress because our stress is their stress.

Right.

You know, we share a lot. I deal with that in my book. Like we, we. Our dogs are definitely our mirrors. And when we take care of our own mental health, we are taking care of our dog's health because our dogs are really concerned about us. And they. We Smell, right. They, they, dogs interact with their, with their environment through the oral factory system, their smell. And we, a lot of people are stressed out, especially people that are on their phones a lot. You smell like cortisol and adrenaline because phones are designed to make you go into fight or flight and you know, the rings, the bells, the whistles and all that stuff. And our dogs are like, you smell like you're stressed. What's the matter? What's the matter? Should I be worried? Should I be worried? You know, and a lot of people don't think about those things when it comes to the word herbalism. But the plants can really help with everything just depending on the modality that you're using. But yes, those are all. I deal with a lot of anxiety, restlessness and usually the people that hire me are anxious and restless. So we kind of have, we have a lot of crossover.

Yeah, that sounds like our most recent rescue dog.

So anxious.

And I'm like, we worked with the trainer and he did a board and train. She was like, I think you're half the problem. And I'm like, not me. It's true. It's absolutely true. And it's so funny. Like he picks up on little things and he like knows when I'm gonna wrap up work. He knows when I'm on certain calls. Like, he's just so intuitive with like when my stress or anxiety raises, he's like, mom, do you need something? Like, I'm here. So it's funny you mentioned that and, and kind of talking about stress and plant medicine, something that we started to implement in our house a couple years ago was started moving more towards like a non toxic lifestyle with our cleaners, the candles we use, the products we purchase. And I do think that has an effect on our dogs, you know, our dogs burning, I don't want to say any particular brands burning particular candles that have such a strong fragrance can certainly affect our dogs. And using certain cleaners, especially when, you know your dog might go lick the floor later if you know, something drops and depending on what you cleaned with. So I think it all certainly ties together and kind of brings us back to our origins of going back to nature and getting back to like, here's what's provided, here's what we should be using internally, externally, in our environment to reduce our overall load of toxins.

Yeah, absolutely. And all of those. We will not mention the names of those candles and those plugins and the scent boosters are the biggest thing now. You know, you want yourself to smell for 12 days I don't, you know, when I'm on a plane, I pray, I sit there and pray. Please do not let a scent boosted person sit next to me because I'm going to have to smell that for the next four hours. And you get immune to that smell, right?

Yeah.

It's really hard on dogs. It's really hard on people. A lot of people are like, well, they wouldn't make them if they were toxic. Yes, they would.

Absolutely.

And they are.

Right.

And they are, they are. They definitely are. And so, yeah. And I think anything that we do to decrease our toxic load is beneficial because disease is opportunistic and our body, when it's out of balance, just waits for the right moment where our pathogens can say, huh, okay, that immune system is down. I think I'm gonna go and I'm gonna try to multiply. And a lot of people need to realize that, you know, it's kind of terrain versus germ theory. We need to fortify our terrain. We need to be more resilient. We need to work on our resilience and our dog's resilience to disease so we don't have to worry so much when there is an outbreak of this and an outbreak of that.

Right.

When we work, anytime you decrease your liver's load, frees it up to do the important things that it needs to do in the body, Right?

Absolutely.

So let's talk about your book. So it's called the Herbal Holistic Canine Herbalism Applications and Practice. So tell us about the book and how this came about.

Yeah, so I've been in practice a long time. I've been working at being an herbalist for a long time. And I started teaching a group of women holistic canine herbalism. So I love education and I used to be very reclusive until someone talked me into starting. I started writing for Dogs Naturally magazine. And then after that someone talked me in to start teaching. I just loved it. I loved teaching. I didn't know, but I loved it. And I'm very good at it. I'm good at breaking down complex things into things to that are easy to understand without a lot of jargon. And so I met with these women every Thursday for four and a half years. Every single Thursday. I think we missed about 10 sessions in the four and a half years.

Wow.

Yeah, it was pretty intense and. But they showed up and I showed up. So I wrote them a lesson every week. And I basically was writing a book.

Yeah.

You know, and I took everything out of that mentorship that I felt was really important for someone just coming to the herbalism table and put it in a book. But there's also advanced things in here that if you are advanced in herbalism, you will understand them more. It's for any level of interest in herbs and helping your dog. It. It answers the introductory questions, though, of how much should I use? What. What type of, like, let's just say ashwagandha, right? Ashwagandha is. What type of ashwagandha should I use? Should I use powdered or should I use an extract? Where should I start? How much should I give? How long should I give it? How do I know if it's working right? When do I stop it? These are all things that I cover in the book. I cover, I don't know, I think over 30 herbs in the book. In the back, I have a vitamin and mineral section. I've got a food section. I deal with what's called energetics, which helps you deal with your dog as an individual. And I have a good application section, which means that. What do you do when your dog's going to have surgery? How do you help your dog recover from surgery?

Mm.

What if your dog has taken too many antibiotics? What do I do? What if my dog has yeast? What do I do? How do I help them with their musculoskeletal system? How do I help them with their nervous system? What if they're anxious or restless? I deal with all those things. What happens if they're. Your dog gets diarrhea, what do I do? And like, for instance, there's a. There's a medicine that, if you know, the standard of care means that if you go into your veterinarian. Veterinarian, they have a standard of care for diarrhea. Okay. The standard of care for diarrhea is a drug called Flagyl, which is metronidazole. I always pronounce it wrong, but it's roughly that. But it's also called flagyl, and it's the standard of care for diarrhea. And the issue with that drug is that it turns on inflammation markers, it genetically modifies the gut, and it's a gift that keeps on giving for years. Yeah. A lot of times you can get a dog that's itching, scratching, biting, won't stop, nothing's working. I'll look at their history, and there it is. But I. But they took it a year ago. Yep. And it's keeping on giving. So, like, what can you use for diarrhea? BlackBerry leaf. BlackBerry leaf. Here in the Pacific Northwest, it's everywhere, but it's really easy. You can even get BlackBerry tea in the, in the grocery store. BlackBerry leaf stops diarrhea in its tracks. It's amazing. I have a dog that has anal cancer right now. She's a 15 year old basset hound. She's doing great. She was supposed to be gone about a year ago. She's doing fabulous. But if she doesn't take BlackBerry leaf, she gets bad diarrhea. And nobody. Interesting, nobody likes diarrhea. Nobody.

Right?

Everybody. Pet owner out there. Let's, let's choose constipation or diet. I'll take constipation any day. Yeah, she takes BlackBerry leaf once a day, a tincture and a full dropper because she's about a 60 pound dog and if we, if no one forgets to give it to her, she has nice little poops. But if I forget to give it to her, it's a very sad day. So, you know, whereas if I didn't know about BlackBerry leaf, she would probably be on a pharmaceutical for diarrhea and it would most likely be an antibiotic that she would have to stay on and it would most likely be the flag. So, you know, I deal with basic things. Constipation, you know, vomiting, I mean, you know, your basic kind of things that come up and what should I do? And I go over, you know, when do you have to worry about vomiting? When do you have to worry about constipation? When you should, what, when should you bring your dog to the vet? Mm, I deal with allergies and sensitivities. I mean, there's so much in this book and I think people are really going to love it. It's easy to use as well. And I even go over how to plan an herbal protocol. Like, where do you start? How do you know how many herbs should you give your dog?

Right.

A lot of people kitchen sink their animals because, you know, they're desperate for an alternative method for something not working. That and like, but I don't know what to do. And the book really provides that. Like this is how you figure out what herbs to choose from because we like, I think all dog owners have like a graveyard of supplements that, you know, they buy and this doesn't work.

This doesn't work.

Or you know, also like, how do I know if my dog's kidneys need help? How do I know if my dog's liver might not be up to par? So I deal with all of those things in my book, but they're definitely from my practice, from teaching. And the most important things that I think are that I, that I experience affecting dog owners across the board. And I think the important thing, like to toot my horn is that my book meets people where they're at. So, you know, I talk about people who feed kibble. I talk about people that might feed like home cooked or raw or freeze dried.

Right.

You know, we have a lot of different food varieties out there right now. And so my book addresses all of those. I don't do any, you know, I don't. Yeah, I offer things to take steps every day to improve your dog's ecosystem. And we are an ecosystem. And when that ecosystem gets unbalanced, everything is connected. And so things start to go downhill.

Right. Right.

One question that I have, and this is, this is recurring, this happens for again, humans and animals is sourcing and where to buy. Do you have guidance, whether it's in the book or anywhere else, on where should we buy these different herbs? What do we look for when we're trying to trust a brand and know it's truly what we think it is?

Yes. So I go over a few of like, I go over a few things in my book. But my book has a website, okay. Called the Herbal Dog. And it has a website and it will have, it has a sourcing section throughout the book. You might see seetherbaldog.com for more information. So I have like, I have what kibbles I recommend what freeze dried, I recommend what raw, what home cooked. I don't get any. I'm not affiliated with anybody. These are. There's no affiliations on my website, except if you go under my book tour. I have sponsors, but that has nothing to do with what I'm recommending. Then I have a sourcing section. I'm working on the sourcing, more sourcing right now. But I have the uk, Australia, Canada and the United States. I carry a lot of tinctures, but next year, in 2027, I'll be carrying dried herbs and extracts. But I'm working with a couple herb farms right now. Okay. Some really quality things. But, you know, a lot of people order from a company called mountain rose herbs, mountainroseherbs.com they have been around for a really long time. They're outside of Oregon. In fact, I'll be going by their farm in the beginning of February here. But they are excellent at sourcing. But there's a lot of other sources and I'm going to have them on the website that. So you won't have to worry about that.

Awesome. Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

And a lot of people, you know, you'll get something on Amazon. It's quick, it's convenient, it's cheap. Keyword there was cheap. You tried a week, you're like, it didn't work. And it's like, well, number one, it's probably the product you bought. But number two, most things are not going to work in a week. And so you mentioned you, you have some guidance in your book with respect to how long should I try this or that kind of thing.

I have a who whole chapter on expectations because expectations are a big deal because we're pharmaceutically trained and you know, we've only been away from the natural world for about 80 to 100 years.

Yeah.

And. And I've lived 50 of them. So, you know, we were a lot more attached to the natural world when I was a kid. So I would say really hardcore. For about 40 years we've been just hardcore, hard, hardcore pharmaceutical. And we're used to pharmaceuticals. Taking a pill and then working within like 30 minutes.

Yeah.

And that you can get lucky with some herbs, flower essences, some homeopathic remedies work very quickly depending on what you're like. If it's anxiety or like fear, it can bring down that stuff right away. But for chronic disease it takes time, roughly between six to 12 weeks. The main goal is to move in the right direction. You know, if you're not moving in the right direction, there's two things that are happening. The wrong herb or the wrong formula or the dose is wrong. Right. If there's side effects. Wrong herb or dose, Everything is dose. Toxicity can be dose. We can kill ourselves with water.

Right.

A lot of people are afraid of herbs, which, here's my shtick on that. I don't know if you've ever watched normal TV lately or football. You will see, if you watch football, you will see pharmaceutical ads and at the end they have a really. Almost all of the pharmaceuticals that are advertised on TV include death. They include a non curable virus. That's super fun. They include vomiting, diarrhea, low appetite or ravenous appetite. They include like huge side effects, problems with vision, problems with cancer. Cancer is one of them. So non toxic herbs, which is the ones I deal with in my book, non toxic herbs don't have those types of things.

Right.

They may have a little vomiting, a little diarrhea. Usually again, wrong herb, wrong dose. It's always the case. But herbs aren't going to cause cancer. They're not going to cause Death, Right? And a lot of the times you'll go on Google and look up, you know, can my dog have garlic? Can my dog have chamomile? Can my dog have peppermint? And Google's one of the worst places to get information about her. Like, dogs can eat garlic. They need to eat fresh garlic and they only eat a tiny bit of it. Right. I've been feeding my dogs garlic for 16 years. All my life, actually. My dogs growing up, my dad fed small amounts of garlic. He used it as an antibiotic. But, you know, you go on Google and it's going to say garlic is going to kill. Cause Heinz anemia and it's going to kill your dog. That is based on a crazy junk science study. And it's tons, grams and grams and grams and grams and grams of garlic. No one's going to give their dog that type of garlic. It's interesting. And you know, chamomile is bad for your dog. No, it's not. There's two types of chamomile. There's Roman chamomile and German chamomile. And I don't use Roman chamomile with animals. It's. It's a little more irritating, a little more toxic. Toxic doesn't mean deathly all the time. It can mean, like, dogs will get diarrhea or vomiting. They'll get irritated, itching, scratching might have a, you know, make them feel kind of lethargic for a little bit. German chamomile is fine. It's fine. And plants belong to certain families. Like German chamomile belongs to the Asterisae family. And a lot of humans and dogs can be a little sensitive to that family. Usually with dogs, it's like excessive itching and scratching. If that doesn't go away in three days, you stop whatever you're doing and try something else.

Right.

But there's not toxicity in the point where it's causing harm. I think people, when people don't understand something, fear goes in, comes in the way.

Right?

Yeah, fear. But I think that, like, if you follow any type of holistic medicine or follow any type of, I would say, mind body, mind body connection modalities, you're going to see how detached we are from nature. And it's having a huge effect on us. Negative effects. Right. Because you go in nature, it's scientifically proven that trees help the immune system. It's scientifically proven that they give off certain chemicals that actually raise serotonin. Plants are our friends. Yes. There's poisonous Plants out there for sure. You need to know what you're doing. But all of the plants in my book are non toxic in different degrees. So there's a lot of plants that are our allies and that can make us feel a lot better.

Mm.

Where can people find your book at?

Sorry, I had to take a little drink. My. My book is anywhere you. You buy books. So it's traditionally published. It's anywhere you buy books. Barnes and Noble, Amazon Thriftbooks has a sale right now. It is. You save about $6 and it's free shipping. Thriftbooks.com. mm. And if you're in the UK, you can buy it on Amazon. If you're in Canada, you can buy it on Amazon. If you're in Australia, I think you can buy it on Amazon. But yeah, you can get it@bookshop.com and you can get it at your local bookstore. You just walk in there and say, I'd like to pre order the herbal dog. It comes out on February 4th. And yeah. And you can pre order it now. Pre orders always help. I don't know why, but it's true. It's a thing right now. I guess it's a thing. So yeah, anywhere. Anywhere you can get a book. You can find my book.

And then outside of your book, where can people find more about you? Where can people find your podcast? All of that good stuff?

Okay, so in a nutshell, here's Canine Herbalist and Rita Hogan. Oh, on Instagram, I'm at Canine Herbalist. Facebook. At Canine Herbalist, I have a teaching platform, 9Herbalism.com okay. And on there I have a subscription community. It's called the Canine Herbalist Advisory. And that's where I answer questions. It's the best way to get a hold of me. It's 15amonth. We have live Q and A every month. And I do a lot of coaching on that platform for people. And then, let's see, I have Dogs are individuals community, sorry, podcast, which is free. Anywhere you get your podcast, I'm there. Dogs are Individuals. And then I have courses on the canine herbalism platform. I have a dental health course. I have a great flea, natural flea course. I have a level one canine herbalism course that teaches you everything in my book, but. And more. And then@canineherbalist.com I have a store with a lot of great products in it. And then I also have my consulting through there.

Awesome.

You are not busy at all?

No.

We appreciate you coming on, sharing all of this with us. This is phenomenal information and I just think it's going to be so helpful for so many people, whether they are looking to, you know, add on to their dog's routine, they're looking to treat something, maybe they've been unsuccessful with western medicine, a prescription. I think this is just going to be helpful for so many people. So thank you so much for being a guest.

I'm so just. It was a great conversation, so I appreciate it.

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