This is a guest post by Robert D Hawkins
Natural pet care is made up of a number of holistic treatment segments with the basic message being to look at the big picture on the way to achieving both short and long-term health. This approach to natural pet care takes into account such things as whether or not your pet is getting the proper nutrition, finding out whether certain factors might be influencing your pets stress level, and determining whether environmental toxins could be contributing to illness or disease.
The holistic practitioners oath is built around the premise of doing no harm first, while taking steps to enable your pets body to heal itself and fend off disease by strengthening immune system function through non-chemical means.
This common sense approach to veterinary medicine will in itself help to avoid overuse of or misuse of many drugs including steroid, antibiotics, vaccinations, and other treatments.
While initially this may not seem like such as big deal research tells us that the overuse of antibiotics is creating a who new strain of super-bugs. One example would be in the area of pet urinary tract infections where the condition is now becoming chronic almost 50 percent of the time due to antibiotic use and misuse.
Another example would be steroids to treat bone and joint diseases that only mask the symptoms potentially speeding cartilage deterioration. On the other hand, a holistic approach consisting of glucosamine, chiropractic care, and some common sense lifestyle changes might actually be able to reverse the condition and improve your pet quality of life.
The holistic pet practitioner will always be asking “why” and working from there. Conversely, my experience with conventional veterinarian medicine tells me the focus will be more about short-term treatment worrying about why later, if at all.
Don’t get me wrong I am not against conventional veterinary medicine as I have many friends in the field who are both really smart and caring but in order for true healing to take place a balance must be struck between natural pet care and other forms of medicine.
There will be times when even the most natural health minded pet parent must rely on the skills of conventional veterinary medicine with complementary medicine only playing a supporting role.
Examples would be in cases of severe trauma, certain types of infections, and blockages of the urinary track which require immediate action.
For example if a struvite or calcium stone/urolith was the reason for the urinary tract blockage a conventional approach might be necessary to remove it, possibly including surgery. Once removed and urine flow is restored then a holistic approach to diet and wellness would be an excellent preventative path moving forward.
Another example would be if a severe bacterial infection of the urinary tract required antibiotic treatment then a holistic approach to diet, exercise, stress reduction, in combination with a homeopathic urinary tract tonic would be an excellent natural way to proceed in hopes of avoiding chronic infection requiring a lifelong regime of low dose antibiotics.
In conclusion, natural pet care involving holistic treatments for your pet is wide-ranging including behavior modification; herbal medicine; homeopathy; vitamin, mineral, and supplement therapy; veterinary chiropractic; and even acupuncture.
The truth is you don’t need to be on board with all the complementary pet treatment methods above to embrace a holistic treatment approach for your pet, or pets, only have the desire to ask “why”, find the root cause of the problem, and make natural choices to cure and prevent re-occurrence.
Robert D. Hawkins is an indepedent researcher and enthusiastic consumer advocate for natural pet health.
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