June 2006
Letters: 06/06
Subscribers Only Dear readers: The response to our article on Dog Gone Pain, featured in “Safe Pain Relief” (May 2006), has been heavy and swift. Quite a few of the letters we received resembled the following: ---------- I ordered DGP for my seven-year-old Labrador, who has had a shoulder problem for two years, and noticed improvement quickly. She sees a chiropractor and receives acupuncture, but this really seems to help her pain. …
A Healthy Pancreas for Diabetes Prevention
The pancreas is an elongated gland, light tan or pinkish in color, nestled alongside the small intestine and adjacent to the stomach. The organ is composed of two functionally separate types of glandular tissue, each which performs a vital and disparate role in the dog’s body.
Willard Water - A Powerful Antioxidant
Subscribers Only Willard Water is one of life’s mysteries. Most people have never heard of it. Those who have, tend to use it religiously, even though they aren’t sure what it is or how it works. They say it improves digestion, reduces migraine headaches, relieves arthritis, improves skin health, heals burns and wounds without scarring, helps balance blood sugar, treats gum disease, supports detoxification, lowers high blood pressure, alleviates pain, and is helpful in the treatment of dozens of other conditions, including cancer.
Positive Methods for Obedience Training
Subscribers Only How to teach your dog to look to you (literally!) for direction. Look is a combination behavior. It is more than the “Leave it” or “Off.” It is more than the ever-popular “watch me.” It involves the dog breaking eye contact with the arousing object, person, or animal (whatever triggers the dog’s manic behavior); turning his head away from that trigger; making eye contact with you; and holding that eye contact until you give a release signal.
Activity-Related Canine Injuries
He’s fearless. Reckless. Senseless? Or perhaps my Australian Cattle Dog, Cedar, is just accident-prone. Yesterday he slammed head first into a door jam during rough play with my Shepherd-mix, Willow. Today he did a nose dive off a five-foot embankment in pursuit of his favorite all-natural dog toy: a pine cone. As always, he retrieved the cone, chewed it into a slobbery clump of fibrous goo, and dropped it at my feet. On his trot back I noticed he was limping, holding his front leg off the ground.
Science Based Holistic Veterinarians
Subscribers Only Frequently, we refer to “holistic” veterinarians in the pages of Whole Dog Journal, as in, “Discuss this with your holistic veterinarian.” What we generally mean by this is a vet who offers her patients complementary and/or alternative methods of healthcare, in addition to her conventional Western medical treatments. The goal of holistic practitioners is to look at the entire animal patient – body, mind, and spirit – and to do more than treat his illness in times of crisis; they must also promote his total wellness, with an eye toward disease prevention.
Signs That Your Dog Has Stress
Subscribers Only Learn to recognize signs of (and then reduce) your dog’s stress. If possible, remove the stressor from your dog’s environment entirely. For example, if he’s stressed by harsh verbal corrections, shock collars, and NASCAR races on TV, you can probably simply stop exposing him to them. For stressors that can’t be eliminated, a long-term program of counter-conditioning and desensitization can change the dog’s association with a stressor from negative to positive, removing one more trigger for stress signals and possible aggression.
Seek and You May Find
Subscribers Only What, now even our dogs are all stressed out? Is this something we really need to worry about? Or just yuppy puppy pseudo-angst? That probably would have been my reaction if, a decade or so ago, I had read an article about signs of stress in dogs. Today, though, I get it. Trained to recognize the telltale body language and behavior of on-edge dogs by WDJ’s professional trainer contributors, I now see stressed-out dogs just about…
